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http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/10/30/in-india-teen-pregnancy-extremely-likely/
India and Bangladesh remain among the countries where a girl is extremely likely to be married before she is 18, and have a child while still a teenager a result, the United Nations said in a report released Wednesday.
Pakistan and Sri Lanka show much lower rates of pregnancies among women aged 15 to 19 than India and Bangladesh, according to the report titled “Motherhood in Childhood.” Every year some four million teenage girls in India have babies, the UN said earlier this year.
For every 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19, there were 76 adolescent births in India in 2010 compared to 49 worldwide and 53 in less developed regions.
In Pakistan there were 16 births for every 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19 and 24 in Sri Lanka.
Stillbirths and newborn deaths are 50% more likely among infants of adolescent mothers than among mothers aged 20 to 29, according to the World Health Organization in 2012. Infants who survive are more likely to have a low birth weight and be premature than those born to women in their 20s.
Underage marriage and teen pregnancy are major health and economic concerns. Some 70,000 teen girls die every year from complications in pregnancy and childbirth, mostly in the developing world, the report said. The report did not say how many of these deaths take place in South Asia.
The lack of progress on reducing teen pregnancy in some countries in South Asia, where most adolescent pregnancies happen in wedlock, is closely tied to the deeply entrenched practice of child marriage. In India, nearly half of women marry under the age of 18, the report said, citing the most recent Indian government data available. In some states, that percentage is even higher even though the practice is outlawed throughout the country.
The worst state for child marriage is the eastern state of Bihar, among the poorest in the country, where nearly 70% of women in their early twenties reported having been married by the age of 18, according to a survey of more than 600,000 households conducted for India’s health ministry between 2007 and 2008, the most recent such large-scale official data available.
In neighboring Bangladesh, one in 10 teens has had a child by the age of 15, the report said, while one in three girls gets married by age 15, the report said.
Although it is illegal for girls in either country to get married under the age of 18, there’s cultural acceptance for the practice and law enforcement rarely gets involved.
“I spoke with judges that were very instrumental in helping me meet people forced into underage marriages,” said Michele B. Goodwin, law professor at the University of Minnesota, who has been conducting field research in eastern India to better understand why India’s child marriage ban is failing on the ground. “They were being invited to the wedding,” she added.
Child marriage is less likely to happen to boys, and doesn’t carry the same health risks for them that girls face when they get married very young. Government data show that about a third of male marriages happen under 21, the legal age for men.
Gender rights groups working on the issue say that a complex mix of circumstances leads parents to continue to marry daughters off before they reach 18, including poverty and worries about having to pay a higher dowry [gift to the groom’s family] if they wait until a daughter is older or more educated. Demanding a dowry is illegal but still widely practiced.
“Everyone thinks that the earlier you get the girl married, the less money you’ll have to give,” said Ayesha Khatun, an activist who has started a school for girls in West Bengal state in eastern India, and works with parents to convince them to delay their daughters’ marriages.
Parents also fear that unmarried daughters are more likely to face sexual violence, a problem India has been grappling with in the wake of the gang rape of a young woman in December that led to nationwide protests.
Prof. Goodwin says that this was the reason given to her by one mother she met, whose 16-year-old daughter was about to enter a second marriage after her first husband died.
“This mother said she felt blameworthy she hadn’t given her daughter an education,” said Prof. Goodwin. But “she feared her daughter might be raped or sexually assaulted going to school so she kept her home,” she added.
Those fears are not unfounded. Particularly in rural India, high schools are further away than primary schools, requiring longer travel time. Some states have provided girls with free bicycles to get around this problem, but many parents remain fearful. Women’s rights groups say that parents ignore the fact that married women and girls face sexual violence from husbands and even husbands’ relatives.
National crime data from 2012 showed that a third of all rapes that year happened to girls aged 18 or under. Marital rape is not a crime in India unless the wife is under the age of 15, and is not counted separately in crime statistics.
Sonali Khan, India director of Breakthrough, a gender rights group based in the United States and in India, that uses pop culture campaigns to work on social attitudes, says that for many parents one of the biggest concerns behind early marriage is family honor, and a fear that unmarried girls will become romantically involved before they are married.
Peer pressure plays a role too, and it is very difficult to be seen to be at the vanguard of departing from social norms. When a family doesn’t get a daughter married at the age typical for the area, neighbors become inquisitive.
“They start asking, ‘Why is she unmarried? ‘Is there something wrong with the girl? All those great questions,” said Ms. Khan, in a recent interview. “That becomes a pressure on the girls’ families to get them married.”
Ms. Khan’s organization is carrying out research on some 3,500 households with adolescent children in Bihar and Jharkhand in eastern India. While focusing public awareness campaigns on some of these households they will research the extent to which such interventions can change attitudes, particularly among fathers, who typically have the most say in marriage decisions.
The organization carried out research on attitudes in these households in 2012 and hopes to have an idea of what effect the interventions had next year.
In the course of their work, women have come forward to tell the group’s social workers their stories of early marriage. One woman Breakthrough connected with in Jharkhand’s Hazirabagh district reported being married around age 12 or 13 to a man in his thirties. She had her first child when she was about 17 or so.
“My parents were very poor and people told them it’s a good family, they won’t ask for a lot of money,” she told The Wall Street Journal in telephone interview.
She said at the time she didn’t even know that it was her wedding that was taking place.
“Even when I went to my husband’s home I didn’t know I was married,” said the woman, now in her early thirties. “Only when people there told me to do the housework, then I understood these were my in-laws.”
India and Bangladesh remain among the countries where a girl is extremely likely to be married before she is 18, and have a child while still a teenager a result, the United Nations said in a report released Wednesday.
Pakistan and Sri Lanka show much lower rates of pregnancies among women aged 15 to 19 than India and Bangladesh, according to the report titled “Motherhood in Childhood.” Every year some four million teenage girls in India have babies, the UN said earlier this year.
For every 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19, there were 76 adolescent births in India in 2010 compared to 49 worldwide and 53 in less developed regions.
In Pakistan there were 16 births for every 1,000 girls aged 15 to 19 and 24 in Sri Lanka.
Stillbirths and newborn deaths are 50% more likely among infants of adolescent mothers than among mothers aged 20 to 29, according to the World Health Organization in 2012. Infants who survive are more likely to have a low birth weight and be premature than those born to women in their 20s.
Underage marriage and teen pregnancy are major health and economic concerns. Some 70,000 teen girls die every year from complications in pregnancy and childbirth, mostly in the developing world, the report said. The report did not say how many of these deaths take place in South Asia.
The lack of progress on reducing teen pregnancy in some countries in South Asia, where most adolescent pregnancies happen in wedlock, is closely tied to the deeply entrenched practice of child marriage. In India, nearly half of women marry under the age of 18, the report said, citing the most recent Indian government data available. In some states, that percentage is even higher even though the practice is outlawed throughout the country.
The worst state for child marriage is the eastern state of Bihar, among the poorest in the country, where nearly 70% of women in their early twenties reported having been married by the age of 18, according to a survey of more than 600,000 households conducted for India’s health ministry between 2007 and 2008, the most recent such large-scale official data available.
In neighboring Bangladesh, one in 10 teens has had a child by the age of 15, the report said, while one in three girls gets married by age 15, the report said.
Although it is illegal for girls in either country to get married under the age of 18, there’s cultural acceptance for the practice and law enforcement rarely gets involved.
“I spoke with judges that were very instrumental in helping me meet people forced into underage marriages,” said Michele B. Goodwin, law professor at the University of Minnesota, who has been conducting field research in eastern India to better understand why India’s child marriage ban is failing on the ground. “They were being invited to the wedding,” she added.
Child marriage is less likely to happen to boys, and doesn’t carry the same health risks for them that girls face when they get married very young. Government data show that about a third of male marriages happen under 21, the legal age for men.
Gender rights groups working on the issue say that a complex mix of circumstances leads parents to continue to marry daughters off before they reach 18, including poverty and worries about having to pay a higher dowry [gift to the groom’s family] if they wait until a daughter is older or more educated. Demanding a dowry is illegal but still widely practiced.
“Everyone thinks that the earlier you get the girl married, the less money you’ll have to give,” said Ayesha Khatun, an activist who has started a school for girls in West Bengal state in eastern India, and works with parents to convince them to delay their daughters’ marriages.
Parents also fear that unmarried daughters are more likely to face sexual violence, a problem India has been grappling with in the wake of the gang rape of a young woman in December that led to nationwide protests.
Prof. Goodwin says that this was the reason given to her by one mother she met, whose 16-year-old daughter was about to enter a second marriage after her first husband died.
“This mother said she felt blameworthy she hadn’t given her daughter an education,” said Prof. Goodwin. But “she feared her daughter might be raped or sexually assaulted going to school so she kept her home,” she added.
Those fears are not unfounded. Particularly in rural India, high schools are further away than primary schools, requiring longer travel time. Some states have provided girls with free bicycles to get around this problem, but many parents remain fearful. Women’s rights groups say that parents ignore the fact that married women and girls face sexual violence from husbands and even husbands’ relatives.
National crime data from 2012 showed that a third of all rapes that year happened to girls aged 18 or under. Marital rape is not a crime in India unless the wife is under the age of 15, and is not counted separately in crime statistics.
Sonali Khan, India director of Breakthrough, a gender rights group based in the United States and in India, that uses pop culture campaigns to work on social attitudes, says that for many parents one of the biggest concerns behind early marriage is family honor, and a fear that unmarried girls will become romantically involved before they are married.
Peer pressure plays a role too, and it is very difficult to be seen to be at the vanguard of departing from social norms. When a family doesn’t get a daughter married at the age typical for the area, neighbors become inquisitive.
“They start asking, ‘Why is she unmarried? ‘Is there something wrong with the girl? All those great questions,” said Ms. Khan, in a recent interview. “That becomes a pressure on the girls’ families to get them married.”
Ms. Khan’s organization is carrying out research on some 3,500 households with adolescent children in Bihar and Jharkhand in eastern India. While focusing public awareness campaigns on some of these households they will research the extent to which such interventions can change attitudes, particularly among fathers, who typically have the most say in marriage decisions.
The organization carried out research on attitudes in these households in 2012 and hopes to have an idea of what effect the interventions had next year.
In the course of their work, women have come forward to tell the group’s social workers their stories of early marriage. One woman Breakthrough connected with in Jharkhand’s Hazirabagh district reported being married around age 12 or 13 to a man in his thirties. She had her first child when she was about 17 or so.
“My parents were very poor and people told them it’s a good family, they won’t ask for a lot of money,” she told The Wall Street Journal in telephone interview.
She said at the time she didn’t even know that it was her wedding that was taking place.
“Even when I went to my husband’s home I didn’t know I was married,” said the woman, now in her early thirties. “Only when people there told me to do the housework, then I understood these were my in-laws.”
