The Necessity of Child Marriage

My late father, the Playboy, married my mom at the age of 19. If I'm not mistaken, mom was 17 at the time. Six children later, "home" was a lot like a war zone on a daily basis. And then 12 years later, they were officially divorced.

I have seen way too many divorce cases in my day, even from among my family members, and I have come to a stage where I'm seeing the phenomenon as some sort of a disease. I've noticed that marriage between adults are not immune from the risk of divorce. People change over the years; people make mistakes in their decisions; sometimes the best solution is to get out of the rotten deal and start over again while there is still youth. However, some people will never learn in life; they make mistakes, and then they keep repeating those mistakes over and over again.

If even adults can make mistakes in choosing their life partners, imagine what's the odds of children making the correct choices? There's a lot more to learn in life than just the reproductive system before deciding on a life partner. In my mind—although I don't have any statistics to confirm it—the failure rate for child marriages should logically be higher than that of adults, simply because it's hard for me to believe that children can make better choices and decisions than adults. That's why I'm against the notion of child marriage. 

I read with interest the Kelantan government's stand on the issue of child marriage—that underage marriage is a necessity as there were social ills. Using marriage to circumvent children from indulging in "social ills" is something like sweeping the rubbish under the rug. It's not really a solution; it's just a temporary measure, but would most probably lead to an even bigger problem later. It is the kind of "solution" of people who are in the state of denial. What happens when these poor souls find out that they made a big mistake and end up with a divorce?

My daughter is just 16 years old now, and I'm praying really hard that she's not indulging in the so-called "social ill" activities. But if she did, marrying her off will be my last choice to make, because I know that there is an over-90% chance that that marriage will fail anyway. I'm not discounting the possibility of her making a big blunder as a teenager; but I won't allow her to make an even bigger blunder by getting married in the hope of escaping from that first blunder. Deal with the mistake by solving it; not by making an even bigger mistake to cover up that first mistake.