Page 17 - HIRS - Eng
P. 17
PREFACE xv
My mother always encouraged me and
my elder sister to be independent and
“capable of standing on our own
two feet.”
do you want to be when you grow up?” and both boys and
girls were expected to come up with grand career options like
‘doctor’ or ‘pilot,’ and to spend the rest of their childhood
working towards achieving that goal. Unlike their previous
generation, parents were no longer scanning matrimonial
advertisements when their children turned 18, but instead
were researching the admission criteria of various colleges.
After receiving their graduate (and sometimes postgraduate)
degrees, their adult children would job-hop for the next few
years to land a well-paying job, while the parents would look
on approvingly. As a result, within a generation, the average
age of getting married shot up from 16 to 24 years for girls,
and from 20 to 28 for boys.