Sara Tasneem was just 15 years old when she was married off to a man 13 years older than her in a spiritual ceremony. And just a year later, at 16, she was legally wedded to him in Nevada. It took her nearly a decade to get out of a marriage she’d never agreed to in the first place, she told Global Citizen.
Yet, as shocking as Tasneem’s story is, it’s far from uncommon. Tasneem is one of more than 250,000 children married in the United States over the past couple of decades. Globally, 650 million girls and women alive today were married before their 18th birthdays. A third were even married before their 15th birthdays. And, without major efforts to stop child marriage worldwide, another 150 million girls are expected to be married by 2030, according to UNICEF.
Child marriage is the formal (or informal) marriage of a child under the age of 18. Most often this is the marriage of a young girl to an older boy or man.
Many girls who are married off before they turn 18 or are forced into early marriages are made to leave school. This deprives these girls of their right to education and future independence. Child brides are also more likely to experience domestic violence.
Young girls who are married off are more likely to experience early pregnancy and have children while still physically immature, they are at higher risk of dying from pregnancy and childbirth complications. And their babies have a reduced chance of survival too, according to the World Health Organization.
Child brides who have children may also be psychologically unprepared and ill-equipped to become mothers at such a young age.
“Motherhood is hard. When [babies] get sick, you don’t know why. I don’t have experience and don’t know what to do with him, probably because of my age. I sleep very little,” a 14-year-old wife and mother told the New York Times.
