Why Must Only Indian Women Leave Their Parents After Marriage?

At every Indian wedding, one moment stands out above all others. The bride, tears streaming down her face, turns to wave goodbye to her parents. The groom, meanwhile, stands quietly beside her, ready to take her home — but never having to leave his own.

The bidaai ceremony is treated as sacred, even beautiful. Yet beneath the music and emotion lies a painful truth: marriage transforms a woman’s entire world, while allowing a man to keep his exactly as it is.

For her, marriage is a farewell.

For him, it is a continuation.

To understand why this imbalance still feels so “normal,” we must look closely at the cultural, social, and emotional systems that make leaving the woman’s responsibility and staying the man’s privilege.

From birth, Indian families prepare sons and daughters for opposite destinies. Sons are celebrated as the light of the home. Daughters are described as paraya dhan, meaning wealth that belongs to another family.

Customs like kanyadaan (giving away the daughter) and vidaai (the farewell) romanticize separation and train girls to detach from the very people who raised them. Sons inherit property, rituals, and surnames. Daughters inherit the idea of impermanence.

This cultural design ensures that by the time a woman marries, she has already been conditioned to believe that her roots are temporary and her home is borrowed. The son stays. The daughter learns to leave.

Researchers studying South Asian marriage patterns often highlight a striking imbalance. The groom remains in his familiar home, while the bride is absorbed into his.

For a man, marriage means addition — a partner who enters his space, his family, and his rhythm. For a woman, it means uprooting — a new home, a new identity, and often new rules.

Even rituals reflect this difference. The groom’s baraat represents arrival and conquest, while the bride’s vidaai marks departure and loss. She must begin again from scratch, while he continues from where he is.

In Indian society, a “good wife” is one who adjusts. She adapts to her in-laws’ expectations, cooks their food, follows their festivals, and blends quietly into their household.

Men are rarely expected to adjust in the same way. A husband who visits his wife’s family too often risks being called “controlled” or “weak.” This gendered idea of adjustment is not about love but control.

Through centuries of conditioning, adjustment has been rewritten as a woman’s virtue and a man’s exemption. Stability is his privilege. Flexibility is her burden.

Indian men often justify staying with their parents as an act of duty. But sociologists note that this duty often overlaps with convenience. Living with parents means shared expenses, household labor performed by women, and emotional security.

In contrast, women are expected to serve this setup while letting go of their own parents. A woman who sends money to her family is questioned for “ignoring her in-laws,” while a man who supports his parents is praised for being responsible.

What is described as family duty for men is often a comfort system that keeps privilege intact.

Cultural language exposes the double standard most clearly. A woman who moves into her husband’s house is honored. A man who moves into his wife’s is ridiculed as a ghar jamai.

In movies, TV shows, and daily gossip, the ghar jamai is mocked as dependent or unmanly. There is no equivalent insult for women because their departure is normalized.

This ridicule has a purpose. It keeps men from even imagining relocation or emotional flexibility. Patriarchy trains women through duty and men through shame. Both become prisoners of expectation.

Whenever this inequality is questioned, the defense is always the same: “It’s our tradition.”

But history proves otherwise. Not all Indian societies followed this pattern. The Nairs of Kerala and the Khasis of Meghalaya followed matrilineal systems where lineage and property passed through the mother. Men often moved into their wife’s home, and women held significant authority.

Over time, these systems were weakened by both colonial law and patriarchal reform, which re-centered inheritance and household power around men. What we now call “tradition” is not eternal. It is a carefully designed system to preserve control in male hands.



The emotional price of marriage is unequally distributed. A married daughter visiting her parents too often may be labeled “attached.” Supporting them financially may be seen as disloyalty.

Men, meanwhile, can rely on their parents freely for support, care, and comfort. Society sees their dependence as filial love, not weakness.

For many women, this leads to lifelong guilt — torn between the home that raised them and the one they are told to serve. Even laws that hold sons and daughters equally responsible for their parents’ welfare cannot erase the silent expectations that still weigh heavier on women.

In urban India, the family structure has changed, but the mindset has not. Even in nuclear households, the emotional center of gravity remains the husband’s family.

During festivals, childbirth, or emergencies, his parents are prioritized. Studies show that even educated, urban couples spend more time, money, and care on the husband’s family than the wife’s.

Technology and education may have modernized our lifestyles, but the emotional geography of marriage remains the same. Until both partners share equal responsibility toward both families, equality will remain theoretical.

If marriage is meant to unite equals, why is sacrifice demanded from only one side? Why is her leaving a duty and his staying a virtue?

The truth is uncomfortable but clear. Indian marriage still functions on an ancient assumption that women must give up more — more home, more family, more identity.

Equality will not come from women adjusting less. It will come when men begin to move, to compromise, to build homes that belong equally to both partners.

A truly balanced marriage is not about who leaves or who stays. It is about two people stepping forward together — leaving behind the comfort of inequality for the courage of fairness.

Until then, every bidaai will remain a gentle reminder that for Indian women, love still begins with loss.