This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and talking about for a while with my sisters. My sister wrote an article about it which I can’t be bothered to post here because it’s far too long, but here’s the link: http://www.happymuslimah.com/2011/04/dinosaur-dads.html
Basically, the concept was about understanding ‘Dinosaur Dads’ who have planned out their children lives and slowly brow-beating their children to accepting a lifestyle/marriage/job of their parent’s choice.
Would you say this is applicable today? In the community I live in, unfortunately, this is still quite prevalent with relatives and people I know, and heck, it’s happened in cases with my own family. We’re brought up to equate obedience with being a ‘good child’, where a child who wants to ‘do their own thing’ they are seen as ‘rebellious’ by some, or just not respecting their parents.
Of course, I only said dino dad's cos in a traditional family its the dad who 'makes the rules' or takes control more than a mother might. Not always the case of course, but just think of dino parents, rather
Hmm, I read the blog entry and it makes for quite interesting reading. I do agree that dinosaur dads (or mums) are not inherently evil or want ill of their children per se but I guess their thought processes are probably so different and so inflexible that they fail to entertain any possibility of their children's lives that does not conform to the narrow ideals of what they have in mind.
It is baffling, for example, why anyone would marry, as the blog notes, all their children to cousins from villages "back home." I mean one would think that for some reason even if someone is unable to find rishtas in the U.K. for their children, for their daughters at least they would try to find a doctor or an engineer or someone who has a university degree from Pakland and can continue his studies in the U.K. so that he can get a decent-paying job once there. Shouldn't financial security for your daughters at least be the biggest concern, especially if they have not been allowed to continue their higher education or are not expected to work outside?
What seems to be the case here is an overwhelming sense of obligation to one's extended khandan, a culture of expectations, fuelled perhaps not so much by dinosaur parenting instincts as by envious 'dinosaur siblings' who harbor life-long grudges at not being able to immigrate, which means that sometimes siblings take priority over one's children as parents force them into marriages from cousins back home-- marriages that are clearly detrimental for their children's future.
What seems to be the case here is an overwhelming sense of obligation to one's extended khandan, a culture of expectations, fuelled perhaps not so much by dragon parenting instincts as by envious 'dragon siblings' who harbor life-long grudges at not being able to immigrate, which means that sometimes siblings take priority over one's children as parents force them into marriages from cousins back home-- marriages that are clearly detrimental for their children's future.
I definitely agree with that. I've seen so many cases where parents feel 'obligated' to marry off their kids to their sibling's children in order to help bring them over - but without really thinking about whether or not they can actually support their children or if the match is even viable. In their eyes, these people are 'safe' because they're in the family, and they know them.
One of parents's biggest fears in the West (well, in my community anyway) is that their child will marry someone who is either only after their passport and, or will turn out to be a bad spouse which will give their family a bad name - basically someone who might abandon their child. In their eyes, they are protecting their kids by keeping them in the family and marrying them off to cousins etc.
