A Cultural Paradigm Gap, Or, Why Did I Get Married?

In northeastern Thailand, many Thai women have begun marrying Western men who have settled in the area in order to get married. Though at first this tradition seems as distasteful as when Western men would take their wives home with them, both men and women seem somewhat satisfied with the way it works out. Thai women actually aspire to marry these men because of their wealth. In what seems to be a reversal of traditional roles, the men are often the ones seeking an emotional connection. One cited the fact that the Thai women were “a lot like women were in America 50 years ago” in that they have not yet asserted their rights and become “strong-headed and opinionated,” so that the marriage is not as “peaceful and relaxed,” according one of the men, an American who had been divorced twice prior to his marriage with his Thai wife.

When I first came across this article, my initial reaction was one of distaste toward the practice. However, while this particular man’s view is full of views of women that I find outdated and distasteful, I’m not entirely convinced that this phenomenon is all bad. After all, both parties are willing and benefit; the American found a wife whose views more closely corresponded with his own, and his wife achieved what she had always wanted – to marry a foreigner for the wealth and status she would acquire in the process.

On the other hand, the practice seems colonialistic on the men’s side and exploitative on the women’s. The women tend to be motivated by the desire for money, which probably doesn’t make the men looking for emotional connections feel good (again, the role reversal here is interesting). The men may not understand that, or if they do, they may not understand that they are also expected to support the wife’s family, as is traditional in Thai culture. If they are not prepared to do so, there can be trouble with the surrounding community.

Furthermore, the idea of allowing the stereotype of a subservient, domestic wife to continue to exist in these Western men’s minds is not one that rests easily in my mind. This American was actually looking for a wife who fit the traditional role, because most modern American women reject it to one extent or another. From the article, I can only conclude that he thinks the liberation of women in today’s society was a bad thing and wants to live in a place where that liberation hasn’t happened, which is a view I cannot stomach.

My question, then, is this: is what this American man did wrong? If both parties to the marriage want to be married, then at what point does it become unacceptable? On a larger scale, which culture’s value systems take precedence, Thai or Western?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/world/asia/25iht-thai.html