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Educational Factors that Facilitate Child Marriage


Educational Factors that facilitate Child marriage


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Education is not only a human right but also a powerful tool for women's empowerment and strategic development investment. There is a clear multiplier effect to educating girls: women who are educated are healthier, participate more in the formal labor market, earn more income, have fewer children, and provide better healthcare and education to their children compared to women with little or no education (Klugman et al. 2014). Women are subjected to child marriage due to different reasons of which one of the prime reasons is education. Child marriage robs its victims of their legal rights, physical and mental health, and capacity for adult survival. Child marriage burdens health infrastructure and increases the human footprint of resource-poor countries, and a lack of education is one factor that facilitates child marriages. Child marriage and girls' lack of access to good education are both rooted in gender inequality, which ultimately perpetuates people marrying off their girls at very young ages, and most of the time girls are not even fully mature to be in such a complex relationship as a marriage. Educational factors often facilitate child marriage for girls in the following ways: When a girl marries, she is often expected to drop out of school, effectively ending her formal education. A girl is more likely to drop out of school during the preparatory time before her marriage. As a wife or other family member, she is often considered to take care of children, the home, and extended family. Married girls face many practical barriers to education, including household responsibilities, stigma, forced exclusion from school, and gender norms that hinder their way to education. Thus, returning to school can be impossible for a married girl. Another aspect that should be taken into consideration is that there are not only female victims of child marriage. Males are also victims of child marriage. People from low socioeconomic backgrounds are mostly uneducated, and they are more likely to believe that instead of sending their sons to school to get an education, they should learn some skills and earn money. Most of the time, underage males are also married so that they can start a family and more people can earn. When a boy is married while being a minor, he also faces a lot of financial burdens as he is immature and is given the responsibility to handle a household. He needs to earn money because he has a family to feed, but due to a lack of education, he is unable to grow financially. Child marriage goes hand in hand for both males and females because, in any case, the victim can be one of them, or sometimes both can be the victim of child marriage at the same time. Education plays a significant role in facilitating child marriage, as people who are less educated live with a narrow and conservative mind and choose to remain ignorant of the effects of child marriage. In a statement, UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore stressed the detrimental effects of early marriage on boys' welfare, saying it robbed them of their childhood.

"Child grooms are forced to take on adult responsibilities for which they may not be ready." "Early marriage brings early fatherhood, and with it added pressure to provide for a family, cutting short education and job opportunities," she said.

To conclude, educational factors do facilitate child marriages, but education is one of the best solutions to eradicate child marriages, as quality education can act as a significant barrier to ending child marriages. In my opinion, educational factors facilitate child marriage to a greater extent for girls than for boys, because child marriages involving men are more caused by cultural and economic reasons than child marriages involving girls. Girls usually face child marriages because of poverty and uneducated parents who live by the fanatic mindset of not wasting their money on their daughters' education as their main priority is to take care of their households. As female victims are deprived of education, they do not even have their basic rights, and when they give birth to daughters, they also live by the same mindset that I will marry my daughter at a young age, and this cycle continues.​
 
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