What Sin Sod Is Not
Firstly, let’s get one thing straight: Sin Sod is not a dowry. You are not buying a woman or approaching her family to buy her. The Western-centric viewpoint that Sin Sod equates to the purchasing of a Thai bride is completely incorrect.
To fully understand the tradition, you need to put the word “dowry” out of your mind, not least because any suggestion to your future in-laws of purchasing their daughter will be very offensive.
What Is Sin Sod?
There are generally three reasons for the payment of Sin Sod; they are as follows:
1. 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. As you might know, it is common for the average Thai woman to send a portion of her salary to her parents each month.
After marriage this usually stops, so as you can imagine, for parents with no pension plan and little savings, the Sin Sod is a much needed payday. Now you can see why richer families don’t usually accept this payment or expect it, quite simply because they don’t need it.
2. 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. Therefore, the Sin Sod acts as a sort of insurance in the event that the husband leaves her and doesn’t offer post separation financial support. The bottom line is, women don’t walk away with half of everything like they do in some Western countries.
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. 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. 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.
3. Where poorer families are concerned, Sin Sod is a repayment for the money invested in their daughter. 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. The Sin Sod is essentially a repayment for that investment. 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”.
6. Age is a contentious and quite horrible issue when it comes to Sin Sod. I mean, when ex childhood superstar singer Tata Young, at almost 40 years old married Prame, the son of the FairTex boxing brand owner, she commanded 100 million Baht. But for a 40-year-old woman from a poor, rural family and a few kids in tow, it’s unlikely that more than 200,000 Baht would be on offer. That said, the type of guys such a woman would have access to wouldn’t be able to afford more than that anyway. But who knows, occasionally a rich man does fall for a poorer woman in good old classist Thailand, and to show his wealth he would no doubt slap down a hefty sin sod.
And so age comes fairly low down on the list. Sin Sod is generally decided by status, family wealth, family name and accomplishment/education of the female in question.