Are sikhs allowed to have girlfriends and boyfriends?

[Mugermach Singh]

take to long to read all comments, will some1 sum it up.

Yes or No will do for me.

[nogroup singh]

<<<< Just pasting it here because its relevent to this topic >>> These are not my views.

ARRANGED MARRIAGES - GOOD OR BAD?

http://srd.yahoo.com/goo/arranged+marriage...9.10.15.50.html

This article(((originally in Scientific America)) IT REappeared in a discussion thread ?.I cut it out and am posting it below?THE FACTS FOR MARRIAGE?.AS THE RESULT OF ?LOVE??.SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES?

Running the Numbers

Several recent studies suggest that the number of marriages in the United States and other Western countries is in a continual decline.

A December 1999 article in Scientific American reports that 67 percent of American women aged 35 to 44 were legally married in 1998. From 1890 to 1940 this number averaged 81 percent, punctuated by an increase due to the wartime marriages associated with the baby boom. Numbers have been dropping ever since, a trend that is echoed in many other Western countries, most notably Canada, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and Hungary. The author, Rodger Doyle, suggests that living together is replacing marriage and that women's economic independence, the availability of family-planning measures, and the increase in higher education have all contributed to both the postponement of marriage and to divorce.

The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago confirms that many couples are choosing cohabitation over wedding bells. "The Emerging 21st-Century American Family," released November 24, 1999, was extrapolated from data from the General Social Survey (GSS), a broad study of American life which NORC has been conducting since 1972. For the 1998 survey, GSS researchers interviewed 2,832 randomly selected people 18 and over and found that the most common household arrangement, at 32 percent, consisted of unmarried people and no children. In 1972 the most common arrangement was married couples with children, at 45 percent, while in 1998 only 26 percent of the respondents lived in such households.

The report also projected that. Such arrangements are further complicated by the fact that working mothers and dual-career marriages have become much more common: in 1972, only 33 percent of parents both held jobs, while in 1998, 67 percent of both parents worked.

"Within marriage the changes have been profound as more and more women have entered the labor force and gender roles have become more homogenous between husbands and wives," said Tom W. Smith, the director of the GSS and author of the report.

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe are codirectors of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University. In June 1999, they published a study called "The State of Our Unions: The Social Health of Marriage in America," which found that the national marriage rate has dropped 43 percent over the last four decades. Their research suggests that many American teenagers have lost faith in their ability to find a lifelong partner.

In an article from the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, Whitehead describes a "new mating regime." The pattern consists of a series of relationships, some of which are short "hookups," while others are longer and include cohabitation and children. Romance and marriage take a secondary role and occur later in life if at all. Breakups are common, and relationship revenge has become a popular theme, spawning the creation of "dump books," catty greeting cards, and stalker films. While she notes that this pattern is most common among the never-married, high school educated young and African Americans, couples of all ages are participating. This is generating a range of questions about the processes of parenting, as well as the importance of personal fulfillment versus the long-term value of commitment.

"The new mating regime imposes myriad social costs," Whitehead writes. "Some fall upon a public system that increasingly must protect women from their violent partners and care for abused, neglected, and abandoned children. The social costs include an expanded family-court system, stepped-up child-support enforcement efforts, increased mediation and conflict-resolution services in the schools, and more. It's a sign of the times that in West Virginia, fourth-grade Girl Scouts can now earn a merit badge in domestic-violence prevention."

Hedging Matrimonial Bets

Politicians, counselors, educators, and clergy have all taken notice of these troubles and are proposing a variety of solutions.

Maggie Gallagher, director of the Marriage Project at the Institute for American Values, wrote about a number of pro-marriage activists in last year's November 8 issue of the National Review: Mike McManus founded the national Marriage Savers organization, which aims to cut the divorce rate by training married couples to serve as mentors in churches; Diane Sollee directs the Coalition for Marriage, Family, and Couples Education, which provides practical courses on marriage skills; Katherine Spaht, a family lawyer in Louisiana, helped to draw up the nation's first covenant marriage--a stronger legal commitment than allowed by standard, no-fault divorce laws; Oklahoma governor Frank Keating has made reducing the divorce rate an explicit goal--he called for a summit of state leaders to draft a "Strategic Plan to Honor Marriage and Reduce Divorce."

The federal government has also gotten in on the act; a law to reduce the "marriage penalty," which forces some spouses to pay more taxes than they might as singles, is making its way through Congress.

Gallagher praises the involvement of state and local politicians in shoring up marriage."The increasing privatization of marriage is a key legal and cultural factor contributing to our current marriage crisis," she writes. "Marriage is a public, legal commitment, not merely a private, impassioned lover's vow. Marriage is an institution like private property--which is not created by government, but which, in order to thrive, must be recognized and protected by it."

courtship vs dating 2

http://srd.yahoo.com/goo/dating+vs.+arrang...com/court2.html

... skip the first two paragraphs and read the rest?it describes history of LOVE MARRIAGE

The relevant part starts off:

There was a Harvard research paper on the subject of parents arranging the marriage of their children. It was discovered that making love and romance, the basis of marriage was a Roman contribution to Western civilization I discovered that for thousands of years, in all parts of the world that the principles of family ties, religion, station of birth, wealth and education were the founding factors in marriage, and not love and physical attraction. This researcher dug up the fact that 100 years ago in Japan marrying for love was a capital crime. The Japanese wisely reasoned that family, its name and inheritance, were far too important to be left to something as shaky as love and romance· Moreover, this researcher, much to her surprise, found that,

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in general, marriages arranged by the parents were just as happy and often more successful than marriages left to romance and falling in love. This is because the love that brings a couple together is not the love that keeps them together.

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There is no doubt that romantic songs, poems, plays, novels and movies have popularized the notion of romantic love being the basis for marriage. The plots of such plays as Romeo and Juliet have done as much as anything else to break down parental authority in marriage and idealize romantic love as the basis for marriage· Thus Shakespeare, and not the Bible, has become the accepted standard. The ideal of romantic love, the attitude that "I do not love him any more" is a real and legitimate excuse for divorce. Some have even gone so far as to change the marriage vows to "As long as we both shall love " instead of "As long as we both shall live. " Romantic love and physical attraction, while they are important, are not sound foundations to build a life and family upon.

You might want to read this article as well : This article is written by a Reverened from a Christian persepective?.read the three areas where dating fails?.

The views expressed are all in line with Sikh thought?How ironic?as we give up our traditions more and more individuals in the west adapt them?(((The same think is happening with cigarette smoking?.increasing in India?..decreasing in the West. )))

Dating vs Courtship - Laying a solid foundation for ...

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...

http://srd.yahoo.com/goo/arranged+marriage...s/datingbw.html

Okay assume that you do find your soulmate via dating what do the statistics say after marriage?

http://www.co.midland.mi.us/foc/stat.htm

*50% of marriages end in divorce within 10 years.

FACTS ABOUT MARITAL DISTRESS AND DIVORCE

http://www.smartmarriages.com/7.html

ARTICLE BELOW?.

Facts About Marital Distress and Divorce

Scott M. Stanley & Howard J. Markman

University of Denver and PREP, Inc.

Web: http://members.aol.com/prepinc (303) 759-9931

Younger people in the U.S. who are marrying for the first time face roughly a 40-50% chance of divorcing in their lifetime under current trends (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992, p. 5).

Of first marriages that end in divorce, many end in the first 3 to 5 years. (As one example, for first marriages ending in divorce among women aged 25 to 29, the median length of marriage before divorce in 1990 was 3.4 years; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992, p. 4).

Adults and children are at increased risk for mental and physical problems due to marital distress (e.g., Cherlin & Furstenberg, 1994; Coie et al. 1993; Coyne, Kahn, & Gotlib, 1987; Cowan & Cowan, 1992; Fincham, Grych, & Osborne, 1993).

Mismanaged conflict and negative interaction in marriage predicts both marital distress and negative effects for children (e.g., Gottman, 1994; Markman & Hahlweg, 1993; Clements, Stanley, & Markman, 1997; Cowan & Cowan, 1992; and Grych & Fincham, 1990).

Marital problems are associated with decreased work productivity, especially for men (e.g., Forthofer, Markman, Cox, Stanley, & Kessler, 1996).

A variety of studies suggest that the seeds of marital distress and divorce are there for many couples when they say, "I Do." These studies show that premarital (or early marital) variables can predict which couples will do well and which will not with accuracies of 80% up to 94% (e.g., Clements, Stanley, & Markman, 1997; Fowers, Montel, & Olson, 1996; Gottman, 1994; Karney & Bradbury, 1995; Kelly & Conley, 1987; and Rogge & Bradbury, in press).

Many more couples live together prior to marriage than in the past--recent estimates are in the range of 60+% (Stanley & Markman, 1997; Bumpass & Sweet, 1991). These couples are less likely to stay married, probably mostly due to the fact that they are less conservative about marriage and divorce in the first place.

Money is the one thing that people say they argue about most in marriage, followed by children (Stanley & Markman, 1997). But, there is a lot of reason to believe that what couples argue about is not as important as how they argue (Markman, Stanley, & Blumberg, 1994).

Married men and women in all age groups are less likely to be limited in activity (a general health indice) due to illness than single, separated, divorced, or widowed individuals (National Center for Health Statistics, 1997).

Children living with a single parent or adult report a higher prevalence of activity limitation and higher rates of disability. They are also more likely to be in fair or poor health and more likely to have been hospitalized (National Center for Health Statistics, 1997).

The "triple threat" of marital conflict, divorce, and out-of-wedlock births has led to a generation of U.S. children at great risk for poverty, health problems, alienation, and antisocial behavior.

Students saying 'I do' to arranged marriage

... in most of the world, arranged marriages are the norm. "We're the oddballs," said

Rebecca Manning, a professor of India studies and religion studies at Indiana ...

http://www.ksc-equinox.com/52-23/lifestyle...%20marriage.htm

One survey of urban professionals living in India suggests that many agree with that assessment.

More than half of the survey's respondents said they wanted their families to choose their mates "because elders know best."

Another 20 percent said because they were guaranteed someone of similar social standing, and about 10 percent said they liked knowing they could count on family support during times of trouble.

But do arranged marriages work? The same survey of urban professionals suggests they do indeed.

Of those surveyed, 81 percent had arranged marriages, and of that group, 94 percent rated their unions "very successful."

source: http://www.sikhnet.com/sikhnet/discussion....0A?OpenDocument

[Sikh_Soulja]

WJKK WJKF

I fink that this issue is going on too long. its a simple yes or no question and a bit of evidence to back that up. you people are just going on and on.

Please....dont argue with each other......as i did notice!

Bhul chuk maaf karna

WJKK WJKF

[Gupt Singh]

NO

evidence - did the gurus have one? if not, why would u want one?

[vaapaaraa]

What's the point in having this discussion, when one person will stick to his opinion, and try to force it on others, its useless... the other person is not goin to be convinced .. anyway good luck

[Guest]

Seems like this discussion is not going anywhere, so we are closing this arguement.

Thanks!