What Is a Mail-Order Bride?
"Mail-order bride" is a term that refers to women who post personal ads in a catalog or with an online agency to find a husband in another country. Usually, mail-order brides are young, pretty women seeking to flee hardship in their home countries. They view attracting an affluent husband as a way to better their circumstances and improve their quality of life.
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History
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Said by some to have begun with male American settlers who wrote to women in Europe asking them to become their wives, mail-order brides have a long history in the United States. (See Reference 1.) However, mail-order brides do choose husbands in other developed countries as well, such as Canada or Australia. (See Reference 2.) The term "mail-order bride" is reminiscent of a time when computers did not exist and women published their information in catalogs read by men seeking wives. Today, Internet-based agencies work as match-making services for mail-order brides and men seeking to marry foreign women.
Today's Brides
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Mail-order brides have historically had a tendency to face economic or financial difficulty in their home countries, causing them to seek husbands in more affluent countries. (See Reference 2.) Today's mail-order brides still generally fit that description. They do not, however, face the unknown in the same way that their predecessors did. Instead of traveling to a foreign country to marry a man she has never met, today's mail-order bride can choose to work with various agencies. Many agencies offer tour packages for men to travel to foreign countries in order to meet and date prospective brides.
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Agencies
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A number of agencies exist that work with men seeking a mail-order bride. One such agency is CherryBlossoms, which claims to have been "successfully helping single men and women meet by publishing their picture personal ads since 1974." (See Reference 3.) CherryBlossoms began as a magazine in which women could publish personal ads that included photographs. The agency has evolved into a website that features chat rooms and email. Also offered are private tours to countries like the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Men who pay for these tours can take advantage of translation services, personal introductions to mail-order brides and help for new brides who need to complete the immigration process. (See Reference 3.)
Statistics and Demographics
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According to a 1997 article by Robert J. Scholes for the Center for Immigration Studies, "The annual number of women available as "mail-order brides" is in the neighborhood of 100,000." (See Reference 4.) Agencies that work with these women estimate that about 10 percent of mail-order brides end up marrying a man through a mail-order agency, resulting in about 10,000 "mail-order marriages" a year. (See Reference 4.) About 4,000 of the grooms in these marriages are American.
Mail-order brides vary in age and build, but Scholes proposes that mail-order brides may be sought because they are thinner and more beautiful than women in a man's home country. (See Reference 4.) Also, "Most of the personal reports from American men who have married women through these agencies talk about 'traditional values.' That is, American women are not content to be wives and mothers, but seek personal satisfaction through their own careers and interests, while the foreign woman is happy to be the homemaker and asks for nothing more than husband, home, and family." (See Reference 4.)
Legislation
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In 2002, Indle King Jr. was convicted of the first-degree murder of his mail-order bride Anastasia Solovieva King. According to an Associated Press article by Joel Arak, Congress began drafting legislation in 2003 to prevent similar tragedies. The drafted measure called for mail-order brides to be able to screen the criminal backgrounds of potential husbands. (See Reference 5.)
The International Marriage Brokers Act went into effect in 1995. It was met with some unfavorable reactions from online dating agencies, though it focused on protecting mail-order brides from abuse. According to an article by David Evans for Online Dating Insider, some of the resistance may have resulted from a fear that customers' chances of finding a bride would suffer "due to the potential scarlet letters these background checks will unearth....There is a big difference [between] getting [arrested] for a DUI [and] going crazy with an axe." (See Reference 6.)
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit Photo by Rebecca Nelles
