Bagging Big Party, Father Honors Daughter's Wedding With Houses for India's Homeless

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A wealthy Indian businessman had intended to celebrate his daughter's wedding with an extravagant party for which he had saved for years. But then a better idea came to fruition.

Instead of paying for the marriage ceremony, Ajay Munot, a cloth and wheat trader based in the Aurangabad district of eastern India, spent the Rs 7 million to 8 million he had saved for the wedding on building homes for the poor, the Free Press Journal reports.

Munot's wedding savings, worth around £93,000, were spent on constructing 90 houses on two acres of land. Each home was 240 square feet, had two windows and doors and had access to filtered drinking water. To insure success, the businessman carefully selected the residents of the new homes under three conditions: they needed to be poor, living in a slum and not suffering from an addiction.

The bride and groom are deeply honored by this long-lasting gift in their honor. via Elle UK

 

Redtracker | The Health Benefits of Decoupling Money & Masculinity For Both Men & Women

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Women's News Headlines August 20, 2016

New research shows Millennial men's well-being improved from staying at home, while women's improved by being the breadwinners. In spite of popular culture images of the emasculated male whose wife makes more money than he does, research shares a much more positive assessment of the situation. 

“A lot of the gendered expectations in marriage are left over from a different era,” Christin Munsch, a sociologist at the University of Connecticut, explains. “We expect women to be primarily responsible for child care. When men ‘help out’ they get brownie points.”

Societal expectations that women take primary responsibility for housework and childcare—while men bring home the money—are relics of the breadwinner-homemaker model that, to Munsch, “isn’t really relevant to today's couples.” Reality is that in most marriages today, both people have jobs. Relics of the Ozzie & Harriet past aren't serving modern couples well. 

More Headlines:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Would Like To Think Ivanka Trump Secretly Opposes Her Father's Ideals @ HuffPo

Why Aren't There More Women In Congress? @ VOX

The Gap Between US and Canadian Working Women That Keeps Growing @ Bloomberg

Read on: Women's News Headlines August 20, 2016

Eye | A Traveling Education | Meditation Rebuilds Brain Structure | Trends In Remarriage

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LifeTracker

Self-Education By Traveling

Traveling Teaches Students in a Way Schools Can’t The Atlantic

Traveling and studying abroad can often educate young Americans in ways that the classroom cannot. To achieve lifelong lessons, it’s best to stay close to the people and not in the lap of luxury when setting out to understand how others live around the world.

Traveling to these places made me realize that the “advantages” I initially thought I had over others were not necessarily advantages to everyone. Many actually preferred living with the challenges they faced over living in a country like mine, where other things are missing. A professional I met in South America who had turned down a job offer in the United States told me, “I’d never want to move there, even though I’d make more money. The social part of life is better here, I find people happier here, and my quality of life is what matters most.” Rick Steves, the popular travel guidebook writer and television host, expressed similar thoughts in an interview with Salon when he said, “It’s a very powerful Eureka! moment when you’re traveling: to realize that people don’t have the American dream. They’ve got their own dream. And that’s not a bad thing. That’s a good thing.”

Married Once Do It Again

Marriage is in decline in America, as it is in much of the developed world. Pew Research reports that the share of all adults who have married once has fallen from 85% in 1960 to 70% in 2013.

One interesting factoid in this trend is the willingness of divorced or widowed adults to remarry. About 57% of this population does remarry, a similar number to 50 years ago.

There is a gender gap in attitudes about remarriage, and it’s not what you might expect.

There are definite gender differences on this question: Most currently divorced or widowed men are open to the idea of remarriage, but women in the same circumstances are less likely to be open to the idea. Among previously married men, 65% either want to remarry or are not sure; 30% say that they don’t want to remarry. Among women who are currently divorced or widowed, only 43% say they may want to remarry, while 54% say they are not interested.

It’s older people who are remarrying. Among those ages 25 to 34, 43% had remarried in 2013, compared with 75% in 1960.

8% of newly married adults have at least one partner marrying for the third time. And men do remarry younger women.

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