Child Marriage: Bad Or Good?

Child Marriage is the marriage of children under 18 years of age, most probably because of their parent’s wish. This nowadays can be a sign of gender inequality, dowry etc.

We know that child marriage these days is not very common, as the government has created multiple policies and rules. But back in the day it was almost like a must for child marriage. This wasn’t because we wanted our population to grow rapidly. It wasn’t because parents felt like it. This is a common misconception that child marriage was a very bad thing that happened in the past. Or at least amongst children this is a misconception.

Back in the day, the health of the world was quite poor. You may be familiar with some cases where your parents had some siblings that passed away and were never mentioned of. Back in the day, if a family had 10 children, one of them would die.

And it wasn’t anything like those car accidents, corona virus, suicide, cyanide, murder, nothing! They just plain died! This was the condition of families all across the globe, at the time.

Now, back to child marriage. Why? Why was child marriage necessary during those times? Back then, it wasn’t just the children who passed, it was also the parents. So, if the parents died who would be there for their children?

Before we go deeper, there is something besides this we need to understand. Child marriage was not like today’s regular marriage. In child marriage, they did not move in together in a house or anything like that. The definition of child marriage at the time would be something like “An agreement between two families, that the other would take care of their children in case they died.”

I think now, everything explains itself why child marriage was SO necessary back in the day! But I would like to put out a disclaimer, that this was only applicable in the past. Nowadays, the health condition is far better and child marriage is very much wrong.