phenomenon

Al-Marsad Newspaper: The writer, Dr. Badr bin Saud, revealed the reasons for the widespread phenomenon of divorce in the Kingdom, calling for benefiting from the Indian experience.

marriage costs

Badr bin Saud said, in his article entitled “A Fine for Marriage Costs,” published in the newspaper “Al-Riyadh”: The average cost of marriage in the Kingdom in 2023 is approximately $267,000, and this amount belongs to families with normal incomes and not well-to-do, because it does not stop at The spouses, including their footnotes, lineage column, first and second degree relatives and co-workers, the cost of the honeymoon or the weeks of courtship as the Germans call it, and the expenses of jewelry and the ceremony for both sexes, which is certainly a large number for those of marriageable age, and their monthly salaries do not exceed, at best, over Two thousand one hundred and thirty dollars, they are still at the beginning of their professional life, and the above was measured based on the numbers of the Saudi Statistics Authority in 2016, which determined the age of spinsterhood in the Kingdom at 32 years.

marriage dowries

He added: Because it found that 79% of the total Saudi women marry in or before it, and in 2022, the same authority revealed a rise in marriage costs, and that it increased on average by 32% on an annual basis, at a monthly rate estimated at about 5%, and attempts to control the issue began. In the emirate of the Makkah region in 2015, specifically from the marriage dowry, when it directed its governorates to write to the tribal sheikhs to determine it, so that it is in the range of 13 thousand and three hundred dollars for those who have not been married before, and eight thousand dollars for those who entered into a previous marriage experience, but it did not make a difference that addresses the problem As required.

Domestic violence

And he continued: Costs are not the only problem, of course, and according to a study conducted by Umm Al-Qura University in Saudi Arabia in late 2021, the rise in celibacy of women was attributed to their sense of independence and self-reliance, and obtaining a job with a good income, and among the additional repels is the exaggeration of incidents of domestic violence in social media. , and the high divorce cases, and the increase in unemployment rates among men, and their lack of responsibility, in the sense that he acts as the silent partner in the relationship and not the other way around, and perhaps the reason is due to the idea of ​​the unilateral model, which coincided with the agricultural revolution and the stability of people, and by virtue of the physical and biological superiority of men over women And his ability to meet the requirements of the old life, he was a master and in control of his leadership role in the family.

Binary model

And he added: However, the two scales have moderated, at the present time, and society has shifted to the binary model, as a result of the decrease in the number of Western men after the First and Second World Wars, and the labor market’s need for more manpower than the existing one, to help move its joints, which forced Western societies to transfer women From managing the affairs of the house to working outside it in various fields, and due to the automation of the industrial and technical revolution, physical strength is no longer an important matter.

Marriage or celibacy

And he continued: The Greek philosopher, Socrates, believes that regret occurs in the case of marriage or celibacy, because in the first case he regretted the loss of money, freedom and comfort, and in the second he regretted the long night, the loneliness, and the lack of a companion, and both of them are two things that are the sweetest overflowing with bitterness, and perhaps the greatest regret is, in my opinion, It is a person saving for a marriage that may cost him 35 years of his life, and then he finds himself at sixty and out of marital and life service, and it is proven that more than three hundred thousand young men in the Arab region borrow for marriage annually, and their loans are estimated at four hundred million dollars, and some Arab women rent a dress A day-long wedding at a value of three thousand dollars, and the commodification of the institution of marriage, by turning it into an occasion for social comparisons and teasing others, will surely strike the stability of marital life and lead to divorce. At Emory University in the US state of Georgia, the researchers noted that the high costs of marriage in America were behind an accompanying increase in divorce rates, and that it reached 46% in 2021, compared to the years before it.

The wedding

And he concluded: Some tribal women in Kuwait issued a remarkable statement, in August of this year, in which they demanded that Kuwaiti marriage ceremonies be limited to the wedding ceremony alone, in addition to stopping paying exaggerated dowries, and this initiative must be invested and built upon, so that the Gulf states do not transform To a group of aging and unproductive societies in the future, as is the case in some countries of the old continent, and local indicators confirm the former in theory, and as evidence, the increase in the number of unmarried Saudi women between 2010 and 2015, from one million to four million, and in 2022, According to the Saudi Center for Opinion Polls, it was recorded that 39% of unmarried Saudis prefer celibacy to marriage, and reluctance will only be resolved by placing marriage within the requirements of employment or promotion for both sexes, and it is possible to benefit from the Indian experience regarding the issue of wedding costs, by fining those They evaluate them with budgets that exceed a financial limit decided by the legislator, and oblige them to pay the equivalent of 10% of the total marriage expenses to the state treasury, in a way that helps provide soft loans for those who wish to form a family.