The focus of campaigns to curb early marriages is on the girl child, but there is convincing evidence that boys, too, have their futures robbed when couples marry too early.
Quite often, the terms ‘child marriage’ and ‘early marriage’ are used interchangeably, but they mean different things. Unicef describes child marriage as a formal or traditional marriage between a child under the age of 18 with an adult or another child.
Meanwhile, the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) describes early marriage as a marital union between individuals whose physical, emotional and psychosocial development makes them unable to freely and fully consent to marriage.
Thus, a marriage between a 19-year-old and an 18-year-old in Kenya cannot be described as child marriage but would be classified as early marriage because of the couple’s level of emotional development. Some communities encourage marriage among young people under the age of 18 due to teenage pregnancy, cultural pressure and financial reasons.
Couples in an early marriage are unlikely to proceed with formal education. Without academic or technical qualifications, the couple will be forced to survive on casual labour, where the pay is very low. At that age, they are not likely to own land on which they could engage in agriculture. Despite the disadvantages of early marriage, young people continue getting into it.
In June, the Star reported the case of Riziki, 16, in Kwale county, a girl rescued from marriage but pregnant after living with a man for three months. The 25-year-old man had promised Riziki a good life after luring her with chips, chicken and new clothes. Riziki comes from a poor family and is the sixth of 12 children.
"The man said he would marry me and give me a fancy life if I ran away with him but he just wanted to use me," Riziki said. The perpetrator is a Form 3 dropout who brews alcohol from coconuts. Riziki says the man would threaten to abandon her if she refused to have sex with him.
In the neighbouring county of Taita Taveta, Rose Mnene is in an on-off relationship with her husband. Mnene, now in her early twenties, is a mother of two. "I got my first child from a relationship while in high school," Mnene says. "I had my second child with my husband." The first child is four, while the second is a year old.
WAY OUT?
Life is tough for the couple as Mnene’s husband is often away from home for long periods as he seeks casual jobs. Though they live in a single-roomed house, the money Mnene's husband brings barely covers the family's living expenses. Mnene's biggest fear is of her husband leaving her with the two children.
Too often, families see marriage as a way out whenever a teenage girl gets pregnant. The tradition in some communities is for the teenage girl to get married to the baby’s father. This is done to protect the girl from the shame of being labelled an unwed mother. The other factor is financial gain. The teenage mother’s family gets bride price, which often takes the form of cash and livestock.
Media commentator Victor Bwire says Kenya had the third-highest teenage pregnancy rate in the world as of 2019. "One in every five teenage girls between ages 15 and 19 has had a live birth or is pregnant with their first child," Bwire says. 13.6 per cent of adolescent girls end up getting married. This early sexual activity is exposing teenagers to HIV infection.
Bwire says new HIV infections are being detected in people as young as 15. “Young people aged 15 to 24 contribute 42 per cent or about four out of 10 of new infections,” Bwire says. He adds that as much as 30 new HIV infections are recorded from this particular age group each day.
Poverty and cultural practices are, therefore, contributing to early marriages. Lots of teenagers are not going to school because their families cannot afford school fees. These children, while idling at home, see early marriage as an escape from poverty. As Riziki's case study shows, even the young man she cohabited with is a high school dropout, struggling to make ends meet.
Data from the 2019 national census shows just 50 per cent of Kenyans completed primary school. 27 per cent have a high school certificate. This means a lot of Kenyans are not pursuing education beyond primary school, which makes them vulnerable to early marriages.
A case in point is the number of candidates who completed high school early this year compared to those who did their final primary school examinations in 2017. The 2021 KCSE examination had 830,854 candidates, while the 2017 KCPE had 1,003,556. This implies that at least 17 per cent of candidates who did KCPE in 2017 did not sit the 2021 KCSE exam. Poverty and teenage pregnancies have a lot to do with learners dropping out of the education system.
In today's highly competitive job market, where university graduates are struggling for jobs, what are the prospects of a school dropout finding meaningful work to sustain a marriage? Unless one or both partners in the marriage takes up a technical course to acquire skills, the couple is likely to remain trapped in low-paying labour.
Interestingly, Unicef notes that early marriage is just as bad for boys as it is for girls. Under-age husbands are forced to take on adult responsibilities for which they are not prepared. For both boys and girls, early marriage limits their access to education, thus blocking them from career advancement.
Numerous studies have shown that early marriages are unstable. Divorce rates among couples who married early are significantly higher compared to divorces among couples who married in their 20s and 30s. Early marriage puts financial and emotional strains on the breadwinner, who's probably earning very little under the circumstances.
One of the most common complaints among couples who married early is that they did not fully understand what they were getting into. A report in the Journal of Couple and Family Psychology reveals that half the divorced couples who participated in a survey said they did not know enough about the realities of marriage at the time of their wedding.
The report's authors recommend premarital counselling for couples to help them better understand themselves and their partners while learning how to manage conflict in the relationship.
