Early Marriage in India: Causes and Problems

Introduction

Early marriage affects millions of children around the world. Widespread in India, where every year millions of adolescents and teen girls are forced to marry older men. Young girls marry while they are still children, and as a result are divested of their staple human rights. Early marriages threatens the development of the young girls and often leads to social isolation and pregnancy at a younger age, poor professional training and low education, fortifying of gender-related poverty. Need to do a lot of homework, pressure to manifest fertility, teenage mothers and married girls face decisions reducing and limiting life choices. Girls and boys both are victims of teenage marriages, but the issue has a huge imapact on the girls in a larger, wider and more intense context (Shawky, 2001, 27-33).

Early marriage,is also known as childhood marriage, marriage is defined as a girl in the age of 18, before she is, physiologically, psychologically and physically ready to assume the duties realted to motherhood and marriage. There are numerous other factors that act in order to place a child at the uncertainity of marriage. Parents promotes the marriages of young daughters assuming that their marriage will be profitable for them both socially, economically and would also reilef the family financially. A direct relationship is found between the age of a women and the level of education they possess. The age at which a teenage girl will give birth to her first child, her husband would be well documentted. Marriage at an early age also depicts that a person becomes sexually active at a very young age. A child's marriage does not affect only their own lives but also affects the life of their children who are not taken care of because usually the mother is too young to take good care of her kids (Wawer, 2009, 229-237).

Marriage at an early age is not a new phenomenon. This is a social practic ethat has been carried out in the same way from generation to generation. The governments have fixed a minimum age for marriage i.e. 18 years. However, it is not always easy to impose laws or to rectify the discrepancies among the religious and customary law and the national law. Most frequently, marriages at an early age is a family matter and are ruled by culture and religion, to assure their persistence. Therefore, the intrusions of rights of the women and girls are widely ignored and are associated with various risks, including sexual exploitation and violence.

Marriages at early ages have been practiced throught out the ages in India. Marriages of children who are not mature, mentally and physically. The issue of marriages of children in India is considered as a complex-matrix of preconceptions of social practices, religious traditions, deep roots and economic factors (Brian, 2003, 476-484).

Causes of Early Marriage

Many are motivated by their guargians and parents to rationalise the marriages at an early age. Frequently these decisions are directly related to the economic reasons such as ...