Who cares about the expiration date?

It’s your twenty-seventh birthday; you have achieved so much already and have made unforgettable memories. Whilst your mum, your dad, your siblings, cousins, and even the distant family friends you rarely see sing to you, you blow out the candles. The light turns on and the inescapable questioning begins.

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‘Don’t you think it’s time to settle down.’

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‘I know someone just perfect for you.’

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‘The clock’s ticking…’

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This is the reality for many young women.

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The pressure to marry is one that many women face throughout time. Women are constantly misinformed that they are ‘running out of time’ from as young as 24. Society and culture intimidate women into believing that their main purpose is to build a family and raise the next generation. However, in a society where - according to the National Office for Statistics - 16.7 million women were in employment at the end of 2024, this traditional ideology is no longer possible.

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Dilara Khalique, a 43-year-old mother to two young children, was married at 30-years-old. Married in 2012, Khalique fought against immense pressure to marry and did not comply to what was expected of her to do. ‘My dad wanted me to ideally get married after I finished my GCSEs, but I fought to go on to do my A-levels and even my degree.’ Khalique’s father was far from pleased by her decisions as the majority of Khalique’s cousins her age had already started to get married. ‘It was the culture, it was the society we lived in,’ Khalique explained ‘my dad didn’t know any better.’

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With the pressure to marry starting from as young as 16 and only getting increasingly severe, Khalique was treated differently within her community for choosing to remain unmarried. From receiving judgemental looks to suspicions of a ‘secret boyfriend,’ Khalique was also told to never touch wedding items whenever she attended. ‘It was an old wife’s tale, superstitious rubbish,’ where if an unmarried woman touched wedding items, she would be cursed to never find a suitor and marry. ‘You would hear that you had gone past your sell by date, I got that all the time.’ At the start, the constant comments would ‘annoy’ Khalique, but as time passed, she was able to ignore them. She would even tease about previous marriages gone wrong to anger those in her community instead.

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‘The pressure still exists because it is cultural,’ Khalique stated, ‘everyone wants to get their children married off.’ She compared this to ‘peer-pressure’, where families feel a need to get their children married as they are seeing other family members having their own children married.

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But how did this idea of ‘expiring’ come to exist?

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Fertility changes throughout a woman’s life, and this change has been named the ‘biological clock’. The term refers to the fact that it is generally harder to conceive a child with age. There is a wide range of scientific evidence that shows that egg and sperm quality decline as you age. However, a woman’s peak fertility varies from person to person, just like how the starting and stopping of periods vary.

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28-year-old Farhana Tarofdear is an example of how the pressure to marry remains prominent in communities like the Bangladeshi community. ‘I knew I never wanted to get married in my early 20s, in my eyes 26 was the perfect age.’ Tarofdear’s goal was to complete her further education before even thinking about getting married, however her exams were delayed due to covid and caused her to graduate by 25. Tarofdear explains that there is not only a pressure from family and community, but also a pressure one puts on themselves whilst watching people around them get married.

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Similar to Khalique, Tarofdear has been told that if she is not married soon that she will be unable to find a suitable partner. However, for Tarofdear these comments have typically been indirect. These comments can hurt Tarofdear deeply, but she tries her best to remember those comments are far from the truth.

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When people find out that Tarofdear is unmarried, she feels as though she is ‘looked at a little differently,’ they appear ‘confused’ and even ‘pity’ her. However, this confusion and pity is typically found within her own community, where Tarofdear mentions that marriage is deemed a ‘priority’ culturally, but outside the South Asian culture there is ‘not much emphasis put on it.’

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Neither Khalique nor Tarofdear have regretted their decisions to marry past their ‘expiration date’. Both were able to focus on other aspects of their lives like their education or career before settling in marriage. Both Khalique and Tarofdear believe that although their achievements would still have been possible, they would have had to work harder to achieve what they have whilst balancing their duties as a wife.