truly become between two independent individuals who fell in love and decided to make a life Such an important decision, perhaps the most important for themselves. decision of one's life, cannot be made by others. (1) sense. Marriage is But in many cultures it simply doesn't make fundamentally a social bond, uniting families and cementing their cultural and (イ) religious values. It may be romantic, but it is not just about the bride and groom; it's about family and community. Indeed, even in the West for most of history, marriage was not primarily about the individual needs and desires of a man and woman and the children they produced. Marriage had as ( ) to do with getting good in-laws and increasing one's resources and family labor force as it did with finding a lifetime companion and raising a beloved child. or Marriage spoke to the needs of the larger group. 3 Different traditions, different marriages. In India, over 90 percent of the (2) bemarriages are arranged. One survey in 2013 revealed that 74 percent of young 9 Indians aged between 18-35 years said that they would rather let their parents ad choose their life partners than choosing themselves. While the traditiona practice of arranged marriage has been illegal in China since the 1950s, parent remain heavily involved in their children's marital decisions, with many paren trying hard to persuade their children to get married by interrogating the (13) during family gatherings. In Japan, it was not until the early 1960s that le marriages outnumbered arranged ones. Arranged marriages can take a variety of forms ranging from fo marriages (where either the bride or the groom, or both, have no choice in matter) to consensual marriages (where the bride and groom have all 002 - 1