For centuries, traditional marriages in Pakistan have functioned in the culturally customary manner of arranged marriages. These were primarily endogamous unions, in which spouses were married within an extended family, clan, or tribe. Parents or other senior members of the family arranged these marriages.

Such arranged marriages have been culturally prevalent because they make it simpler to keep family assets and affiliations with others. Consanguineous marriages provided the endogamy needed for the family to preserve its social and financial status. The traditional marriages in Pakistan are typically consanguineous marriages. Such consanguineous marriages function to preserve cultural homogeneity.

What Are the Functions of Traditional Marriages in Pakistan?

In an arranged marriage, Pakistani men and women do not expect to have love and an intimate relationship with their future spouse. They marry whomever their families select for practical matters. Economic suitability, financial security, social respect, and family interests have priority over love and romantic attraction. Marriages are family duties.

For women, the most important things were to get a home and find a man who could support her and their future children with resources. Practical matters, rather than love and romantic attraction, are on their minds. In arranged marriages, parents want to ensure that their future son-in-law or daughter-in-law will fulfill social and economic expectations. Parents and other relatives think of marriages as social and economic contracts that will help them have good and safe lives (Ahmed, 2022).

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Traditional Gender Roles in Marriage in Pakistan

Cultural norms expect that men provide financially for the family and women take responsibility for domestic matters.

Women in Pakistani culture are taught to give priority to their domestic duties and household chores over their education, careers, and even their own health. Women were expected to focus on cleaning, cooking, looking nice, and caring for and raising children. Over generations, mothers, aunts, and grandmothers followed these routine customs. They were all raised with the awareness that marriage and childbirth were the only important things that would happen in their lives (Ahmed, 2022).

Why Do Pakistani Women Remain in Abusive Marriages?

Like women in other South Asian countries, Pakistani women in arranged marriages can become victims of domestic violence. The major sources of such marital violence are the need to protect family honor, cultural normalization of abuse, the abusive personalities of partners, and failing to meet gender role expectations (Ahmed, 2022).

Despite everything, women are likely to remain in abusive relationships due to their cultural expectations and fears of losing their children. For example, women are taught that when they have children, they cannot leave their marriage for the sake of the children.

Another reason that Pakistani women remain in abusive relationships is the worry of being on their own in life. Women are often taught that their husbands can simply find another wife, but they will be alone when they are divorced. Pakistani cultural expectations say that no one would want to marry a divorced woman who has lost her virginity.

Practical Interdependence of Spouses in Arranged Marriages in Pakistan

Arranged marriages are destined to endure despite anything. Women and men are interdependent on each other in several practical household issues. Many women remain in marriages because of their lack of education and inability to find another source of income besides their husband’s. Many men, on the other hand, are incapable of taking care of cleaning, laundry, cooking, and taking care of children. They feel very dependent on their wives for these domestic things. There are also reasons why men and women prefer to remain in marriage because of all these obligations and dependencies. Being happy is of secondary importance to them.

Here is another reason why Pakistani arranged marriages tend to endure. The wife and husband cannot return to their family homes. In such cases, many parents never keep their doors open for their children to return home. Women, as well as men, are told that once they are married, this is forever. They are encouraged to do everything that they can to make peace in marriage. Therefore, men and women need to remain in their marriages to satisfy their families. Their own happiness is a lower priority.

Therefore, children are often forced to remain in difficult marriages because they want to avoid having their parents gossip about them. The sad consequences of arranged marriages, in which adults are not allowed to marry the partner of their choice, are that many young men and women feel unhappy, borderline depressed, and emotionally unstable in their lives (Nazir, 2021).

A cultural Challenge for Arranged Marriages in Pakistan

People in Pakistan are becoming increasingly concerned about the potentially pernicious effects of Western social and sexual values and customs on their children. Due to these concerns, many parents believe that marrying their children off to prospective partners of the same Pakistani culture will solve these possible intercultural clashes (Shaw, 2006).