The Marriage Age Misconception

Context: Addressing poverty is the key to improving the health and nutritional status of mothers and their infants.

Issues with the arguments in support of raising the marital age for women:

• Increasing the nutritional status: The government believes that raising the age of marriage is the best way to improve the health and nutritional status of mothers and their infants. 

• Poverty of the mother plays the greatest role both in relation to her undernourishment and that of her child, but this is not acknowledged. 

• For E.g. instead of early pregnancy causing malnourishment, they may both be the consequences of poverty.

• Delaying the pregnancy act as the weakest link: in the process of addressing poverty of mother.

•  For E.g. The age only begins to have real significance when pregnancies are delayed to ages of 25 and above.

• Controlling the Over-population: The government relies on the reports of over-population of India resulting into efforts to eliminate child marriages by increasing the age threshold.

• The fertility is declining: India’s fertility rates have been declining to well below replacement levels in many States, including those with higher levels of child marriage.

• Costless and Effortless: Raising the age at marriage by amending the law is costless and can be effortlessly achieved by legal fiat.

• It will criminalise majority of Indian women who marry before they are 21 without the legal protections that the institution of marriage otherwise provides.

• Prevalence of Child Marriage among Muslims: The decision may be partly prompted by a vague belief that child marriage is more prevalent among Muslims and helps them reproduce faster.

• Evidence shows otherwise: States with high mean ages at marriage of 25 years are erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir, Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur and Goa. 
• Even Kerala (22 years) and Delhi (23 years) have signi?cantly lower mean ages at marriage.

Conclusion: One of the ways to break the undernutrition problem is to address the poverty of the mother, beginning with the method of nutritional programmes for girls and women.