WHAT HAPPENS TO OUR YOUNG PUPILS CUM BRIDES?
Impact of Child Marriages
I personally mourn the loss of education opportunities created by child marriages. In another article I wrote about some causes of child marriage.
The list of causes of child marriages is inexhaustible and the only reasonable thing to do before looking for solutions is to dig deep into its real causes. There must be something deep rooted into our way of life that triggers all these causes of early marriages which we always mention such as poverty, lack of activity, etc. Poverty exists in such a skewed manner towards the female species.
Today I will concentrate on the devastating effects of child marriage. From a distance, every bride is happy but a closer look reveals heartbreaking silent suffering which only the victims know about. Do not console a victim of child marriage by saying “sorry I know how you feel” because you don’t know how she feels unless you have experienced it before. These unfortunate young girls (child brides) have silent tears which only The Almighty God can see and as such it is difficult to quantify the damage done to these young lives. God forgive us for our sins against our own daughters.
Child marriage does not only affect the young bride but also her children, her family, community and the country as a whole. The big question is, what really happens to a pupil who stops school to get married? Here are some of the effects of child marriage.
1. Loss of childhood
Psychologists advise that childhood is an important phase of our life and that an individual’s adult life may be affected by what happened in his childhood. Childhood should be enjoyed and cherished because that is a critical stage of development in the physical emotional intellectual and even spiritual realm. Disturbing childhood with adult related activities such as marriage, sex, pregnancy etc destroys the whole essence of childhood. A pupil who is removed from school to be married off at a tender age is robbed of her childhood.
Remember how we used to play as children, in the grass or even in the drizzling rain. We would climb trees to get mangoes oranges and so on without worrying about cooking for a family because we were kids. We would play hide and seek, skipping, Touch and Go, and sing Kakuluwele as long as we liked. We would bathe our Dolls and dress them up and it was fun because mistakes on a doll were not deadly as they were not real babies.
Child brides are robbed of the importance of play and it has a negative psychological and emotional effect on them so they tend to be playful later on in life to make up for the time they were robbed of playing in their childhood. While their peers are playing, the child brides are busy cooking for their husbands, bathing real babies and doing tonnes of laundry too enormous for their age.
2. Loss of Education
When a pupil is married off at a tender age, they not only lose education opportunities but a trail of other opportunities which come with an association with a good education. It is common knowledge that a good education is likely to increase an individual’s earning opportunities. It follows logically therefore that loss of education implies loss of earning opportunities. As we all well know, when earning opportunities are lost, livelihood is disturbed because it is difficult to access essential commodities and services leading to untold poverty.
The loss of education shatters the young brides’ hopes and dreams leading to misery and un productivity. This is a recipe for dependency syndrome where the young girl becomes a parasite to the husband. At this point male dependency syndrome is born and male supremacy is perpetuated leading to gender inequality which is a topic on its own. All efforts to end poverty are hampered by the vicious cycle of dependency and inequality. We safely conclude that loss of education is likely to perpetuate poverty.
Young uneducated and unproductive brides are likely to be victims of Gender-Based Violence simply because they become an economic burden to their husbands. A wife should have a percentage of economic freedom. Gender violence has its own socio-economic implications which are equivalent to a whole new write-up.
3. Health Implications
Girls who leave school to marry before 18 years of age are likely to suffer psychologically. They may get depressed and suffer a very low self esteem as they compare themselves to their counterparts who first finish their education before getting married. A low self esteem may lead to un-productivity and hence worsen the poverty situation.
Young brides start bearing children before their minds and bodies are ready for reproduction. This early reproduction is likely to lead to complications in pregnancy and childbirth because the girls’ bodies are not yet ready for it. Early reproduction leads to an increased infant mortality rate. Babies born from underage mothers are likely to be underweight and their growth is questioned due to the fact that their mothers are still too young to take care of them- thanks to a few grandmothers who come to their rescue. It is a known fact that babies born from very young mothers risk being stunted or in other words, experience delayed physical development.
Research shows that in developing countries, or let me say low and middle income countries, pregnancy-related complications are among the leading causes of maternal death among young girls aged15-19 years.
Early sex exerts a certain amount of trauma to under aged girls because it is meant for mature people and not girls, in other words sex, by design, is meant for adults and not children. It follows that very early sexual encounters are likely to disturb normal developments in the brain and the body as a whole. Experts advise that in girls, reaching puberty does not signify readiness for reproduction but it is just an indication of the maturing process, otherwise the cervix and other parts of the body, brain inclusive, have a lot of growing to do.
Don’t parents wonder why their teenage girls have to nurse a caesarean operation almost every time they get pregnant? It is too much for a teenage bride to nurse a newborn baby and a wound from a C-Section!
Research shows that our young pupils get married to men who are much older than themselves and that it is easier for young girls to get infected by HIV/AIDS than their male counterparts due to their biological make-up among other reasons. Young girls out of school are too minor to make informed decisions hence early marriage works against the control of HIV/AIDS and STI infections. Early marriages also invalidate the campaign against family planning. The un spaced children born from young inexperienced brides overwhelm the essential services which are already limited especially in developing countries.
4. It is a High Cost
At a glance, parents may argue about what I am about to write. It is very costly to allow young girls to leave school for the sole purpose of getting married before they are 18 years old. In relation to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, girls leaving school to get married before 18 years will cost development countries trillions of dollars by the year 2030. This is a statement by the World Bank group and the International Centre for Research on Women.
The loss of earning power and productivity in these young brides who lose education may not be felt immediately by themselves, their families and the nation as a whole but it may take years. For example, if I married off my 13 year old ninth grader daughter this year, 2017, I have cut off her earning power of the year 2026 when she was supposed to finish her university studies and start working for wages or any entrepreneurial activities. Can I feel it immediately? Not at all, it is a long term effect for the whole nation actually.
Who is to blame for early marriages?