Dowry

I am slowly changing my mind about the validity of the dowry system.

I understand the function of bride price, where the father of the daughter is compensated for loss labor when he gives her off to be married. It’s not really a crass system, as many in the West would see it. Having observed the bride price system among the Pokot or Kenya, I never looked at it as a “selling off” the girls. There are always abuse of any system, and it’s true that some fathers misuse the bride price practice to gain economic advantage . Bride price disputes can go on for generations if girl is barren, lazy or just a troublemaker and the groom’s family feels they have been cheated. Marriage and family disputes are messy affairs no matter the culture or custom. The West touts “fairness” laws to protect the woman in cases of divorce, but that doesn’t mean our system is without flaws. Obviously, in a culture that has a nearly fifty percent divorce rate one could hardly say our practice is morally superior.

The custom of dowry, where the family of the daughter pays a negotiated price to the groom’s family, seems, on the surface to be reasonable. The groom’s family is, after all, taking on the responsibility of the girl and therefore to support the extended family, dowry is, in theory, a helping hand for the well-being of the new couple. Since the extended family financial structure is one of pooled resources, what is given to one is shared by all. Again, that’s the theory. I suspect that in most cases it functions well.

Almost every week, if not everyday, in some newspaper throughout the nation there are stories of brides being beaten, harassed or killed by the groom’s family. In today’s paper there is a story about a young woman who killed herself with a suicide note stating that she was no longer able to cope with her mother-in-law and sister-in-law’s constant abuse and demands that she go back to her father and demand more dowry money.

Because all cultural systems are, as my friend Sherwood Lingenfelter says, prison’s of disobedience, whether the bonds of marriage is through dowry or bride price negotiation or through unreliable romantic love, the only way it will have a chance of survival is through the transformation of the heart. That transformation comes when both husband and wife know true love through Christ. When that transformation takes place, any arrangement of marriage will do.