September 18, 2014

"If our parents had not forced us to marry at such a young age, our lives would be so different."

"Recently I spoke to a school friend who told me he was going to engineering college. The news left me feeling ashamed and pitiful.... would have liked to have gone to engineering school. If we were allowed to finish our educations, Rajkumari and I would have learned about family planning. Maybe I would have gone to college. Forcing children to marry doesn’t just push them deeper into poverty and threaten their health. It crushes their ambitions—whether they are girls or boys."

From "The Sad Hidden Plight of Child Grooms."

8 comments:

mccullough said...

Good to see the Daily Beast take against multiculturalism.

Birches said...

"Boys are not sexually initiated forcefully, they don’t get pregnant, and divorce is not the threat to them that it is to girls. But, obviously, being a boy groom is not a good plan.”

This quote made me angry. The shortsightedness of that woman.

Cheryl said...

Birches--that is exactly the quote that jumped out to me, too. You beat me to it.

Really, really angry. As if half the kids involved in child marriages aren't worth caring about.

FullMoon said...

They need some western morals over there. Marriage not really necessary anymore, at any age.

FleetUSA said...

This is another form of slavery, economic slavery for the families of the couple. They see preservation of their family assets and way of life as an essential element here.

Although these countries have entered the 21st century (barely), there are clusters of poor and uneducated who see this as necessary to preserve their way of life which may still be stuck in the 19th C or earlier.

FullMoon said...

"Recently I spoke to a school friend who told me he was going to engineering college. The news left me feeling ashamed and pitiful.... would have liked to have gone to engineering school. If we were allowed to finish our educations, Rajkumari and I would have learned about family planning. Maybe I would have gone to college. Forcing children to marry doesn’t just push them deeper into poverty and threaten their health. It crushes their ambitions—whether they are girls or boys."

Guess the author could not find any young couple who were happily married. If this guy was an engineer, he might be whining about something else.
My standar ice-breaker when meeting an Indian engineer is"Your parents must be very disappointed you're not a doctor, right?'

n.n said...

Perhaps. It's anecdotal evidence, which conflates cause and effect. The issue is at what age can human beings reasonably and legally offer consent. The issue is the degradation of family, which is the primary level of social organization. The issue is also the changing priorities of men and women, their benefits and consequences. Men and women today are less capable of multi-tasking.

Anonymous said...

No kidding. That goes for unplanned pregnancies as well. But it can work out. All is not lost. He can still find a way to attend college perhaps?