Khaberni - Deep within the Jordanian social scene, a heavy-shadowed phenomenon forms, slowly expanding and transforming year after year into an obsession that cannot be buried beneath the noise of daily life. It is the spinsterhood... that word unjustly attached to girls until it has become more like a stigma not due to any fault of theirs or any flaw within them, but truly a mirror to a reality burdened by economic conditions, inherited social pressures, and accumulated disappointments in the dreams of an entire generation. The phenomenon resembles a fire under the ashes; it does not scream, but it burns.
Although the numbers circulated are not always based on up-to-date official records, the general trend is as clear as the sun: a decline in marriage rates, an increase in the average age at marriage, and a widening layer of young men and women stuck on the threshold of a phase that was supposed to grant them stability and tranquility. The costliness bears down on those about to wed, and the costs of marriage stand like towering mountains that young people with modest salaries cannot scale, while unemployment contributes to an unintended reluctance to take a step once considered a natural transition in life and path.
Behind the economic conditions, customs, and traditions rise like a second, no less solid wall; exaggerated demands, parties that exhaust the groom and his family, and dowries that widen like a chasm with no bridge between one class and another. Added to this is a social heritage that diminishes the standing of a girl whose marriage is delayed, as if her age is owned by the eyes of others, not by her choices, ambitions, and dignity. With the educational and professional shifts that have made many women busy building a stable future, the years of delay have increased without society keeping pace with this natural change, thus looking at the delay as a defect rather than as a right.
The shifts in priorities of the generations cannot be ignored; young men who chase a steady job to protect them from the unpredictability of days, and young women who strive to achieve high degrees and secure a decent life, at a time when marriage is no longer a quick decision as it used to be, but a project that requires long planning, anticipation, and precise calculations. Thus, the reasons intertwine and complicate the picture, making spinsterhood a result rather than an independent condition, the end of a long series of imbalances that the woman is not the original party of.
As for the solutions, they cannot arise from a vacuum. They begin by addressing the economic roots through providing real job opportunities for the youth, reducing the cost of marriage, and encouraging a culture of facilitation, along with revisiting the customs that have unduly burdened society. Awareness also emerges as a necessity to erase harmful terms from the social dictionary and replace them with just words that preserve everyone’s humanity, and for religious and social discourse to advance responsibly to restore the original meaning of marriage away from the extravagance that has distorted it. As for the controversial proposals, foremost among them polygamy, they cannot be presented as a ready remedy for a complex phenomenon without a precise study of the risk of destabilizing existing family structures, as social crises are not solved with hammers but with understanding and wisdom.
In the conclusion of this scene, spinsterhood in Jordan appears not just as an individual or women's problem, but as a societal issue that requires sincere will and a deeper understanding of its economic, psychological, and social consequences. Reality proves that times have changed and people have changed, and the old molds no longer suffice to contain the aspirations of a new generation that wants to build its life, not inherit the burdens of its parents. When society deals with the phenomenon with awareness, and reduces the severity of its view, and breaks the cycles of customs that have blocked the sun, marriage will return as an affordable option rather than a difficult exam, and the silent crisis will begin to recede instead of intensifying.!!!
Writer Ahmed Saad Al-Hajjaj
