ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY
(Media, Adolescence, Marriage)
Early marriage can be a worldwide problem related to a variety of health and social consequences for teenage gitls. Designing effective health interventions for managing an early marriage for the teenage girls, it must be applied to the community based approaches, However, it's received less attention from policymakers and health researchers.
Media, Adolescence, Marriage is generally understood to mean marriages that take place before the age of 18, but for many girls, marriage occurs much earlier. In some counttries, girls as young as 7 or 8 are forced by their families to marry much older men. The reasons girls are married are diverse, and parents sometimes believe that through marriage, they are protecting their daughters and increasing their economic opportunities. However, child marriage exposes girls to increased health problems and violence, denies them access to social networks and support systems, and perpetuates a cycle of poverty and gender inequality. (As cited in International Women's Health Coalition) 37,000 girls under the age of 18 are married each day. We have now the greatest number of married girls and girls at risk of child marriage than ever before.
There are a lot of consequences of child marriage, such as child marriage effectively ends a girl's childhood, it curtails her education, minimizes her economic opportunities, increases her risk of domestic violence, and puts her at risk for early, frequent, and very high risk pregnancies. Girls under 15 are five times more likely to die in childbirth than woman in their 20's and face higher risk of pregnancy related injuries, such as obstetric fistula. Child brides are often unable to negotiate safer sexual practices and are therefore at a higher risk of so called HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. There are negative consequences of child marriage beyond girls themselves, children of child brides are 60 percent more likely to die in the first year of life than those born to mothers older than 19, and families of child brides are more likely to be poor and unhealthy.
Child Marriage occurs in every region of the world, not only in the Philippines but also in another countries such as Iran, Brazil, California and other Foreign Countries, and is practiced across cultures, religions, and ethnicities. The highest rates of child marriage by country are observed in Sub-Saharan Africa, in countries such as Niger, the Central African Republic, and Chad, However, the largest number of child brides live in South Asia Where 46 percent of girls are married before the age of 18. Incidents of child marriage have been shown to increase as instability increases, making girls living in conflict or crisis settings particularly vulnerable.
Teen marriage can be defined as the union between people between the ages of 13 to 19 years. In the past teen marriage was considered a norm in many places. Then the legal age for marriage was when a girl reaches the stage of puberty and considered fertile and ready for procreation. The proposition for delay of marriage age is based on believes that teenagers are not mentally and psychologically prepared to handle the issues that are related to marriage. In the past the focus was to eradicate the prevalence of premarital sex in the society.
Other major factors that contribute to the prevalence of teen marriages include teenage pregnancy, religion, family and peer pressure, poverty and the need for security, arranged marriages and cultural practices that encourage it. Some parts of the world practice teen marriage for the continuation of family bloodline and lineage for economic and political reasons; a good example is the ancient Rome.In the past teenage parenting was not a big issue. Teenage parents were everywhere. The world of politics, media and academics had not declared it a social problem. Phelps, Furstenber and Colby (2002) put that before 1965 in America, half of the women were married before the age of 20. After the Second World War, the decline in marriage was witnessed due to women taking educational careers. In 1970s, the average marriage age for women had risen to over 21 years. (Sailor 2002, cited that) there is another problem that has been associated with teen marriages is the prevelance among married teens.
Teenage relationships are all associated with high level of violence. Although there is no prove of increased violence after marriage, it should be noted that women between the ages of 16 -24 years experience the highest levels of violence. The nature of violence range from victimization from their partners on rape, murder, sexual assault and other aggravated injury. The US department of Justice reports that women opt to get married to escape hostile home environment (Sailor, 2002). Some women also cite childhood abuse as the reason that they became pregnant and want to get to early marriages.
Early marriages therefore should be taken to be an indicator that teens are experiencing some trouble in their family.Maturity of partners in marriage is an essential factor. By considering the age of people in teen marriage, there are bound to be immature and irresponsible acts done by the teens in their marriage. Such kinds of actions may not be a big problem to someone outside marriage context but it posses a serious problem to anyone who is married
https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(13)00124-9/fulltext
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jeph/2016/8615929/
https://iwhc.org/resources/facts-child-marriage/
https://lagas.org/teen-marriage/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20456768
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000061/
https://www.iapsmupuk.org/journal/index.php/IJCH/article/view/1108
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/8/4030/htm
https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2467&context=facpubs
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