Posted on 07/21/2007 9:14:00 AM PDT by wagglebee
According to the International Center for Research on Women, 57 percent of girls in India marry before the age of 18. The number is 75 percent in Bangladesh, and an astounding 82 percent in Niger. There are around 51 million girls worldwide, between the ages of 15 and 19, who are married. Child marriage is a practice that many people find distasteful, and rightfully so. Child brides remain at high risk for complications in pregnancy and childbirth, due to the fact that their bodies are not developed fully. They also suffer high rates of domestic violence, STDs, HIV, and poverty. Children born to child mothers tend to be premature and have a low birth weight.
Many groups in the world rightly fight against this atrocity by promoting legislation to enforce 18 as the minimum age of marriage. They promote education for girls as an alternative to marriage, teaching parents about how schooling can lead to better financial situations and poverty reduction. But some of these organizations, such as International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), while seeing many of the horrible problems inherent in child marriage and promoting some of these beneficial ideas, ignore the fact that one of the many reasons for opposing child marriage is that children and teenagers are not emotionally or physically ready to engage in the sexual activity and child-bearing that results from early marriage. Experts indicate that adolescents are not physically and emotionally fully developed until they are around 17 years of age or older. Even though they are developing sexually, it is unfair to force them, or encourage them, to plunge into a world of sex before they are fully mature and ready, physically, mentally and emotionally, for sexual activity within a healthy, adult marriage.
Why, then, does IPPF and its domestic sister organization, Planned Parenthood, not advocate sexual abstinence for adolescents? They insist that teens be given condoms and contraceptives, claiming that teens will have sex no matter what, so they might as well have "safe-sex". This is ignoring the fact that 92 percent of teens and 94 percent of adults polled in the United States believe that teens should be strongly encouraged by society to remain abstinent until at least after high school, and that two-thirds of sexually active teens wish they had waited longer to have sex. According to IPPF, it is wrong for teenage girls to be married, but alright for them to "explore their sexuality," as long as they and their partner use condoms? It is irresponsible for IPPF to fight against child marriage while ignoring the physical and emotional immaturity of the adolescents whom IPPF assumes will engage in so-called "free-sex."
In essence, IPPF is telling adolescents, "You are not mature enough to be married, but you are mature enough to risk STDs, HIV, and pregnancy by having sex whenever you want. Oh, and if you do get pregnant, don't worry, we'll sell you an abortion." It is a hypocritical message, and it is appalling that IPPF and other organizations promote teen sex when girls around the world are fighting for the right to be educated and to put off marriage and child-bearing until it is their decision. To promote the message that they are old enough to have sex only reinforces the existing cultural pressures forcing them into early marriage.
Organizations fighting against child marriage should instead keep their focus on education: The education of parents about the benefits of allowing their daughters to go to school. The education of boys and men about how child marriage will harm them, their wives and their children, and that chastity and fidelity within marriage are honorable aspirations. They need to educate girls about their inherent worth, that they deserve the right to choose when to marry. Girls need to hear that they have the right to go to school, to learn and to create a future for themselves before, and whether, they decide to marry.
These organizations should fight against child marriages. They should promote abstinence until adult marriage and fidelity within, which is the only situation that completely prevents teen pregnancy, STDs, and HIV.
No one in our modern world should force children to marry, or promote dangerous adolescent sexual activity. Our children and young adults deserve the dignity and respect that comes from abstinence until marriage and fidelity within that marriage. To encourage children otherwise is to degrade their inherent worth as children of God.
Planned Barrenhood doesn't actually care about women and they really don't care about women in the Third World.
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I really don’t know what to think about this; I just don’t know enough.
In the US, young marriages are inadvisable. But, I remember reading of young marriages in the 1700’s, etc..
As far as third-world countries go, I can imagine where a young marriage is a good thing. I just don’t know, so won’t judge them at this great distance.
Does anybody have more information that is objective?
I’m not sure that I would call marriage in rural agrarian cultures with the girl being 15-19 a child marriage.
15 is very young no doubt but this sort of thing was quite common here not long ago
My maternal grandmother was married at 15 and my paternal grandmother at 14....and both had long marriages and lives.
and at least they got married and had little or no sex outside of marriage since folks back then understood better the ramifications for unmarried pregnant girls.
Child marriage to me is more Mohammed and his 9 year old.
I disagree, esp if they make a baby. There is this ugly, dark secret called responsibility that more people need to know about.
Including their brains.
The US cannot address Female Genitalia Mutilation as a crime in our own country. How do you expect we can offer ‘hopes and aspirations’ to the third world women?
(50 million female fetuses have been aborted in India in the past 20 years because they see them as a liability)
A person is old enough for sex when that person is married and physically, emotionally, and financial prepared to be a mother or father.
To some extent, this is culturally flexible: My 16-year-old has the skills (if not the disposition :-), to be a wife and mother, but it’s not a particularly wise choice in our culture, given all the alternatives.
However, a hundred or two hundred years ago, marriage at 16 might have been good choice for her, depending on the available husband-material.
It’s kind of a tangent, but pushing for delaying marriage, beyond a certain point, goes empirically against CWA’s goals of reducing promiscuity, out-of-wedlock births, and abortion.
Your daughter is going to be thrilled to read that you want to marry her off as soon as you can find suitable “husband material”!!! :-)
Both of my grandmothers married at 16, because that is when they graduated high school. My grandfathers were both in their early 20’s and gainfully employed.
As far as physical “readiness” goes, girls are maturing at an earlier age now (because of all the hormones in their diets), so that argument doesn’t wash.
The key is can they support themselves. Today in the U.S. teenagers just can’t support themselves, let alone a family.
As I recall, the age of consent under English common law was 10 years.
Does anybody have more information that is objective?
Your request for more information before rendering an opinion is commendable. Would that more folks would do so.
There’s a huge difference between forced marriage of a young girl to an older man, and teenagers having sex because they want to. And what CWA is missing is that one of the big reasons for child marriage is the sick mentality that a woman has no value unless she delivered to her husband as a virgin. The idea is to marry them off very young to be sure they don’t have sex before you can sell them (because in the countries where forced child marriage is prevalent, brides are indeed sold).
“A person is old enough for sex when that person is married and physically, emotionally, and financial prepared to be a mother or father.”
There are many who never reach that point of maturity and yet marry. I am pretty sure to be right based on the 50% of marriages that fail.
mohammad married a 7 year old, so it's OK.
(Although in all fairness I must mention that he didn't, uh, consummate the marriage until she was 9. What a guy)...
In the 1700's, all we had were agricultural societies, for the most part. Young marriage gives a chance to get started on an agrarian lifestyle that does not require large amounts of education.
Once the rest of the world gets industrialized, this problem will take care of itself, but not before. Westerners 'persuading' Third Worlders to 'do the right thing as we see fit' are going to just hit a brick wall.
I got married at 38. It was bad. VERY bad.
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