Children aren't Brides

By Audrey Hwang 

Every minute, 28 young girls are married before the age of 18.

Children against the globe are married against their will. They are sold to men twice their age and molded into mothers at ages as young as 12 years old. The problem has become far too normalized in today's society, but its lasting effects are more than just a ring.

By forcing them into marriage at such a young age not only takes away their childhood, but also their future. Their rights to make decisions on their bodies, education, and ultimately their lives are stripped away from them. They live like servants to their husbands, forced to obey and live a life in submission.

But why? Some blame the root of the problem on gender inequality and the belief that women are inferior to men. While that may be true in some cases, the issue is started or worsened by poverty and the lack of education. 

The larger problem is the correlation between child marriages and pregnancy. Girls who get married before the age of 18 are more likely to have early pregnancies, which only mean dangerous complications for women in areas with insufficient healthcare and domestic violence for women in areas where forced marriage is considered the norm.

So for Michelle, her voice was silenced the moment her parents forced her to marry a man twice her age. She was subject to being sexually assaulted, physically abused, impregnated, and cut off from her social life. Being forced to quit school and tend to her children destroyed her childhood and her future.

For Sara, being married to a stranger at the age of 15 ment going to pick her kid up from school rather than being at school herself.

All of their stories should be considered a violation of human rights abuses and a rare occurrence. But it's the story of 12 million girls every year.

Instead of brushing the hair of their dolls, they brush the hair of their children. 

Instead of playing at the park, they watch their children play instead.

These girls are children themselves, not brides, not wives, not mothers. They are kids who are abused and forced into marriages.

There are ways that we can help the problem. By increasing education to girls across the globe, we can decrease the rate of child marriages. This has been happening for the last decade and has successfully prevented 25 million child marriages. But the fight to change this issue wont be easy, forced marriages tend to happen in underdeveloped countries who aren’t able to properly educate their younger populations.