Social Consequences Of Early Marriage

Did you know 50 percent of marriages in the US end up in divorce? That means five out of ten marriages are doomed to failed, maybe leaving a broken child and with an unhappy childhood to go through. According to International Center for Research on Woman “150 million girls will be married before their 18th birthday over the next decade. That is an average of 15 million girls each year” probably most of these girls will not have the chance to finish their studies, affecting the social development of the society. Early marriages are one of the main reasons about this social problem. They are a risky weapon which people get confused believing that marriage may be the solution, because of an unwanted pregnancy, cultural hurdles or just to raise

Different cultural traditions are based on gender discrimination where men are more important than women, this brings many consequences one of them is early marriage for beneficial reasons between families, marriage is usually made without the consent of the women. This always manifests itself in the form of domestic violence and marital rape. According to UNICEF a united nations program that provide long-term humanitarian and developmental assistance to children and mothers in development countries, said that “Women who married younger are more likely to be beaten or threatened, and more likely to believe that a husband might sometimes be justified in beating his wife”. It is detrimental for the family and society that a child grows in an environment of fights and discussion where he can see how his mother is beaten. This will bring harmful consequences for the society because we will be surrounded between young people who are potential criminals because they grew up without the education of their

Dr. Justin Deeter, a senior pastor at Forest Hill Baptist in North Carolina said that “it is not a strange sighting today to see 25 or 26-years-old-men living at home with mom and dad, drinking red bull, and playing X-box all day. Adolescence is no longer just during the teen years but continues into the 20s and early 30s”. It is commonly though among society that marriage encourages couples to grow up, specially the man because now he becomes responsible to provide all the resources that the family need. Another point that people say to justify early marriage is that those who are sexually active before marriage are more likely to divorce, according to a study made by Dr. Kane of the university of Maryland “A study found that non virgin brides increase their odds of divorce by about 60%”. Early marriage is a good reason to avoid further divorce and establish the unity of the family. Nevertheless this study is not entirely true because in these times great part of women who get married on these days are not virgin, despite this fact it can be seen that many couples are successful on their marriages, so the fact of age is not an issue for a marriage as long as the couple is mature and take the right decisions. Also, the fact that you live with your parents at a certain age does not signify that you will be an unsuccessful person who never is going to get