The Burden of Child Marriage: Health Implications for Girls in Rural Pakistan

Abstract

The current research examines the effect of child marriages on the girls’ health in rural areas of Faisalabad (Punjab)-Pakistan. The ratio of child marriages is high in Punjab. In Pakistan, 21% of girls marry before the age of 18 and most of them almost 75% gave first birth at the age between 16-17. Child marriages affect both male and females, but it more affects the health of females. Because before the age of 18 years, girls body parts are not being developed and mature to bear sexual pain and ability of the childbearing process. There are many causes of child marriages, such as lack of education, parental illiteracy, lack of parental awareness regarding the negative consequences of child marriages, lack of laws, burden of debts and poverty. The Positivistic-quantitative approach was chosen to collect and analyze data, by using interview schedule as tool of data collection. The unit of analysis was female (100) who was married before the age of 18. The identification of respondents was done through social referral methods and snowball sampling methods. The data were analyzed through the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 22.0 and MS-EXCEL 365. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were applied as a data analysis technique. The findings of the study showed that all the respondents were married before 18 and they give birth to the first baby at the age of 16-17 years which is considered very dangerous. Majority of the respondents were agreed that child marriage affects the health of girls and there are more chances of maternal deaths at the time of first childbirth. Child marriages effect physically, psychologically, socially, and economically. Moreover, the child marriages lead towards the physical abuse from husband and in-laws. The child marriage can be overcome from the society through Govt level policies, the facility of free education to girls, awareness to parents regarding the negative consequences of child marriages.