The amount is usually agreed between the two families.
Who Pays Sin Sod?Īny man marrying a Thai woman is expected to pay Sin Sod. To fully understand the tradition, I think it pays (pardon the pun) to put the word “dowry” out of your mind, not least because any suggestion to your future in-laws that you are purchasing their daughter will be very offensive. The Western-centric viewpoint that Sin Sod equates to the purchasing of a Thai bride is completely incorrect. Some refer to Sin Sod as a dowry, but to be clear, you are not buying a woman or approaching her family to buy her. The amount paid for Sin Sod could be considered relative to the sacrificial cost of bringing up the child – thus the reason it is often referred to as payment for the “mother's milk”. The Sin Sod is essentially a repayment for that investment. Many families sell land, borrow money and generally go without to put their kids through university, or in some cases to simply put food on the table. Where poorer families are concerned, Sin Sod is considered repayment for the money invested in their daughter. So again, should she find herself alone in the future, at least the family will have some money put by for some inevitably rainy years ahead.Īs you can see, marriage is actually somewhat of a risk for a young woman.ģ. Thai society also dictates that the older a Thai woman gets the harder it becomes for her to find a job, let alone a well-paid one. The bottom line is, if a woman finds herself back living with her parents as a single mother, the Sin Sod insures that there will be some money/land in the family to support the family. Therefore, the Sin Sod acts as a sort of insurance in the event that the husband leaves and doesn't offer post-separation financial support. Once a woman has been married, and/or has kids, the structure of Thai society makes it very hard for her to find a man of decent stature. For them, Sin Sod is more about showing status.Ģ. Richer families, who don't need the money, usually return the money because, quite simply, they don’t need it. So, as you can imagine, for parents with no pension plan and little savings, the Sin Sod is a much-needed payday. This usually stops once she is married and has her children to care for. As you might know, it is common for a single Thai woman to send a portion of her salary to her parents each month.
Traditionally, the eldest unmarried daughter takes care of her parents until she gets married, and therefore the Sin Sod in some respects replaces that income for the parents. To break the meaning down further, there are generally three reasons for the payment of Sin Sod, as follows:ġ. However, not all families keep the money, and in the modern day it is often returned. Sin Sod is a very significant part of the Thai marriage tradition, and something most families take seriously. It is also symbolic of the groom's ability to be able to financially take care of the bride. It is a repayment for the investment they have put into raising their daughter, and also for the loss incurred by their daughter not being readily available to support them anymore. However, what I can say is that the information is the experience of myself and two Thai people, both educated and well-versed in their own culture. So for this post, to make sure my understanding is accurate, I enlisted a couple of Thai friends to help me stay on point.īefore I begin, I am not by any means saying that the information in this post is entirely definitive or one hundred percent historically factual. But of course, if we want to know the truth about Sin Sod, the best people to ask are Thai people themselves. I'm married myself, and I've been to a few Thai weddings in my time. And like traditions the world over, some people simply participate and follow along without really understanding the history. They've seen it a hundred times at weddings since childhood. Part of the problem is that Thai women often don’t explain the concept of Sin Sod very well, which isn’t at all surprising, considering that for them it’s a standard tradition and an age-old part of Thai culture. So, when a foreigner wants to marry his Thai girlfriend and the inevitable subject of Sin Sod arises, it is no surprise that he becomes confused over what he should be paying and why he is expected to pay it. You will find a huge amount of misleading information online regarding Sin Sod, and conflicting experiences can be found plastered all over forums and blogs.
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