What is the key to a happy marriage? Love for one another might be the most common answer. But a recent study by the Kazakhstan Institute of Public Development (KIPD) reveals that parents still play a big role in many important marriage decisions, from wedding preparations to financial allocation—all reliant on Kazakh traditions of honoring and respecting the elderly.
Such traditions might include the daughter-in-law’s obligation to serve her husband’s parents or to wear a headscarf at home, living with parents after marriage, and the elders’ right to name the oldest child. Just over half of the respondents (55.3%) accept these traditions and regard them as an essential prerequisite for the prosperity of a family.
Aibarshyn Akhmetkali.
As someone who is not yet married but has been going on dates, I have noticed certain tendencies often shaped by a strong adherence to traditions—particularly the expectation of living with parents after marriage.
The problematic part is that while living together offers the exchange of experience, knowledge, and values between generations, the younger generation increasingly feels pressured into such arrangements by the older generation.
“Among the disadvantages: they will not have any personal life, young people have less responsibility for raising children, for their family financial situation, they will think about personal things, family values will be in the background. They will shift all the responsibility to their parents,” said one of the KIPD survey respondents from Semei.
At the same time, if parents financially support a newlywed couple, such allocation leads to financial control under the pretext of joint budgeting.
According to the latest research from Kazakhstan’s Agency for Regulation and Development of the Financial Market, around 70% of respondents do not independently manage their personal finances. Many rely on their spouses, while 30% are financially managed by their parents. Notably, this includes parents overseeing the finances of adults aged 40 to 50. Such tensions lead to many challenges for the family structures within our society.
The KIPD survey also shows significant debt levels among the population. Half of Kazakhs have loans, and 52.4% purchase goods in installments. About one-third of respondents in various types of marital unions face difficulties due to excessive borrowing.
Behind those statistics are human stories, some happy, others less so. Amid societal pressure, many young people marry even without the financial means to support the new family. While this might seem positive in light of the global decline in marriage and childbirth rates, the real question is whether it fosters the development of a healthy, sustainable family unit.
What lessons can we draw from the essence of traditions?
In my opinion, the problem with relying on traditions is that most people treat them as unquestionable dogma, stripped of their initial meaning and depth. Living with parents may have been an essential part of the nomadic lifestyle, where entire tribes lived together in one community, but how relevant is it today? Or perhaps we are misinterpreting the traditions related to sharing a home and daughter-in-law’s obligations altogether.
One of the survey respondents, a 53-year-old female from Aktobe, said, “You know, Kazakhs have no such traditions that would infringe on someone’s rights. They were just perverted later. In fact, all traditions are aimed at educating young people.” I think there is some truth to her words.
The question of what it was like to honor the elders in the past brings me to stories from literature where the essence of tradition was preserved.
Below is the portrait of Akhat from Kazakh writer Sherkhan Murtaza’s “Flaming Arrow.”
“Akhat is the elder and wise man of Tau-Shilmembet. He is a respected old man. Although he is a peasant, he is a pious man who dresses cleanly and combs his white beard every day. People see Akhat as a saint in their own way. Ryskul, who does not worship anyone except Tengri [ancient deity] and wonders every mountain and stone of the region, stands still on Akhat’s words,” reads the excerpt.
In this context, the elder is portrayed as a wise man—a guardian of the village’s families, a trusted advisor to whom people turned for guidance and a sense of kinship. In another scene, we see how Akhat is respected for his wisdom and lives independently in his own house at an old age.
“It was Akhat – the neighbor. He coughed to give a signal before coming in. Katshagul, who was sitting at the hearth, tending the pot and making a fire, immediately left the pot down, jumped up, and greeted her father-in-law with a bow. ‘Live long, my dear,’ Akhat said warmly.”
More globally, vital senior citizens can be found in Clarissa Pinkola Estes’s “Women Who Run with the Wolves.” In her work, she explores universal archetypes that have existed in every ancient society, including the elderly woman.
“If something is lost, it is she to whom one must appeal, speak with, and listen to. Her psychic advice is sometimes harsh or difficult to put into practice but always transformative and restorative. So when something is lost, we must go to the old woman who always lives in the out-of-the-way-pelvis,” Estes writes.
As the keeper of tradition, she describes older women archetypes as those who “record the personal past and the ancient past for she has survived generation after generation, and is old beyond time. She is an archivist of feminine intention. She preserves female tradition. Her whiskers sense the future; she has the farseeing milky eye of the old crone; she lives backward and forward in time simultaneously, correcting for one side by dancing with the other.”
In contrast to someone who is “a symbol of the rigid keeper of collective tradition, an enforcer of the unquestioned status quo, the ‘be-have yourself; don’t make waves; don’t think too hard; don’t get big ideas; just keep a low profile; be a carbon copy; be nice; say ‘yes’ even though you don’t like it, it doesn’t fit, it’s not the right size, and it hurts.”
From this, we understand that traditions and respect for the elderly, when preserved in their true essence, serve as a profound source of spiritual nourishment, wisdom, guidance, and a sense of continuity. They have the potential to enrich lives and cultivate meaningful connections within families and communities.
However, when traditions become rigid, they risk becoming empty symbols. Instead of inspiring growth, they can act as barriers to personal development, self-expression, and even financial independence.
So, what does it mean to hold onto traditions while striving for an independent lifestyle? Striking that balance is a decision each family must navigate for themselves.
