by HEATHER BARR
PHOTO/Javi Sanchez de la Viña/ Flickr/under Creative Commons
Ramita married when she was 12 years old and her husband was 15. She describes it as a “love marriage” – she chose her husband and decided to marry him. But it’s not a simple romance.
Ramita’s choice is a reflection of how marriage-related decisions are changing in South Asia. Although arranged matches are still the norm for many, young adults are increasingly likely to choose their own spouse. For some, this is a welcome break with tradition. Research shows that as women gain more education, their control over their choice of husband also increases – and more girls are going to school across the region.
But in the villages of Nepal, where I investigated early marriage for a new Human Rights Watch report, increasing numbers of children are choosing to wed. Arranged child marriages may be declining, but this achievement is threatened by a rise in “love marriages” by children. Though in these cases a girl may be choosing to get married, these child marriages can still come with their own devastating consequences, including leaving school early, poverty, health risks and an elevated threat of domestic violence.
Nepal’s government has pledged to end all child marriage by 2030, and to develop a plan to meet that goal. But in our interviews with police, educators and health workers, they often seemed to view love marriages as outside this effort. “If kids fall in love, what can the government do?” more than one local official said. But they must step up.
Teen romances remain largely socially unacceptable in rural communities, particularly communities that are marginalized and poor due to caste or ethnicity. And so stigma encourages haste. Courtships can be very short, as teens and pre-teens often skip past “dating” and go straight to marriage. Several girls we interviewed had met boys over the phone—after a friend passed along a phone number, or even after a wrong number—and the couple eloped the first time they met.
Complex Answers
What prompts children to jump into a life-long commitment with someone they barely know? The answers are complex. Romance sometimes—but not always—played a part, as did the impulsiveness of youth. But in some cases, especially in poor communities, other forces were also at work.
In desperately poor families, where girls go hungry, they sometimes marry a boy or man they think can feed them. Others flee abuse at home, or grueling work. Girls who know their parents have planned an arranged marriage for them sometimes rebel in the only way possible: by marrying someone else, even though many of them would rather not marry at all until later.
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