The scandal of child marriage

Through the ages and across cultures, marriage endures as a bedrock institution. Yet there are profound variations in the practice; political movements seek to expand or limit who can marry; and several studies here in the United States confirm that people are waiting longer to wed, interracial marriages are becoming more common and divorce rates are rising.

Around the globe, some societies are more tolerant than others in permitting a man to take more than one wife. As well, the age at which people are legally able to marry seems somewhat elastic.

When the latest issue of National Geographic arrived in my mailbox, I flipped through it and was drawn to a jaw-dropping report called "Too Young to Wed -- The Secret World of Child Brides."

The author, Cynthia Gorney, is a veteran magazine writer and member of the faculty at UC Berkeley's highly regarded Graduate School of Journalism. She's also someone I've come to know as a friend. The photographer, Stephanie Sinclair, has been documenting the practice of child marriage for a decade.

Gorney weaves several contemporary cases together with historical context. She presents the proponents' case for child marriage but doesn't shy away from the dark side involving rape and childbirth before the girls are physically ready.

Sinclair's photos are riveting and revolting. Starting with an 11-year-old girl in Yemen made up to look twice her age and ending with a 5-year-old (yes, 5) in northern India, Sinclair presents a collection of portraits that make it oh-so-clear that this is oh-so-wrong.

One photo portrays a 14-year-old girl bathing her scrawny newborn while her 2-year-old daughter plays beside her. Another (above) shows two girls starting forlornly at the camera as they stand beside their husbands. One of them, now 8, was married at age 6 when the groom was 25. And the 5-year-old? She's roused from sleep and carried to her wedding on her uncle's shoulder. Half her face is covered by a yellow garment, so we see only one bleary, brown eye.

I like to think of myself as tolerant in most respects. But the practice of marrying off girls before they even hit double digits strikes me as obscene. I realize the practice goes back centuries and in some cases are seen as business transactions -- as a way to settle a debt or as a wise investment by parents seeking a stable future for their daughters. I realize, too, that the practice persists because girls in many societies have little or no access to education, and virtually no local prospects for employment. Those things would have to change for families to consider deviating from the practice.

Fortunately, there are "positive deviants" like Nujood Ali who give some hope. Nujood generated worldwide headlines in 2008 as "the 10-year-old Yemeni girl who found her way alone to an urban courthouse to request a divorce from the man in his 30s her father had forced her to marry." Her story has been made into a book, translated into 30 languages, "I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced."

The National Geographic report is chilling. My hearts breaks at the sight of these too-young girls forced to assume roles long before they're ready and which they never asked for in the first place.


Photograph by Stephanie Sinclair