Marriage is legally recognized relationship between men and women, which changes their status from men and women to husband and wife and confer rights, responsibilities and obligations toward each other. It is well said that, marriage binds husband and wife into one soul. This oneness is symbolized in the marriage ceremonies which imply that they are one in religious rites, sacrifices, domestic co-operation etc (Ross 1961). However, marriage confers distinctive roles to perform. Husband is assigned the harder work outside the house and wife, mainly because of their child bearing and rearing function, takes over the household duties. Furthermore, in all societies’ man whether he is husband or father or son is generally responsible for the financial support to the family, supervises the important family purchases and expenditures. On the other hand, woman whether she is wife or mother or daughter is responsible for household chores and child care rather than to work outside the household. So, the present study was conducted with the following objectives.

  1. To know how decisions-making is divided between the intermarried couples.
  2. To know how child care is performed by the intermarried couples

Methodology

The study was conducted in the Kathmandu valley. The valley includes three districts i.e. Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur districts. For the study 210 women who intermarried were selected by using snowball technique. Data were collected from the respondents with the help of pre-tested interview schedule. After collecting data tabulations were done and finally interpretation of data was done.

The study found that there are changes in the decisions-making process in all the areas under study (economic, social, education and health). A large number of the respondents and their husbands were jointly taking decisions. On the other hand, child care was largely performed by the women. However, finding also shows that one third of the husbands are equally sharing the child care task with their wives.

Key words: marriage, intermarriage, decision-making, Husband-wife, Nepal, child care.