Shaymaa Nagud
Sociology 364
12/08/11
Child Brides in India In many societies, marriage is a celebrated institution commemorating the union between two consenting adults and the beginning of their lives together. However, this experience and celebration is different for the millions of girls around the world who are forced to wed while still children, some not even yet teenagers. Child marriage is a marriage that occurs between two people where one or two of the partners is under 18. While boys are also married under the age of 18, girls far outnumber boys in child marriages. It is usually forced and occurs often to girls who are ages 12 to16 years old[2]. The husband is also often several years older than his wife, sometimes even
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This reaction is what one would expect at a funeral not at a birth.
Cultural and socioeconomic factors that reinforce child marriage differ from region to region. Where one lives within a country may strongly influence whether or not she will marry early. In India the highest rates of child marriage is concentrated in five states: Madhya Pradesh at 73%, Andhra Pradesh at 71%, Rajasthan at 68%, Bihar at 67 % and Uttar Pradesh at 64%. The median age of marriage in India is 16.4 years according to the National Family Health Survey. [8]It also found that 65% of girls are married by the time they are 18. There are many reasons why child marriage occurs but they can be put into two general categories. The first one is based on social norms, customs and religion. Virginity in India is very important. If one is raped, it is hard for her to be married. “As Vatsayyana said a couple millennia ago that a virgin bride is important, even if people don’t talk about it openly”.[1] Therefore, the younger the bride the more likely it is that she’ll be a virgin and so marrying off the daughter as young as possible, the faster the end of the parent’s responsibility to keep her a virgin. The second category as to why girls are married off so young, is poverty. Education can be a solution to child marriage, however it is too expensive and so families do not see it as necessary if they will marry their daughter into another family. In India, it is tradition for a woman to leave her
Soon after a girl hits puberty, she is considered ready for marriage. Marriages were almost always arranged by the families of the bride and
Lastly, San girls marry young as a result of pressure from their parents. Their parents want and need a man to collect meat for them, and hope that he will do so into their old age. The parents also want to get closer to the grooms
In the article, Child Marriages in Sub-Saharan Africa, states the reasons and crazy expectations of child marriages. In Sub-Saharan Africa 39% of girls are married before the age of 18. Child marriages has spread throughout all of Africa. In West and Central Africa 42% of girls are married before age 18 and in Eastern and Southern Africa it is 36% of the girls (Child Marriages in: Sub-Saharan Africa). These number vary throughout the year yet they never drop to zero. It is a mass dilemma to outsiders yet in the depth of Africa, it a tradition that is hard to break. Daughters may be married off due to poverty or fear of safety. It is a custom in which the daughter does not have much control and marriage can be used as a leverage in a heated
The information from this source, which seems most important, therefore, early and forced marriage happens. A quote from the article is "In countries where the legal age for marriage differs by gender, the age for women is always lower." Also another quote from this article, the evidence of forced marriage is offering ", 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that marriage should" be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses ". Where one of the parties is married under 18, consent can not always be assumed to be "free and full '."
Rena Silverman, in his article Millions of Young Girls Forced into Marriage wrote that “Driven largely by ……….family members”. The physical and emotional consequences can be very fatal. Since some decade, people give their daughter in forced marriage, when they are generally poor. This being the Dot is a tradition in a marriage will make the fiancée 's family meet its needs. Forced marriage is to be married for the cattle, food or money, also, for the transmission of belongings. After the husband death, the son of the legal wife will inherit of all his property; which will become her own. For this reason parents give their daughter in marriage to have money to stay alive. Yana T. Child marriage problem: causes and consequences said “Parents who cannot provide …………. to ensure she is supported”.
Child marriage in the States is a serious problem. The current law for child marriage states that you must be at least eighteen years old to marry. However, state laws make exceptions if minors have parental consent. Due to the lack of awareness in this topic thirty-three states and two counties in the U.S. reported that between 2000-2015 there were a total of 170,363 minors that were married. Of which, six were twelve-year-olds, fifty-one were thirteen-year-olds, nine hundred eighty-five was fourteen years old. Not only is this number increasing but it is also alarming. The main reasons for child marriage are poverty, gender inequality, tradition/culture, education, and insecurity. Most of the child marriages happen in rural or backward areas of the country. The main reason for this is poverty for sure. Parents who have a daughter but don't earn as much choose this method to give them a better life. For the boys, the marriage does not take place but poverty triggers child labor. Another main reason behind this activity is gender inequality. Even today there are lots of countries that consider
Approaches you cannot help but lack the ability to speak, brush your hair, or even put on your dress; instead, a day devoted to happiness and joy is overshadowed by an overwhelming feeling of disgust and reluctance. This was the feeling a young Durga, (15) felt on the day her father forced her to wed a forty year old, uneducated man known to have a drinking problem, within the little Indian village of, Rajasthan (AIZENMAN, 2017). Wedding ceremonies such as this are not uncommon within the country of India. In modern times, arranged marriages are still preferred by over 85% of India’s youth. In a recent study conducted by IPSOS in 2013, over 74% of young Indians, that is between the ages of 10-35, allow their parents to choose their spouse ("Know All About Arranged Marriage In India!", 2017). Arrange marriage has not always been the norm within Indian culture, long before this practice was accepted within Indian culture, Swayamva- a ceremony where suitable matchers from all over the country is invited to swoon over an expected bride; however, this practice cised in 500 b.c. when “Vedic Hindu” gave birth to Hinduism ("Know All About Arranged Marriage In India!", 2017). With the rise of the Manusmriti- a code of conduct for a life of stratified Dharma, (duty, virtue, morality, religion), women were stripped of their basic independence ("Know All About Arranged Marriage In India!", 2017). Women who were
Marbel Van Oranjes from Girls Not Bride stated that 40 millions girl are getting married before they are 18 years old. And this big problem need to be change as it is a truly global problem that cuts across countries, cultures, religions and ethnicities. Child brides can be found in every region in the world, from the Middle East to Latin America, South Asia to Europe. As we can see
When one thinks of marriage, they think of two adults being in love and deciding to spend the rest of their lives together. To most, marriage is a choice, but according to the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), one third of the girls, under the age of eighteen, in the world marriage is not all they would have dreamt of. All around the world girls under the age of eighteen are getting married. Girls are getting married to strangers, to men drastically older than them and also unwillingly. This can be and is extremely dangerous. A person under the age of eighteen should not be allowed to marry simply because they are not mature nor developed enough to handle adult situations. These girls are having to be put in situations that they do not understand how to solve. Ending child marriage requires work across all sectors and at all
Child marriage is the marriage, usually forced but may not be, between one party of under 18 and another over the age of 18. There are many reasons for child marriage which can range anywhere from social or religious pressure to safety, either economic or physical, for the girl and her family. As well as how many families find girls to be economic strains as the families need to provide a dowry for the girl. Young women tend to not be allowed to work as they are considered worthless and a burden, especially considering that sons carry the family name and are seen as a sign of fertility in most societies. This is an
Most girls in these circumstances are younger than me. If I had to have my parents choose my lifelong partner, I would change my name and move to Mexico. If our society was like India’s people, there would be no way I could settle for that conformity. There is no law saying the girls must follow through with marriage; however, whether they would like to or not, girls still do it for their parents and tradition. Indians do not see arranged marriages as being wrong. They think that “brides are the embodiment of that family's honor and pride” (“Arranged Marriages and Dowry”). But, us in the West see this tradition as an unnecessary custom. Rejection from your own blood, your own friends, and your own people, is not right. No dowry in the world could pay for love. Love is an emotion worth more than all of the money in the
In addition, child marriage started to become more common as well. Often Muslim rulers and officials kidnapped Hindu girls. Due to the kidnapping of the Hindu girls, their parent had to practice child marriage. According to the history of India, “It was emphasized that the proper age for the marriage of girls was seven and that marriage after the age of eleven or twelve was sinful.
In many of the cultures in these parts of the world honor is of vital importance. It is a great shame to one’s family for a girl to have sex outside of marriage, consensual or otherwise. Women who have sex outside of wedlock are ostracized from their communities and at times even killed in order to cleanse the family honor. Based on these beliefs, a father (as it is almost always the men of the family who arrange marriages) may marry his daughter off early in an effort to protect her and the family. In Yemen there is a proverb that says “To guarantee a happy marriage, marry a nine-year-old girl” (Ali 74), and in Nigeria it is “considered shameful for a girl to menstruate more than once while still residing in her parents’ home” (Haberland
Child marriage was one of the worst evil practices. It was practiced more by the effluent upper castes than the marginalized lower castes. Visscher in his work noted that, the Brahmins gave their daughters in marriage at the age of eight or nine years, for if they pass their tenth year unmarried, they lose caste and are not allowed to marry [6]. Nairs, Christians and other sections of Travancore also followed this. Samuel Mateer points that child marriages arises from the distrust of female virtue. Small children, below the age of ten are married off and their husbands were probably aged ones. It also led to the increase in the number of child wives which may be resulted in becoming widows in younger period of life. It was one of the most prominent factors which acted as a barrier for the education of girls in Travancore.
Birth, marriage and death are the standard trio of key events in most people’s lives. But only one, marriage is a matter of choice (Innocenti Digest, 2001). The rights to have a choice were recognized as a principle of law, yet many girls and some boys enter marriage life without any chance of their rights to choose. Childhood and adolescence are usually the greatest years of one’s life. However, the period is cut short when marriage and adult responsibilities come too early as ones practiced early marriage. Early marriage refers to any form of marriage that takes place before a child has reached eighteen. According to Adlakha, Arjun, Mohamed Ayad and Sushil Kumar (1991) early marriage extends a woman’s reproductive span, thereby