Daughter’s Money. Who Has The Right To Use It?

So you have a working daughter who is married, and earns for herself. What about the money your daughter earns? Who has a right to a daughter’s money?

We are in the 21^st century, where women have moved from managing kitchen chores to office chores. They are bonafide earning members of the family now. However, these women are facing a dilemma today. The money they earn – whom does it belong to? The car, house or any other valuables they must have bought before marriage with some or no help from their parents, whom does it belong to after marriage? What if they want to give a part of their salary to her parents even after marriage? Will it be ok with her new family? Will her parents accept it?

Many people have realized, that education provides confidence and independence to a girl, needed if faced with dire consequences. So, thankfully, many girls are being educated today. You can see the pride, if their daughters are scaling new heights in their career.

We call ourselves progressive, but we never get rid of the concept of girl being ‘Paraya Dhan’. The word ‘Kanyadaan‘ itself indicates giving away. As soon as a girl is born, if a family is not dejected, deep in their heart they prepare themselves for the day when they will give away their beautiful daughter.

Is not ‘Kanyadaan’ objectifying women? Is she an object or a piece of land to be given away? Marriage is about two people spending their life together, why is it made to be about a girl leaving her birth family?

There are many girls who financially support their family. However, once she is married, the right on her money is assumed to be transferred to her husband and his family. If the husband’s family is good, they would say, “You know we allow her to help her family. After all they are her parents. We are not orthodox you know”.

Who gave you the right to allow or not allow? It is her money, and she alone has the right to decide what to do with it! The way, a girl’s parent has no right on your son’s income, similarly you don’t have any right on your DIL’s income.

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There are so many women who help their parents secretly because their in-laws won’t like it or worse, they might one day taunt her parents. Many parents seek help from their daughter secretly because they feel ashamed of letting the society know about it. It will hurt their so-called image in the society. Funnily, our society cribs if a son doesn’t take care of his parents but daughter has no such obligation. And if daughter takes care of their parents, they are labelled as – ‘Son’

By imparting education to our daughters, we have crossed one barrier. But true equality would be achieved when we treat our daughters with exactly same expectation as we treat our son. When you will truly believe that your daughter is also an integral part of your family irrespective of her marital status, the way your son is.

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