Child marriage is an international issue, faced by young girls from different backgrounds and places in the world. However, there are some main underlying reasons why it occurs.

Ineffective Laws

Very few countries have not set minimum age requirements for marriage. Most countries with child marriage already have passed laws that declare a minimum age for marriage. However, there is great variation between countries. Additionally, many are not actively enforced, and there are several exemptions where parental consent can legally allow child marriage.

Clashing Customs

Customs should be valued, as they reflect our diverse backgrounds and beliefs. However, customs such as dowry and child marriage hurt women and children in communities. Despite several laws that (in theory) take action against child marriage, there is often severe pushback from people, resulting in an ineffective society where these practices continue.

Why is the custom of child marriage prevalent in the first place?

​Gender Inequality in Communities

Men are usually the "breadwinners" of the family and make most (if not all) of the family decisions. This may, in many cases, include pressurizing daughters into early marriage for several reasons. 

Since practices such as dowry and child marriage are so ingrained in communities, it is often considered the right course of action—not many go out of their way to break tradition.
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Poor Economic Conditions

In economically-impoverished communities, child marriage is often seen as a necessity to ensure survival and stability for all members of the family.

Securing an  early marriage is perceived as the only way to give daughters stability and safety—especially in areas with war and economic turbulence. ​

Additionally, child marriage is seen as a method to decrease the amount of mouths a family needs to feed. Why?

Girls are often forced to be dependant on men in their family to provide food and shelter, as they are rarely educated and, in many cases, cannot sustain themselves. ​

Girls' Lack of Opportunities

Women and girls are often not viewed as equals to men—their "role" in society is to strengthen bonds between families through marriage and reproduce children.

Since sexuality plays a large importance in a woman's societal role, families feel a need to control this sexuality by transfering this control from one man to another (example: from a father or brother to a  husband). Why?​​​​

Families' honors at stake: When a woman loses her virginity and/or become pregnant before marriage, a family's honor may be destroyed. To maintain their social standing, families often marry their daughters as soon as possible (leading to early marriage)​

Peer Pressure

Law Enforcement

The system of dowry (money paid by the bride's family to enter marriage) encourages child marriage. Since the amount of dowry paid increases with the bride's age and education level, early marriage is often incentivized.

​Moreover, even if the system of dowry hurts the bride's family more than the groom's family, not paying dowry is treated as taboo in many communities, hence pressurizing families to follow this custom.

​Breaking away from the system of dowry can be hard, in more than one way. Even when families are eligible for receiving social empowerment funding from national government, they often use this money for dowry, instead of providing girls opportunities to learn and sustain themselves.  

Despite the fact that there are laws in almost every country that prohibit child marriage, several obstacles obstruct law enforcement from taking action against child marriage.
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Countries that set a minimum age requirement for marriage possess laws with several loopholes and ambiguity. Many nations allow children to be wed with parental permission. Some permit marriage at young ages, even when the legal age for adulthood is 18 years old. Others have passed laws that have different age requirements for different religions and different genders.

Even if the law is successfully passed by lawmakers, law enforcement now faces challenges. There is often severe pushback from communities (see previous sections for more root causes). Since government officials and law enforcement officers have ties to and belong to the community in which they enforce rules, they often feel pressure to allow early marriage and are reluctant to enforce controversial laws (usually passed by a remote central government) that prohibit popular customs such as child marriage and dowry.

Facts are everything. Visit Statistics to learn more about these issues.

There are numerous ways to help to protect girls in big and small ways.