IT’S a fact: The age of marriage is getting higher in urban areas. A Yangon academic says parents need to take steps to ensure this doesn’t result in a generation gap that leaves them cut off from their children.

“According to the census taken by the government, the age of marriage is later in urban areas. The young people there are more likely to be well educated and they have different objectives in life. Getting married is not always a highest priority for them,” says Daw Khin Aye Win, retired professor and head of Psychology department at the university of Yangon. “They plan to continue their study in abroad, after that they will try to get good job. They hesitate to get married till they are set up financially and have enough money. People want to start their married life when everything is convenient and sufficient.”

She says the result can be a generation gap in urban families, between children and their parents, which can become too wide to bridge.

The generation gap is usually seen in the differing values, interests and way of thinking of children and their parents. She says it is up to parents to prevent it from happening.

“Parents must prepare themselves so this generation gap is not big. They need to make efforts to understand their children and, if they don’t, problems might occur,” she says, adding spending time with your children, especially listening and having conversations with them, was essential.

“If the parents and children have built good relations and understanding, then this won’t be a big problem,” she says.

“There are many things, opinions, that we do not share with our children. For example, we did not have chance to talk back to our parents even they were wrong. But now we give our children the chance to talk back to their parents.

We have to teach them how to talk to parents. Rude ways are not the right way. We don’t permit them to do so. It is not our tradition, it is not Buddhist behaviour,” Daw Khin Aye Win, herself a mother of two daughters, says.

“Parents should have sympathy for their children, they should think about what they did when they were the same age,” she said.

Parents should try to know everything what is going on around them and to catch up with the current trends, she says. If the ways of thinking and concepts are different with their children, they should then try to find out whether it is good or bad for their children.

Ko Zaw Win, 33, does not think age gap is a problem for parents and their children. He and his wife have decided they would like to have a baby in the next two years.

“I think no matter how much our age differs, (parents and children) can understand each other, there will be no more problems,” he says.
He said the age gap between him and his parents is almost 40 years.

“I am the youngest child in my family. That’s why the gap between me and my parents is so wide. As my parents are traditional Myanmar people, they did not go to the university. They do not keep up with the current trends. They don’t know what I am doing. They love and confide in me, and they let me to do whatever I want although they don’t know what I am doing.

“For example, I have attended a computer basic skill class and I wanted to attend another computer class, an upgrade courses. They asked me how many times you attend computer classes. Also, I attended English spoken classes and then I register to attend German classes. They asked me after learning a language after another, what I will do,” he said.

He says he tries to keep them up to date with what is happening in his life, in particular explaining what he learns at his computer and language courses.
“Although they don’t tell me what to with my education, career and future plan, they teach me things which every Myanmar people should know; Myanmar culture, traditions, customs and Buddhist ways of life,” he says proudly.

“When I’m a parent, I’ll try to keep up with the times of my children and current trends. I would like to know all the things what they are doing, if I do I can try and guide them the right way if they are wrong,” Ko Zaw Win said.

He says there are advantages to getting married later in life. Younger couples can be too inexperienced to raise children parenting and at the same time they may be struggling with money and busy with business, not having enough time to look after their children.

“When we are at the age of about 30, we have lived a lot, have a lot of life experience, so we can guide and look after our children very well.”