Introduction
Child brides, also known as child marriages, is defined as either an informal or a formal union entered into by the individuals who are below the legal age of marriage, in India, it means that the boys are below 18 years and girls below 18 years. Marriage is one of the most important social institutions as it is a way of establishing families upon which the family perpetuates. However, in India, child marriage is one of the most predominant issues, and it has almost become an acceptable norm and practice. The imperative question that one is compelled to ask is that “despite child bride being regarded as a virtuous act in India, is it a social justice to the children?” Therefore, in this paper, the focus will be to provide counterarguments on the views of those supporting the act. In other words, arguments against the child bride will be provided to justify the reason the act is a social injustice to the children, its causes, and why the reduction of its predominance is indispensable.
Consequences of Child Marriage
To answer the aforementioned question, it is preliminarily necessary to understand the context of happenings and consequences of child marriage. It has been determined that child marriage presents more harmful consequences than benefits, hence the need for its abolishment. Nevertheless, there exists conflicting situation regarding the child bride practice in India, as there some individuals who continue to support it while others are against it. There are those who are conservatively glued to the societal and cultural principles seeking to preserve child bride as a virtue of promoting the purity while a large percentage of the educated Indian population have deemed it barbaric act whose time is all gone.
Child marriage presents adverse consequences to both sexes, but much more stark for the girls than boys as the female gender often suffer from domestic violence and abuse. It also severely curtails the opportunities and freedom of choices pertaining to every aspect of social life. Worse of all, there are usually harmful health outcomes associated with the consequences of early childbearing and the greater roles in household chores at both the societal and individual levels. Besides, the prevalent problems of higher infant and maternal mortality rates have been attributed to the child brides. Moreover, the increasing concern of intergenerational poverty cycle in India and the ever-widening gap at the macro-level between the poor and the rich is argued to be contributed by child marriage and further responsible for the marginalization of women in the society (Nour, 2009). Considering the negative impacts that child marriage has on the health and social life of the victims, it is irrefutable that regardless of how the Indian society might view the practice, it is an act of social injustice to the children.
Causes of Child Marriage
There are four main causes of the prevalence of child marriages in India, “widely sanctioned and accepted social norms,” “economic considerations related to high cost of wedding and poverty,” “lack of easy access to schooling,” and “gender prescriptions and norms.” First, the widely sanctioned and accepted social norms are characterized by mass child marriages, cross and sibling marriages, marriages within the extended families, and communal relationships. The practice of mass child marriages increases the number of festival days that have been declared as “auspicious” for the specific purpose of marriages and its prevalence has made it difficult for both the activists and administrations to stop the child bride practices. Raj et al., 2014) hypothesize that cross and sibling marriages have been a major driver of the prevalent practice of child marriages as they encourage multiple marrying of sisters and cousins in same ceremonies. The marriages within extended families allow for a large age-gap between the brides and grooms, a practice that has been responsible for marrying young under-age girls to older male adults. Communal relationships bestow the fathers with the liberty of marrying off their daughters at whichever age they may desire in lieu of debts to be repaid or taking loans (Chari et al., 2017).
Second, poverty and the high cost of wedding among other economic considerations have been determined to be responsible for the increasing prevalence of child marriages in India. The parents, therefore, often take recourse to escape the burden of incurring high wedding costs by marrying their children at early child marriage to lower the expenses. Group marriages presented by such opportunities as mrityu bhoj allows for organizing and conducting mass weddings, a situation that has been associated with the social practice of increasing child marriages. Evidence shows that the poverty fuels the practice of child brides as the parents resort to respond to the high costs of living by saving wedding and additional costs of educating and looking after their children, mostly girls, by marrying them off. In the remote areas of States affected with adverse poverty such as Bihar, Gujarat, West Bengal, Telangana, and Andhra Pradesh, children are viewed as “marriage migrants” and the practice of child marriage is almost a usual social norm (Chari et al., 2017).
Third, the lack of access to education, especially at the secondary and upper primary levels, has a major driving force of child marriage in India. The lack of affordable access to schools has acted as an impediment to the later marriages, specifically in the context where the concern for chastity and safety of the girls is a concern of the parents. Therefore, the schools do not act as viable alternatives to marriage if the majority of the population cannot afford or access them. In Gujarat, for instance, where access to education has been a major problem due to lack of school facilities and the existing schools being located in far distances from the majority of the population, not to mention the high cost, there is a high prevalence of child marriages. Therefore, child brides have been considered as both the likely cause and consequence of the lack of school facilities (Raj et al., 2014).
Finally, there is the emergence of gender prescriptions and norms as the root cause of child marriages in India. Whether these gender prescriptions and norms are driven by social customs or poverty, the fact that the female gender in India is subjected to inferior positions in society is fueling the prevalence of child brides. The situation facilitates the patriarchal control practices concerned with family honor, puberty, fertility, chastity, arranged marriage, caster endogamy, and boy preference. These practices are the cause of social beliefs and customs advocating for child marriage as they are guided with the belief that girls as someone else’s property (paraya dhan) and that their main responsibility is to get married and bear children (Raj, 2010).
Drivers of Change
Chatterjee (2011) suggests that considering that child marriage has been largely viewed as a social injustice to the children and its causes known, it is doubtless that measures should be established as drivers of change to scale up the reduction of its prevalence within the Indian communities. There are three main drivers of change argued to have the potential of helping mitigate the prevalence of child marriage in India. One of the drivers is promoting the access to affordable, safe, and quality education. The increase in the rates of school participation has a positive correlation with the increase in late marriages. The affordability and increased access to education, therefore, acts a viable option to child marriages. Parents will not only see the need of taking their children to school but also consider it as an environment for protecting the chastity of their children until when they are old enough to get married (Chatterjee, 2011).
The other way of reducing of child marriage is through the empowerment of girls and women and engaging with boys and men. The empowerment of girls and women can be carried out through, collectivization, information sharing, and exposure to help them develop a different thinking towards the existing social norms related to child marriage. The girls can, thus, aspire for better lives and become more confident in fighting against the vices of child marriage. However, as the girls are empowered, the boys must not be left behind, so that the focus on reducing child marriage receive the support of both parties affected. The situation has an impact on instilling important information serving to enlighten both boys and girls why it is necessary postpone the age of marriage and not allow themselves to be victims of the vice by negotiating with their families better (Forbes, 2017).
The establishment of consistent laws to facilitate the strict enforcement is the final driver of change. The process champions for social protection and behavioral changes geared towards reducing the prevalence of child marriage in India. Laws are the critical components upon which the implementation of the desired and legal social practices in the societies that do not violate the rights of individuals is based. Currently, there are inconsistencies in the laws regarding Indian Penal Code, Child Labour, and Child Marriage. As a result, it is mandatory for such inconsistencies to be removed so that a single and national universal age for attaining adulthood is defined (Chatterjee, 2011). The definition of adulthood age will consequently institute the compulsory requirements for registration of marriages so that the problem of child brides is reduced.
Conclusion
In conclusion, child bride is a social vice that only needs to be reduced but also entirely eliminated from the Indian communities if possible. Given that India has majority of its population belonging to the young age structure, there is a risk of many boys and girls becoming victims of child marriage. It is, therefore, imperative that child marriage, from social, health, and economic perspectives, be bestowed with greater concern on how the problem can be solved. The reduction of early marriages and progressively working towards their elimination is essential. It is vital to institute measures that can serve to champion for late marriages as the most effective and practical starting point that can be adopted to address the problem of child marriage prevalence in India.
References
Chari, A. V., Heath, R., Maertens, A., " Fatima, F. (2017). The causal effect of maternal age at marriage on child well-being: Evidence from India. Journal of Development Economics, 127, 42-55.
Chatterjee, P. (2011). India grapples with its child marriage challenge. The Lancet, 378(9808), 1987-1988.
Forbes, G. H. (Eds.). (2017). Women and modernity: the issue of child marriage in India. Women's Studies International Quarterly, 2(4), 407-419.
Nour, N. M. (2009). Child marriage: a silent health and human rights issue. Reviews in obstetrics and gynecology, 2(1), 51.
Raj, A. (2010). When the mother is a child: the impact of child marriage on the health and human rights of girls. The Indian journal of medical research, 141(5), 709.
Raj, A., McDougal, L., Silverman, J. G., " Rusch, M. L. (2014). Cross-sectional time series analysis of associations between education and girl child marriage in Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan, 1991-2011. PloS one, 9(9), e106210.
