The Marriage Age Misconception

The Hindu     21st August 2020     Save    
QEP Pocket Notes

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.

QEP Pocket Notes