What Can We Do About Child Marriage?

Lauren Farmer’s article “Child Marriage: When does a cultural practice become a global health issue?” appearing in Berkeley’s Public Health Advocate magazine issue of fall 2013, encourages readers to rethink how passively we approach the issue of child marriage in developing countries, as it is protected by the limitations on our cultural prowess due to ideals of reverence and appreciation of societies different from our own that have emerged since the fall of Western imperialism. We understandably fear overstepping our boundaries as it could provoke subdued emotions regarding the era of colonialism in the countries that we—the West—had once oppressed, resulting in numerous political problems that I, as a science major, can only guess at. The only problem here is, what if our regard for another’s culture enables the suffering of millions of young girls around the world every year to take place?

As an individual pursuing the medical and public health track, I don’t look at the photograph in the article of teenage fiancés who are meeting for the first time on their wedding day being wed as an expression of a culture and tradition that are hundreds of years old—I see only the injustice being carried out that results in the numerous medical problems detailed in the article, and this doesn’t even begin to explain the human rights and mental health issues at stake. Chief among these problems are early and frequent childbirths that has been causally linked to seizures, hemorrhaging during labor, chronic incontinence, infections, and even death of the child and the mother.

              The problem tree continues to grow: when a girl is married young and is made to start a family young, she is generally sexually assaulted by her husband—especially as she cannot really consent—she drops out of school, she loses the opportunity for a job, and she ends up minimally contributing to society, the economy, and her country (unless, of course, she produces a number of male offspring).

              When all of these undesirable consequences are occurring with child marriage at the root of the problem, can we really coax ourselves into thinking we have no say in that cultural realm? And if not, how can we reconcile cultural differences into a feasible solution while inviting minimal amount of hostility from those whose culture we are criticizing? I am not naïve and recognize that a glorious solution with which all parties involved will be happy is not going to occur, but the faction of impoverished female children with opportunities being snatched from them before they are even old enough to know what those might have been, has been given the short end of the stick for far too long.

              We need policy change, we need action. We need to make a better world for the children who are being veiled not only in a wedding outfit but by the notion of cultural boundaries and the inability of those with power to take a risk to reach out behind the veil and help them.