For all the traditional marriage defenders, consider this: Traditionally, marriage was an economic transaction. In many places in the world, it still is. And the most valuable female partners are often going to be extremely young, so that they have many working and child-bearing years to offer. I personally think it’s a great thing that we have re-defined traditional marriage, and I’d like to see a whole lot of other traditional marital practices abolished. Go ahead, defend it — in the name of tradition and all:
Rather than a willing union between a man and woman, marriage is frequently a transaction among families, and the younger the bride, the higher the price she may fetch. Girls are valuable workers in a land where survival is scratched from the grudging soil of a half-acre parcel. In her parents’ home, a girl can till fields, tend livestock and cook meals. In her husband’s home, she is more useful yet. She can have sex and bear children.
Afghanistan is not alone in this predilection toward early wedlock. Globally, the number of child brides is hard to tabulate; they live mostly in places where births, deaths and the human milestones in between go unrecorded. But there are estimates. About 1 in 7 girls in the developing world (excluding China) gets married before her 15th birthday, according to analyses done by the Population Council, an international research group.
Before we get all high-and-mighty about our progressive Western ways, keep in mind that teen pregnancy in the United States hit its peak in 1957, at the height of the fetishization of the “traditional family” — the difference, of course, is that most of those pregnant girls were married.
And if marriage is primarily for procreation and raising children, then what’s the problem here?
Another thing that these folks have in common with Western right-wingers: a virginity fetish.
But the practice of early marriage stems as much from entrenched culture as from financial need. Bridal virginity is a matter of honor. Afghan men want to marry virgins, and parents prefer to yield their daughters before misbehavior or abduction has brought the family shame and made any wedding impossible.
Traditional marriage is a crock, friends. And “it’s tradition” is not a viable argument for human rights abuses, or for treating some people as second-class citizens.
Unfortunately, there are no reliable data about the age of Afghans at marriage. Husbands are not ordinarily old enough to be their wives’ fathers or grandfathers, but such February-September couples as those pictured here are hardly rare either. In such marriages, the man is likely to view the age difference as a fair bargain, his years of experience in exchange for her years of fecundity. At the same time, the girl’s wishes are customarily disregarded. Her marriage will end her opportunities for schooling and independent work.
On the day she witnessed the engagement party of 11-year-old Ghulam Haider to 40-year-old Faiz Mohammed, Sinclair discreetly took the girl aside. “What are you feeling today?” the photographer asked. “Nothing,” the bewildered girl answered. “I do not know this man. What am I supposed to feel?”