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.
