People within the Maori culture in the Manukau area simply don’t get married, but the single mothers end up having a ton of children. It’s not that marriage is not sacred, but more so because it’s completely unaffordable. The culture demands that you invite all your relatives and everyone you know to the wedding. Not only do you need to pay for the cost of feeding everyone at the wedding, but culture requires you to give a large tray of food to everyone to comes to take home with them. Even if you invited 500 people, you would be providing 1,000 meals. Already living in underprivileged communities, marriage is simply not an option.
Why not break free of cultural norms and simply have a smaller wedding? It would be social suicide. There are two options: have a ton of kids with different people and have a sense of “belonging” or be ostracized by having a marriage you can’t afford. Marriage just isn’t a huge value here. Pregnancy at a young age is the norm. Having a ton of children as a single mother is a norm (especially when you get more social welfare from the government with each additional child).
How are we as individuals, as communities, as churches suppose to create change in cultures that inherit norms which further the cycle of poverty?
Here’s what my team in New Zealand is doing…Read the next blog entry: An “Eggs”pression of Love to end the Yolk of suffering.
