Nadiya Hussain does not want her children to have arranged marriages – despite having had one herself.
The Great British Bake Off star was married to her husband aged just 19 and although she said she had grown to love him in time, she admitted that she needed to “move with the times” when it came to her own children.
The mother-of-three told Good Housekeeping magazine: “It’s tough – you are pretty much marrying a complete stranger.
“We need to move with the times.
“I don’t think (my children) need me to find them a husband or a wife. They will do a better job than I will.”
Talking about her own experiences, she explained how she had worked at her relationship.
She said: “I had an arranged marriage, and learnt you have to persevere and remember we are all human and all have faults.
“Obviously my husband Abdal has more faults than I do!
“We had to live through the good and the bad, and have come out the other side.
“Love is strange…it creeps up on you and then smacks you in the face.
“I didn’t know my husband, and then we had two children, and then I fell in love with him.”
Hussain added that she wanted to encourage independence in her children.
She said: “They won’t be living with me when they’re 18 – I’ve got a cruise to go on.
“I don’t give them pocket money for doing chores – I don’t get paid to do the dishes, so they don’t either.”
The full interview appears in the September issue of Good Housekeeping, on sale August 2.
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