We want progress but find it impossible to let go of ill-conceived traditions!

A friend shared a very interesting thought in an email and I find it very difficult to disagree with it, even though she does often go a bit hard on tradition

The FATHER walking the bride down the aisle during weddings for instance. Laughable isn’t it? Given how much mothers have to put up with. But it is tradition? Probably women would kick harder against changing it as you still hear phrases such as “cannot wait for my dad to give me away”; so, one chap hands her over to another chap.. Tradition is great but the mindset needs reassessing. Thankfully at some more modern weddings today, you see both parents walking the bride down the aisle and the “giving her away” bit is now more subtle.

Surnames. In this day and age, every child should have both parent’s names combined as their surname: why should the mother’s name automatically pave the way for the father’s? Biblical? Ok. But it always seem to sway conveniently in favour of men and tradition is always the acceptable reason and we all go along with it in the name of keeping with tradition. Some will even call it “values”. But when we look around us today, where exactly are those “values”? We treat each other with disdain. Half the global population is in poverty and are stuck in darkness (literally) – I saw a very interesting satellite image of the world online, showing where there’s electricity and one can only shake one’s head. It really is unfortunate

Nothing wrong with tradition (and values), but where it remains bizarrely biased towards men, we all need to wake up and get real. I am a man and I am happy to enjoy a bunch of perks, but seriously, we need to stop hiding behind these ill-conceived traditions…..