Boys With Brides: Afghanistan's Untold Dilemma Of Underage Marriages

[rpannier]

Mohammad Wali was just 12 years old when his widowed mother began arranging his marriage to a 24-year-old woman from their village in Ghazni Province.

"I don't want to be married," the young Afghan boy is said to have pleaded with his mother. "I just want to play soccer and cricket. I want to go to school."

But his mother insisted on the marriage to ensure that she and Mohammad Wali's two teenage sisters would not become street beggars -- a possibility she feared because of local inheritance customs for widows who don't have any male heir.

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"You must get married," she is said to have begged her son. "You must marry soon and you must have a son of your own or we could become destitute, without any property, and your sisters will have no say about anything that happens to them."

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Hussaini says UNICEF has recently been registering about 200 Afghan boys each month, aged 11 to 17, as they return to Herat Province from Iran where they've being working to help support their families.

https://www.rferl.org/a/boys-with-brides-afghanistan-untold-dilemma-of-underage-marriages/30106032.html

[Farmer-Rick]

1. So institionalized sexism ruins men's lives too.

Maybe if we didn't have religion to perpetuate an antiquated 6th century goat herder's mentality to relationships, we could all be better off.