Yet, in many places, some of the family changes predicted by modernization theory have occurred, including widespread increases in age at marriage and declines in fertility ( Bryant 2007 Ortega 2014 Raymo et al. Non-western families have not uniformly converged towards the Western model and the Western nuclear family itself has undergone substantial changes in recent decades ( Cherlin 2012). Many predictions of family change found within modernization theory have been discredited, yet the theory continues to be influential. It also implies increases in contact between prospective spouses before marriage and the importance of love or interpersonal compatibility. Thus, a decline of arranged marriage likely signals declines in the importance of ethnicity/caste, religion, and other aspects of the status of a prospective spouse and their family. In the Western model of marriage, young people choose their own spouses on the basis of individual compatibility or love, usually gained through interactions before marriage ( Macfarlane 1986 Thornton 2009).

In arranged marriages, parents customarily choose a spouse based on the caste/ethnicity, religion, and social and economic standing of the prospective spouse and their family and there is little to no contact between the prospective spouses prior to marriage. This predicted decline of arranged marriage is usually conceptualized as a change in spouse choice, but it also points to other marital changes. Following this prediction, arranged marriage – a practice found largely in Asia and Africa in which parents and other family members select their children’s spouses – was expected to be replaced by Western style marriage, in which young people choose their own spouses. Modernization theory predicted that the great diversity of family behaviors found in non-Western countries would converge towards the Western nuclear model under the influence of industrialization and urbanization ( Adams 2010 Goode 1963 McDonald 1993). Rather than unilateral movement towards Western marriage practices, as suggested by theories of family change and found in other Asian contexts, these trends point to a hybridization of customary Western and Indian practices. Further, instead of displacing parents, young women increasingly worked with parents to choose husbands collectively.

However, many of these changes were modest in size and substantial majorities of recent marriages still show the hallmarks of arranged marriage. During this period, women were increasingly active in choosing their own husbands, spouses meeting on their wedding day decreased, intercaste marriage rose, and consanguineous marriage fell. Specifically, the authors examine trends in spouse choice, the length of time spouses knew each other prior to marriage, intercaste marriage, and consanguineous marriage at the national level, as well as by region, urban residence, and religion/caste.

This article evaluates whether arranged marriage declined in India from 1970 to 2012.

Arranged marriage countries