“Marriage is like going to restaurant. You order your choice from the menu and look at the neighbouring table and wish you had ordered that.” This is one of the marriage jokes, which is being circulated among the youth in Mumbai on SMS these days. What is alarming is not the joke but the gradual shift in the value system. The whole concept of marriage has changed in the recent years and it seems to lose its validity in the near future.

Kaushik Chakravorty (28) works in a PR agency. He says, “I think late marriages make more sense as it gives more time for having fun and more importantly, establish oneself career wise before one takes up serious responsibilities in life.” Shalini Verma agrees. “There is so much to do in life. I am 26 and I don’t want to get married now. Marriage some how binds you and restricts your growth around limited areas,” she believes.

Psychologist Laila Swaminathan feels that this is a general trend picking up. “The focus today is on acquiring a stable career. Both men and women have become work oriented. By the time one receives a bit of stability, one realises that one has probably missed the right person. After that point of time, it becomes a bit difficult to find a match. Besides seeing so many marriage failures these days, everyone wants to make sure they are marrying the right person. The entire process takes a lot of time.”

Thirty-year-old Sanjeev Bajpai explains, “Late marriage is no choice. In metropolitan cities like Mumbai, it holds across both the genders as people are ambitious and at the same time feel free to go around with their opposite sex. When it comes to marriage people start questioning their priorities. Whether you are financially stable in life? Do you want to take up responsibilities of family now?”

Dr Hitesh Shah, counsellor for marital and sexual problems, says, “The young generation can’t be blamed much. I have highly qualified clients who have problems in their married life. The reason for this is, either lack of emotional or sexual compatibility in their marriage. If today’s youngsters push back from marriage and go for live-in relationships instead, it is the result of negative feed back coming from the already married community.”

Animesh Srivastav is a 30-year-old well-settled professional. He reveals, “I have been very busy making my career all this while. Now that I have all the comforts, I don’t know why marriage still seems to be a secondary issue to me. An aggrieved father complains, “Such attitude of the younger generation is highly irresponsible and selfish. They have become insensitive towards family responsibilities. I think they are scared of commitments.”

Dr Shah states that the root cause of the problem is lack of education and counselling in terms of marriage. “ The young generation needs to understand that marriage can happen in a way that helps both the partners to enjoy their own space and grow as an individual. This will also give them a chance to build up emotional and sexual compatibility. Only then marriage will become an institution in the true sense.”