Nadiya Hussain has said she doesn't want her children to follow in her footsteps by having an arranged marriage. The Great British Bake Off star, who has said she fell in love with husband Abdal after their arranged marriage, who took place when she was 19, said she needed to "move with the times" when it came to her own family. "I don't think [my children] need me to find them a husband or a wife," the mother-of-three, 32, told Good Housekeeping. "They will do a better job than I will."
© Photo: RexNadiya Hussain pictured with husband Abdal and their three children
Of her own marriage, she said: "It's tough – you are pretty much marrying a complete stranger. I had an arranged marriage, and learnt you have to persevere and remember we are all humans and all have faults… 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."
Nadiya - who now fronts Nadiya's British Food Adventure on BBC Two – is mother to Musa, nine, Dawud, eight, and five-year-old Maryam with technical manager husband Abdal. She previously told the magazine that she wants to encourage her children to be independent. "They won't be living with me when they're 18 – I've got a cruise to go on!" she said. "I don't give them pocket money for doing chores – I don't get paid to do the dishes, so they don't either."
