After 13 years of war in Syria and the upheaval of intellectual, economic, and living concepts and standards, most people put a piece of cloth over their eyes to obscure the reality, keeping those ideas attached to the details of their youth. Even if they are currently tasting the bitterness of life, nothing saves the youth today from the phrase “when I was your age, I already had kids.”
It is natural for someone who lived in the 1930s to be no older than 25 years old with a child or children, because they have no worries, food comes from the land, water from the rivers, abundant firewood for warmth and cooking. Even family ties were tighter than today when a single room housed ten people. With no electricity, internet, lighting, or any means of development and entertainment, they had nothing to do but procreate to end their short life journey in their twenties.
Today's youth carry many burdens, yet the older generation adds on the worry of marriage, forcibly imposing it on them. At a time when dreams have not been fulfilled nor stability achieved, does society want me to marry to settle down? When everything was secured in terms of food and to some extent shelter, the habits of the past necessitated getting married, having children, and then settling down. But today there is no marriage or childbearing without stability, and in the current situation and prevailing circumstances, remaining single is a blessing.
"When Are We Going to Celebrate You?":
Is happiness only associated with marriage! Does graduating from university, getting a new job, taking on management positions and awards, or any personal accomplishments which one spent considerable time achieving mean nothing to them? Anyway, determining the timing of a wedding celebration depends on personal developments and the plan set to transition from instability to stability, which can take until the age of 40 and beyond. But the answer to the essential question lies in "God has not written it for us yet" or jokingly to the question "hopefully someday."
"What More Do You Need? You Have Your Parents' House":
Returning to the confusion between the old and new generations, the elders repeat the phrase "what more do you need? You have your parents' house" even though the house itself is the biggest and most fundamental problem. But the issue is their firm beliefs around "parents' home" and that it's a place you can launch your married life from.
However vital the psychological and spatial importance of the family home, it remains a place for family gatherings and not for youth to settle down. What if there is more than one young person in the family? Will everyone get married there? Where then is the privacy of the married couple? And their independent life? And truly no matter how tolerant, modest and calm the parents are, as well as protective, it will not last long. Not because anyone is bad mannered, but cohabitation changes all ideas, habits and more, and time reveals what was hidden.
Speaking of “what I’m missing,” thank God all I'm missing is a stable life that I can live in peace to get married. Basically the options for youth to remain in the homeland have become slim, transforming from we used to travel to buy a house, to we sell the house in order to travel.
"Get Married, Have a Kid, and Your Livelihood Will Come With it":
Logically, what livelihood? And the price of diapers alone is minimum 40,000 Liras. And frankly, even if one gets married, having children in these circumstances is unfair to the child itself if the family's situation does not allow for it. And returning to the ancestors, their only profession was reproduction, to the extent that you find 10 “aunts” and 10 “uncles” in every family.
