In rural Nepal, the high value placed on marriage is indicated in its universality and early occurrence.
Hence, this setting is ideal for studying the association between marital discord and marital dissolution where divorce is becoming increasingly common. Furthermore, nearly every young Nepali person marries, which automatically exposes them to the possibility of experiencing marital dissolution. In fact, the number of divorces registered in the Chitwan District Court of southern Nepal has been increasing rapidly since the mid-1980s, from less than 10 per year, to over 200 in the year 2010.
Divorce remains uncommon throughout South Asia ( Dommaraju & Jones, 2011), but is likely to be on the rise as families and their social surroundings are changing ( Axinn & Yabiku, 2001 Jayakody et al., 2008). Specifically, this paper focuses on the role of marital discord in predicting marital outcomes among an agrarian population in southern Nepal. It is even less clear whether a wife’s perception of marital quality will be as influential as her husband’s perception of marital quality. Although research demonstrates that marital quality is associated with marital dissolution among Western populations ( Amato & Rogers, 1997 DeMaris, 2000 Gottman, 1994), it is unclear whether marital quality will have a similar impact in this South Asian setting. This study investigates the process of marital dissolution in rural South Asia: a setting where individuals, and particularly women, have relatively low personal freedom ( Bennett 1983 Jayakody, Thornton, & Axinn, 2008 Sastry & Ross, 1998). Yet, we have a limited understanding of the process among these more collectivist-oriented populations. Accompanying this marital shift, many of these non-Western countries have seen a rising prevalence of divorce ( Goode, 1993).
Over the last several decades populations outside of industrialized, Western settings have begun to adopt a new model of marriage that emphasizes personal fulfillment and happiness ( Dion & Dion, 1993 Goode, 1970 Thornton, 2001).
0 kommentar(er)
