Child Marriage - A Mandatory Essay

Child marriage Throughout the world, marriage is regarded as a moment of joy and celebration. However, in some cases it’s not a very joyful event. In this case, for children who get married. Child marriage is one of the biggest human rights violations in the world. Even though in most countries the legal age for marriage is 18. Some people, of course, find their way around the law and allow child marriage. Child marriage violates girls’ rights to health, education and opportunity. It exposes girls to violence throughout their lives. Girls as young as 13 and 14 years old are forced to marry someone who is older than the girl. Girls are forced to drop out of school and be responsible for a husband and kids. According to the council on foreign relations, 142 million girls will marry before adulthood within this decade. Child marriage is a crime that should affects girls, and it should be stopped and should be outlawed across the globe. There are socioeconomic causes that lead to the existence of child marriage. Poverty, cultural norms, and the low social value of women and girls are the primary forces that fuel child marriage, although the significance of each varies from place to the other. In developing countries, one in every three girls is married before reaching age 18. Fear of premarital pregnancy, rape, hunger, and homelessness are all drivers of child marriage. According to Girls Not Brides (n.d.), more than half of girls from the poorest families in the developing world are married as children. When people live in poverty, they believe that early marriage is a solution to secure a good future. In some places around the world, like India, the husband-to-be must pay money for the wife’s family to marry her. That amount of money rises if the bride is young. Meanwhile, the family of the bride must give the husband-to-be money, or dowries, that amount of money can be lowered if the bride is young. So, the family of the bride pays less money to the husband and the husband pays more for the bride’s family, which makes it a win-win situation for the bride’s family. Research from the World Bank, based on Demographic and Health Surveys data, shows that across countries, girls from wealthier families tend to marry at later ages, supporting the hypothesis that poverty and economic survival are drivers of early marriage. Culture norms is also another factor that plays a huge role in child marriage. Passed from one generation to the next, cultural norms are the shared, sanctioned, and integrated systems of beliefs and practices that characterize a cultural group. In other words, culture norms are the practices that a culture preserve to be “normal”. According to Girls Not Brides (n.d.), Child marriage is a traditional practice that in many places happens simply because it has happened for generations. In some communities, they believe that when a girl hit puberty, she is now ready to bear children. In many cultures, they believe that a girl’s virginity is tied to her family honor. Families try to marry their daughters early on so they would make sure their daughter got married as virgins. According to both Council on Foreign Relations (n.d.) and Girls Not Brides (n.d.), in Northeast Africa and parts of the Middle East, child marriage frequently occurs shortly after female genital mutilation, which is the removal of some or all the external female genitalia, which are mostly the parts that allows for sexual pleasure. Female genital mutilation is a practice that is often justified as promoting virginity and prevent sexual assault. Female genital mutilation is now illegal in many countries around the world, though, it is still practiced because it is one of the “culture norms”. Another factor that leads to the existence of child marriage is the value of women or gender inequality. In many communities where child marriage is practiced, girls are not valued as much as boys. Boys go to parties, go have as much fun as they want but girls must stay at home. In many cultures, having a girl is a burden and a shame to the family. Child marriage is also driven by patriarchal values and the desire to control female sexuality, for instance, how a girl should behave, how she should dress, who she should be allowed to see, to marry. They put so much rules on girls that they don’t put on boys simply because they think they are protecting the families honors that way. Girls who have relationships or become pregnant outside of marriage are shamed for bringing dis-honor on their families and can be killed for it in the name of “honor killing”. In many cultures and countries, girls are not allowed to get education. Some people justify it by saying that a girl should only be able to clean, cook and wash, they believe that a girl’s only job in life is to be a housewife. A shortened to non-education is both a cause and effect of early marriage. While it is not clear if child marriage causes school dropout or the other way around, child marriage often means the end to a girls’ formal education. Girls tend to drop out of school in the preparatory time before marriage or shortly afterwards. Once a girl is out of school, she is more vulnerable to child marriage and early pregnancy. Girls who are uneducated are and don’t have any idea about the hardships of marrying as a child and after pregnancy and birth complications are not likely to say no to getting married. Child marriage and early pregnancy can also force girls out of school. Girls tend to drop out before or shortly after marriage because their new role as wives expects them to take care of the husband, children and the family. In some places, girls are not usually welcomed back in school if they got married or have children which makes it hard for girls to continue their education. Education can be one of the most powerful tools to enable girls to avoid child marriage and fulfil their potential. The longer a girl stays in school, the less likely she is to be married before the age of 18 and have children during her teenage years. According to Council on Foreign Council (n.d.), Surveys of child brides conducted by the United Nations and many nongovernmental agencies paint a broad demographic portrait of young married girls: Girls from rural areas are twice as likely to marry as children as those from urban areas. Child brides are most likely to be from poor families. Married girls are generally less educated, either for lack of opportunity or the curtailment of their schooling by early marriage. In some countries, the prevalence of child marriage also lie along religious, ethnic, or regional lines. “According to United Nations Population Funds (2016), Niger has the highest percentage of child marriage in the world (75%). In Niger one in three girls is married before the age of 15, and 75% of women aged 20 to 24 are married before they reach 18. According to activists, girls as young as seven are married in Niger. The United Nations Population Funds reported that 47% of girls in India are married before the legal minimum age. The northern State of Bihar has the highest incidence of child marriage at (68%), followed by Bangladesh (66%), Jharkhand (55.7%), Rajasthan (57.6%), Uttar Pradesh (54.9%), West Bengal (54.8%) and Madhya Pradesh (53.8%). On average, almost three out of four girls are married before their 18th birthday in Chad” (Laccino, 2016). Shockingly, child marriage also happens in First world countries like the United States of America. “About 57,800 minors in the U.S. ages 15 to 17 were married as of 2014. That might sound like a lot of people (and it is), but it’s also just five of every 1,000 in that age group, a Pew Research Center analysis of 2014 data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey finds. By contrast, 18 of every 1,000 of those ages 18 to 19 were married, and among those ages 20 to 24, the number rose to 107 out of every 1,000” (McClendon & Sandstorm, 2016). The rate varies depending on the states, in the southern states like, West Virginia and Texas child marriage is most prevalent. Several other states in the South and the West, including Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Nevada and California, also have above-average rates of child marriage. Some researchers say that child marriage is more common in the south because it is the religious/conservative region of the United States. Michelle DeMello, was a victim of child marriage. She was 16 and pregnant. Her Christian community in Green Mountain Falls was pressuring her family to marry her off to her 19-year-old boyfriend. DeMello told Reiss (2017) that she couldn’t say no to the marriage since she was the one who shamed her family and dishonored them. DeMello believed that the clerk/judge wouldn’t marry a minor but she was wrong. While most states set 18 as the minimum marriage age, every state allow children younger than 18 to marry, typically with parental consent or judicial approval. According to Reiss (2015), thousands of children under 18 have recently taken marital vows – mostly girls married to adult men, with approval from local judges. Some people describe child marriage in the United States as an epidemic given that the United States is a first world country and has a lot of law and regulations against child marriage and any form of child abuse. Marriage forces girls into adulthood before they are emotionally or physically mature, leading to a range of harmful and traumatizing effects that young married girls must face. Child marriage often has devastating consequences on a girl’s health. It encourages the starting of sexual activity at an age when girls’ bodies are still developing and when they know little about their rights or their sexual and reproductive health. Child brides are often expected to bear children soon after marriage, which makes them vulnerable to pregnancy and childbirth complications, including obstetric fistula, which is hole between the vagina and rectum or bladder that is caused by prolonged obstructed labor, leaving a woman incontinent of urine or feces or both. It Occurs commonly in young girls who give birth before their bodies have matured and are able to bear children. The World Health Organization reports that pregnancy complications remain the leading cause of death among girls aged fifteen to nineteen and those girls are twice as likely to die in childbirth as are mothers aged twenty and older. Babies born to adolescent or child mothers are more likely to die than those born to mothers over age twenty. They tend to have lower birth weights and weak immune systems, and face higher risks of malnutrition and may end in the death of the mother, the baby, or both. Also, child marriages leave girls vulnerable to Sexually transmitted diseases which may cause cervical cancer for women in the long run since they marry someone they don’t know anything about who might be carrying diseases. In Kenya and Zambia, a study found that HIV infection rates were higher among married girls than their unmarried girls who had more privilege to choose their sexual partners. Early, unwanted pregnancies are associated with increased levels of induced abortion, which when carried out in unsafe conditions carries severe health risks, including death. The rates of preterm birth, low birth weight and asphyxia are higher among the children of adolescent girls; all these conditions increase the chance of death or future health problems for the baby. The lack of education is also one of the effects that marriage have on girls. Married girls between the ages of 10 and 14 and who are not in school have no access to sexuality education, further increasing their vulnerability to pregnancy. A girl who is uneducated is unable to educate her own children and take safe care of them. She may not be able to keep them healthy and provide them the right nutrition that they need. Once married, young girls are typically forced to leave behind their family, friends and community and move to their new husband’s home. Their ability to attend school is disrupted, eliminating another source of social support and companionship. Advocates for girls’ rights say this isolation can have emotionally scarring effects, as well as violent consequences if their new families mistreat them. The age gap between a child bride and her spouse makes her more vulnerable to domestic abuse and nonconsensual sex. Moreover, the parents of the girl train her on how to treat her husband and her new house and tell her to treat him with respect and never say no to him, which makes girls less likely to come forward about abuse. Girls who marry young are less likely to receive the education they need to live a healthy and empowered life. Without an education, they are less able to earn good income that would lift themselves and their families out of poverty. By marrying young, girls and their families are trapped in the poverty cycle that they may not be able to get out of. Ending child marriage requires work across all sectors and at all levels. It requires us to understand the complex drivers behind the practice in different contexts and adapt our interventions accordingly. Child marriage is still prevalent in many place around the world, advocates are pressing to make investing in girls' futures a policy priority. Access to primary and secondary education is crucial to increasing girls' self-confidence and delay the age of marrying young. Formal schooling and college can help girls develop thinking and social skills, establish support networks, make informed decisions, and boost their incomes. Also, there should be sex education class in schools that helps girls have healthy sexual lives and be able to understand their bodies and the stages of pregnancy, etc. As discussed before, some families marry off their daughter to get money from the husband. Government should aid poor people like cash assistance so that they wouldn’t have to sell their daughters for cash and investment in their daughters’ education. Minimum-age marriage laws should be introduced or strengthened to uphold a standard against child marriages. These laws can tie into regulations against sexual violence and domestic violence. There should be awareness about child marriage and how to prevent it. Community-based programs can shift public attitudes about the roles of women and girls in society. There should be safe space programs which can provide girls with an opportunity to build their skills, learn and meet friends and mentors in an informal setting and learn about the services they can access in their community. There should also be registering births and marriages which helps prevent child marriage by proving the age of a girl and her partner and means that girls and women are able to seek financial and legal redress if the marriage ends. In conclusion, child marriage is a very devastating event that young girls must go through. In some countries, girls as young as 7 years are married to someone who may be 60 years of age. Child marriage violates girls’ rights to health, education and opportunity. Child marriage is a crime that should affects girls, and it should be stopped and should be outlawed across the globe. Child marriage leaves girls vulnerable to diseases like HIV, cervical cancer and may even cause death. Child marriage ends the girl’s education which means that the girl is uneducated and will not be able to educate her own children. Since girls are school drop outs, they have little to no knowledge about sexuality and the reproductive system. Child marriage traps the girl in the poverty cycle.