A shotgun wedding is a wedding that is arranged to avoid embarrassment due to premarital sex possibly leading to an unintended pregnancy, rather than out of the desire of the participants. The phrase is an American colloquialism, though it is also used in other parts of the world based on a supposed scenario that the father of the pregnant bride-to-be must resort to using coercion, such as threatening the reluctant groom with a shotgun, to ensure that he follows through with the wedding.
Video Shotgun wedding
Rationale
One purpose of such a wedding can be to get recourse from the man for the act of impregnation; another reason is trying to ensure that the child is raised by both parents. In some cases, as in early America and in the Middle East, a major objective was the restoring of social honour to the mother. The practice is a loophole method of preventing the birth of legally illegitimate children, or if the marriage occurs early enough, to conceal the fact that conception occurred prior to marriage. In some societies the stigma attached to pregnancy out of wedlock can be enormous, and coercive means (in spite of the legal defense of undue influence) for gaining recourse are often seen as the prospective father-in-law's "right", and an important, albeit unconventional, coming of age event for the young father-to-be. Often a couple will arrange a shotgun wedding without explicit outside encouragement, and some religious teachings consider it a moral imperative to marry in that situation.
Maps Shotgun wedding
By culture
East Asia
- In Japan, the slang term Dekichatta kekkon (????????), or Dekikon (????) for short, emerged in the late 1990s. The term can literally be translated as "oops-we-did-it-marriage," implying an unintended pregnancy. Notable celebrities with these marriages include Namie Amuro, Y?ko Oginome, Hitomi Furuya, Ami Suzuki, Kaori Iida, Nozomi Tsuji, Anna Tsuchiya, Meisa Kuroki, Leah Dizon, Melody Miyuki Ishikawa, Riisa Naka, Rie Miyazawa and Emi Takei. A quarter of all Japanese brides are pregnant at the time of their wedding, according to the Health Labor and Welfare Ministry, and pregnancy is one of the most common motivations for marriage. The prevalence and celebrity profile of dekichatta-kon has inspired Japan's wedding industry to introduce an even more benign phrase, sazukari-kon (????, blessed wedding).
- In China, the term ???? (pinyin: Fèngz?chéngh?n; literally: "married by the order of child") means that the couple married because conception occurred outside of marriage. It is a pun on the phrase ????, pronounced Fengzhichenghun and implying that a wedding is approved by imperial edict. It is becoming increasingly common among China's youngest generation. However, in the same age group, there is objection and criticism to such a practice.
- In Korea, the slang term ???? (RR: Sokdowiban; literally: "speeding over the limit") refers to the situation in which the pregnancy preceded the marriage.
- In Vietnam, the term "Bác s? b?o c??i" (literally meaning "because [the] doctor said so") is often used with humorous intention.
Europe
Because of the sexual revolution beginning in the 1960s, the concepts of love, sexuality, procreation and marriage were separated after being intimately entangled for centuries.
- In Denmark, a 1963 study found that 50% of all brides were pregnant.
- In the Netherlands and Belgium, the Dutch term moetje was a commonly used euphemism for marriage resulting from unintended pregnancy. The noun is formed from imperative of the verb moeten ("must", "to have to") with the added suffix -je, indicating a diminutive. Thus, it might be translated as a "little must" or a "little you-have-to", i.e. one has to get married to avoid the shame of giving birth out of wedlock.
Moetjes were a common occurrence in Belgium and the Netherlands until the first half of the 20th century. In the early 1960s, about a quarter of all marriages in the Netherlands were shotgun marriages; however, in some areas, up to 90% of the brides were pregnant. By the late 2000s, the practice had become so rare that the term was growing obsolete. According to a 2013 by the Centrum voor Leesonderzoek, the word moetje was recognised by 82.5% of the Dutch and 43.1% of the Flemish.
North America
- In the United States, the use of duress or violent coercion to marry is no longer common, although many anecdotal stories and folk songs record instances of such coercion in 18th- and 19th-century America. The phenomenon has become less common as the stigma associated with out-of-wedlock births has declined and the number of such births has increased. Effective birth control and legalized abortion have also resulted in fewer unplanned pregnancies carried to term. Nonetheless a marriage which occurs when the bride is pregnant, even when there is no family or social pressure involved, is still sometimes referred to as a "shotgun wedding".
In popular culture
Films
- Acht Mädels im Boot (1932), German musical film
- Eight Girls in a Boat (1934), American feature film, refilming of Acht Mädels im Boot
- Jenny, first Dutch fullcolour feature film, refilming of Acht Mädels im Boot
- A Kind of Loving (1962), British feature film
- Girl with Green Eyes (1964), Irish feature film
Books
- The Lonely Girl (1962), Irish novel on which Girl with Green Eyes is based
See also
- Forced marriage
- Knobstick wedding
- Marry-your-rapist law
- Premarital sex
- Oklahoma!, a play where one character, Ali Hakim, is forcibly coerced towards marriage on two separate occasions.
- Marriage of convenience
References
Source of article : Wikipedia
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