Married at Age 5: The Life of a Child Bride

 Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair

A note: I first read the National Geographic article “Too Young to Wed: The Secret World of Child Brides,” by Cynthia Gorney, during Summer 2012, which was a pivotal year for me as I was going into my senior year of high school. I had experiences this particular summer that opened my eyes to knowledge and understanding of the world beyond U.S. borders. Reading this article made me realize how much I didn’t know about other societies. The accumulation of all of these events solidified for me that I wanted to pursue International Relations in college. I even wrote one of my college essays about this article. Two years later, I still find this issue to be as tragic as before.

Marriage. It seems so simple here. You find the person you love, you marry them, and it’s happily ever after. This is not the same in other countries. Marriages are used for practical reasons: to create ties and financial stability between families. This is not to say they are less important; this may ensure a family can survive and move up in society. However, when the pawns in these schemes are girls not even in their pre-teens, it is a little concerning. Being a child bride is a reality in countries such as India, Yemen, Afghanistan, India, and more. These girls can be as young as five, and are married off in secret “midnight ceremonies,” which whole neighborhoods will hide to avoid marriage age laws. A story was told in the article that someone once called the police at one of these weddings, but the bride was forced to wear heels and a veil to mask her age. The police left. Even when people try, this issue is almost unstoppable. How can change ever come when the brides do not even know they are getting married and the enforcement is powerless? Not only this, but the future husbands can be double or triple the age of their brides. The brides are terrified of their husbands. Once married, these brides usually do not have access to education, are sometimes physically or emotionally abused, and importantly, do not have a childhood. It is not all about morals either. Physically having children at age 12 can damage a girl’s body and make her very sick. The issue of child brides is a hidden one; one that rarely makes headlines or is as publicized as AIDS epidemics in Africa or animal cruelty in the U.S. Maybe someday there will be a solution to this problem. For the time being, what we can do is make sure this issue does not stay hidden. Read the article, look at the photo gallery, and share it with friends and family. The more people who know, the more likely someone who is able to do something will. Let’s try and leave this world better than we found it.

To find the article and astounding photo gallery:

Too Young to Wed: The Secret World of Child Brides