Of Marriage and Single Life

Central argument: According to Sir Francis Bacon, a person should marry only after they have a career and contributed in some way to the society, and is ready to take responsibilities as a married person. I agree with him as I think that marriage before career only leads to unhappiness in life.

Bacon writes that marriage imprisons a person to a certain boundary. They do not have the freedom to do the things they want, when they want and have a lot of difficulty in managing time. A true creator needs space and time to come up with things that will help the society and him to build his career. These are the two things that is needed the most and a married person in most cases to not have access to any of those. For instance, I have heard from a lot of mothers that they had to give up their career because they had to look after the children. Today I watched a movie named "Le petit Nicolas" in French class which has a character who keeps telling his son how he would have been an expert on something he wanted to, hadn't he married his mother. This does not just happen in movies; my uncle who is working six days a week for a reasonably fine salary tells everyone he can that he would have pursued to be a pilot if he hadn't married. To a lot of people marriage and children stops them from being successful in life. Yes, having a family is good but before that people should be confident that they are responsible enough to support their family.

Being unmarried has a lot of advantages, especially if you have an unmarried companion. The unmarried people can be the best of friends, masters and servants for they have enough time to spare for others. They however, do not have enough sense of discipline and responsibility. A lot of people start working hard and start keeping a grip of reality only after they have a family to support. From what I have seen in movies and from some of my family member, people, especially men, tend to quit a lot of bad habits like smoking and drinking after they have a kid that is born. In psychology class we watched a video of this man in the United States who was addicted to drugs for a decade or so. However, he promised to be clean and admit himself to a rehab after his first son was born.

In countries like Nepal and India, people need to marry before a certain age or else they will be taunted by the entire society. This is mainly pressurized on young women. If they do not marry in a certain age then they are considered to be a disgrace to their family. In many parts of Nepal people still follow the Dowry system where the family of a girl needs to give certain amount of money or goods to the bridegroom's family. Marriage of a woman is that important that people go to up to the extent to buy it!

The importance of marriage, however, is as important as standing on your own feet and being able to support yourself. Therefore, instead of wasting your time being good for nothing, you should have a certain goal in life, which you should fulfill before taking the responsibility as a married man.