2 MILLION Girls Under 14 Forced By Parents To Have Babies
By Angel Pink
According to reports by the United Nations, teen girls are having babies to early on in their lives and many of the millions who partake in the early child bearing stages are being forced to do so by their own parents. Studies show that this happens more in developing countries such as India where it is tradition for girls as young as 12 to be married to men who may sometimes be almost twice their age. It is public knowledge that these young girls do not have a choice in who they marry and when they marry the chosen person. Their husbands may be the son of a family whom the girls family owes a debt, or has more money than her own family.
The U.N. states that the best way to get out of it would be to not have a girl child because there's no solution in sight for the children who are forced to be brides -- Girls having babies at 15 years old or younger have an increased chance of developing health problems that only form through early child bearing situations and will have an ever lasting impact on their lives. The U.N. also believes that with these young wed girls who haven't even reached puberty yet are forced to give up their dreams, professions, education and freedom -- for a marriage that too many of them truly do not want.
The largest complaint that was heard among the young women, was that they didn't want to marry their husbands: they would have rather stayed in school and continued their studies. The organizations that use teen pregnancies as their target audience blame the young woman who are in the stages of maturing for becoming pregnant when all the factors of their environment and their circumstances aren't even looked at -- many studies show that when things such as uniform are free of charge or educational centers offer services such as sexual health or human rights are taught: the rates of child marriage or teen pregnancies are lowered significantly. Recent studies show that in 2010, the rates for babies born to teens aged 15-19 was at a record low and with numbers like that, we can achieve the one thing that seems to be impossible.
In my opinion, the fact that girl children are even looked at within that light is beyond horrifying. The idea that in America if a man even thought about approaching a young woman under the age of 18, he could spend a few years in prison and on the other side of the world, girls who haven't even developed breasts yet are being forced to marry grown men and have babies is disturbing -- it makes you think about what the world has come too -- and why aren't there people protecting these young women and their babies. These young women are being robbed of a childhood and of a life time and no one seems to care and it appears that it is all fo money, respect and power. It's a scared woman and no one seems to ever tell you just how scary it actually is -- These girls deserve so much more and it is sad that the people that bring them into this world and should be protecting them are the same people that are hurting them.
