What always fascinates me is that this rigid track extends beyond careers and to the family life. According to my Indian colleagues, the social structure sets expectation on the type of wife, age you are married, age you start having kids.
I would say this is true to a large extent. Our family knew an Indian who wanted to marry his Japanese girlfriend. The parents behaved like the biggest <censored> on the planet, even harassing the couple and taking the guy around to meet other women (who they thought were more appropriate for their son). Needless to say, that family went through quite a rough patch. But this is true of Indian parents. On one hand you have the new, more educated variety of parents who allow the kid to charter his/her own life. Then you have the weirdos who are completely out of touch with the world and feel that they know everything (no literally, from deciding their kids' majors in college to deciding where the kid should build his/her home). Right now there are more weirdos in India than the sane ones.
I don't have a better response than saying BullSH!T.
Ask your friend to peek out and look at the city dwellers, there's no set age for one to get married though parents are heavily involved in the process, there's social pressure and most people get married in their 20's.
Ofcourse these are the norms, within the handful of people I know the exception rate would be 20-30% which is high enough not to take all the social structure/expectation stuff too seriously
Oh come on. I know several people in their late twenties being pressured into marriage by their families. Why? Because, according to their families, if they don't marry right now they'll never find a husband/wife for themselves and spend their lives childless. Or something.
I said there's social pressure... but frankly isn't this the same even in the US, don't mom nag their daughters to find the right guy when they are of the "right" age here.
