Consequences of child marriage
Similarly, divorce rates are also increased in young girls in comparison to boys due to multiple factors that magnify the increasing number of social issues for girls.
There are number of young marriages that come to an early end in the province. Girls who marry young, are more prone to be divorced at an early age. Child brides are often disempowered and dependent on their husbands. child marriage in iran is also very common.
The occurrence of divorce is annually increasing leaving girls with more social problems that they as child divorcees or widows are simply not capable of handling. The enormous responsibility for a young girl to go from a life, then mother and now a divorcee or widow is catastrophic. These girls are more vulnerable to persistent poverty if their spouses die, abandon, or divorce them. Given that girls in ECM are often significantly younger than their husbands, they become widowed earlier in life and may face associated economic and social challenges for a greater portion of their life than women who marry later.
This problem threatens to increase with the expanding youth population in the developing world. In addition as ECM is considered an interfamilial binding contract, the breaking of it, i.e. divorce can have serious consequences both for the families and for the girl. Even those girls with the option of divorcing an abusive spouse are vulnerable because they have little earning power, education, and financial support. Widowhood is one of the most neglected gender and human rights issues within ECM. These young girls, long invisible in many countries are most vulnerable.
This is particularly acute in rural areas, where traditions, customs and discriminatory interpretations of religious codes often dominate and where there is a glaring lack of the modern age of marriage legislation. The consequences of widowhood which include social ostracisation, economic dependency, marginalisation, legal discrimination, political insensitivity and human rights violations. All these consequences are intensified by the fact that they are being faced by young child widows who are extremely vulnerable. Child widows are the legacy of ECM.
Read more: Feminization of Poverty-The Cause and Consequence of Early Childhood Marriages in Iran