Akbar Ali you say, ‘eh???
When I first moved to Hawaii legal age of marriage was 14 for girls and 16 for guys.
they made it 16 years for girls and guys some time in the early 2000’s.
Hard to believe India is stricter than Banana Republic Hawaii.
I think my wife and I married at age 21 in 1977.
we are the same age for a few months of the year.
Still married.
We made better decisions than our parents did.
My mother had 4 husbands. Glad she didn’t pick out my wife.
Arranged marriages fare better than American style.
When a girl is poor, getting married to a guy with a good job is a way out of poverty.
It’s a better solution than what we do in the US, where young girls would get pregnant, so as to qualify for government cash, and raise fatherless kids.
Wow, such horrible, horrible poverty in India.
(Too bad they don’t have airports to live in.)
You shouldn't be surprised when a poor woman gets upset when the breadwinner of the family gets taken away, leaving her to figure out how to get money to buy food with.
When you hire workers (professors) from other countries, the two things you have to worry about is polygamy and child marriages. I remember a case where a professor was dealing with his wife being required to attend high school due to her age.
Then there is changing the spouse on the medical insurance.
The thing I most noticed is that they are using an example of a woman who is 19, with a baby born when she was 18 at the earliest — not an unheard of or shocking situation, even here in the US — I am sure there are many more Indian (Hindu/Muslim) “brides” who are aged 12 to 15 (or younger) with children born very soon after their “marriage”.
But they're all for the age of consent being 12 or 13 here.
“These child marriages have become a social evil and as a result the mortality rates have been quite high,” he said.
The article doesn’t say how these marriages cause increase in mortality rates, it just sounds like a dismissive comment.
I know that Alabama in the 1970s allowed girls as young as 13 to get married with parental permission and 16 without permission. Now, it’s 16 with permission and 18 without.