Early Marriage In African Society

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EARLY MARRIAGES: THE CRADLE OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE Marriage is a fundamental principle of an African society. it is an abomination to reject marriage when it is proposed to you (if you’re a girl). In most African societies, parents are the ones that decide when the girl child will get married. Indeed, a girl child’s life is never in her control. From the time she is in her mother’s house to her husband’s house, she is always bossed around following rules that do not even make sense to her. Neglection, battering and other abuse are prominent in Africa because the woman is under the man’s patronage. Once a woman is financially stable and can live independently the chances of her getting abused are minimal but in Africa, that chance is also taken…show more content…
Most families in Africa marry off most youth girls because they think this is a way to safeguard these girls against HIV and AIDS (Clark , E.,2004). Early marriages apart from the socio-economic factors mentioned earlier in Africa mainly corollate with local historical, cultural and religious factors. If you can relate all these reasons you will notice that they are all based on beliefs, African myths, and superstitions. Africans find it hard to adapt to the new systems of living. It sounds ridiculous to us to marry a 15-year-old teenager to a 30-year-old man but if this practice has been part of the culture for a thousand years, it can’t just be ruled out. We must immerse ourselves in their state and understand how hard it is to let go of a habit. Several rules have been put in most countries constitution but they're not effective. This is because most of the time we are not engaging the local influencers themselves. A president can be influential indeed, but a chief is much more influential. He is always with his people, therefore, there is a certain level of trust between the chief and his people (since politicians are extremely doubted anyway). It shouldn’t be the polices job to spread the news that the laws of child marriages but rather it should be the chief's job to bind such kinds of acts and in the village there the ones that usually initiate the unacceptable practices. So if we got to get them understand the implications of these practices the would find a very suitable way to communicate to there
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