A glimpse into one of my interviews - Early Marriage Documentary

I interviewed Ahmed Waguih Sadek on Monday, October 15th, 2012 and asked him about his opinion on early marriages. Waguih is currently studying Medicine in Cairo University.



Transcript:

Interviewer: Mona Bassel Tawfik

Interviewee: Ahmed Waguih Sadek, medical student at Cairo University

Mona: How would you, in your opinion, define early marriage?

Waguih: Actually an early marriage, according to my perspective would be a marriage that happened before the age of 25, 26 minimum.

[Why don’t you support early marriage?]

 Waguih: Okay, first of all, it’s not really an option for both of the couple, because, okay, they might be in a relationship at an earlier age, depends on whether they’re open minded or not, but most of the time they’re not, so it’s just the fact that parents force their children to get married just so they can see replacement values for themselves. So, you would witness a father forcing or manipulating his child –not child at that age, its daughter or son, into getting married. Usually it’s a casual marriage, planned by the family, which does not give much space for the couple to know each other well before getting married, which leads to a huge issue. I’d consider it as a catastrophe because it’s one of the highest; statistically it’s one of the highest rates worldwide –divorce. Because they just, they’re not used to each other, they do not know each other, they never got the time or got the space to know each other that well so this is one of the problems, divorce. 

And if the marriage continues,  somehow this student or fresh graduate –he cannot balance or organize the time between establishing a family or on the other hand establishing himself within his career. So he finds himself in the middle of a very long road, that he has to work harder and sacrifice the time with the family in order to make more money and establish himself career wise, or focus on with the family and not get the time to establish himself with his career.

So it ends with one of two things: either mediocre parenting or mediocre career. Not something I would like, not something I would support, and it’s not something that the society should support.

Anyways, another reason for this would be, these children. After they’re subjected with bad parenting, they are going to grow up with bad manners, with mediocre education, with mediocre healthcare with mediocre family bonds between them, so basically it ruins one of the two things, either the career or the family.

Mona: [You mentioned the disadvantages, so] What do you think the advantages are?

Waguih: Well the advantages are, it’s that the parents they witnessed more stages of growth in their children. For example if I get married at the age of 30 or 35 I might not witness the marriage of my son or daughter, but if it’s earlier this gives me a better chance or longer life span to witness that, this is mainly the advantage. But on the other hand it has lots of disadvantages that I just mentioned.

Mona: Why do you think the trend is that more college students are getting married?

Waguih: One of the biggest factors is parents. Parents insisting or parents manipulating them into the marriage. The other thing is that maybe, religious wise, this person does not want to expose himself to premarital relationships so they decide to cut it short and take on with the road of marriage earlier. Maybe some people take it for support or for the emotional side of it, that they need someone to be with them, being attached to, being supportive to them in whatever they’re doing. So these are the factors I think.

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