Comments on: How to tackle the child marriage crisis

By: Val71

Val71 — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:00:16 +0000

Child marriages are part of the problem of lack of education for women. It is also true that teen pregnancies in other cultures are a similar problem. The biggest problem has been overpopulation. It must be recognised as the root cause of nearly all environmental problems. A girl who has a child at 15 has twice the rate of a woman who waits until 30. This high rate of breeding in a world already far into overshoot, must stop and reverse before ecological collapse causes a rapid die-off. Western counties will not be immune, and the longer massive pollution exists, the greater chance this die off will be followed by extinction of most other species and humans, too.

By: bhupe

bhupe — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 01:31:37 +0000

I am not a supporter of child marriage, but it is a sheer Hippocracy when it comes from a western writer,who doesn’t want to address the problem of child sex and drug abuse and early pregnancy (no marriage and no-loyalty)in their own culture. How many kids get pregnant in the high school? Doesn’t that affect their education and life?
I will say almost 98% of the kids having boyfriend and girlfriends in the middle school and having sex-peer pressure of having boyfriends and girlfriends is a one form of child marriage (without vows) or not? and on the top of that religious pressure to carry on pregnancy and have child is a similar scenario Mr. Brown is scoffing as a child marriage in other than western culture.

By: anonymot

anonymot — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 13:49:02 +0000

If Gordon Brown is just finding out that everyone isn’t like his English constituents he should be ashamed. Thet have done perfectly well with their own culture in those countries. Of course, he and his American masters would change the whole world into their corrupted image!

By: GMavros

GMavros — Sun, 11 Mar 2012 03:30:37 +0000

It is so pretentious and easy for westerners to criticize and point out age old costumes in third world societies. It has been in style for some time, for the pseudo-intellectuals and pseudo-philanthropists and pseudo-Human Rights Activists. So ignorant, they are pathetic.

Early ‘childhood’ marriage was predominant in most western and other societies for thousands of years,and up to recent times as well. Family-economics and a short life expectancy were the underlying reasons.

Ignored are the ‘real abuses’ re; child labor, violence and sexual abuse. They so conveniently forget that less than a hundred years ago and up to very recent times, these same western ‘enlightened’ societies were widely abusing these same human rights, not only within their own societies but also in their deplorable colonial territories, even more so.

The reason for all this, in all societies, is an economic one. If a more equal distribution of wealth existed, these problems would not be so prevalent, then and today.

By: mgb500

mgb500 — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 18:43:59 +0000

Gordon Brown was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2007 to 2010. He is currently an adviser to the World Economic Forum.

What this lovely title fails to note is that Gordon the gopher Brown, bankrupted the UK, destroyed education, destroyed manufacturing, along with his chum Tony B’Liar killed hundreds of British troops by sending them to die to appease the Yanks, he sold off UK gold reserves for a pittance AFTER announcing the sale – this is the man who ‘saved the world’ & who reckoned he’d ended Boom & Bust in the UK – he is a complete idiot!

By: txgadfly

txgadfly — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 15:44:37 +0000

It is important to note that the extension of “childhood” to age 18 is both very culture bound and very modern, being significantly less than 100 years old. It has achieved a virtually religious status in the USA and western Europe, so much so that it is considered outrageous to the point of sacrilege. It is not acceptable to question its correctness or consequences. It is blindly advocated, as in this piece.

This is a disservice. On the face of it, it is an assertion that nature and the genetics that determine the age when humans are able to reproduce are both fundamentally wrong and obviously need to be interfered with to advance the cause of humanity. This is clearly quasi-religious rather than rational.

If this were as clear as implied in this article, why has no known culture before the last century followed the recommendations made here?

By: NSal

NSal — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 03:07:00 +0000

We need this issue in our daily discourse. The past is not our compass; we have come to an age where we have access to education and we provide ample choices for a better life, which is the basic privilege if not the right, but not for every child. Why not? Because the battle that won this right for children was painful, demanded a high price and we have become wimps to face this challenge.
Thank you for the article.

By: OfCoUrSe10

OfCoUrSe10 — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:42:53 +0000

We need the issue in our daily discourse. The past is not our compass; we have come to an age where we have access to education and choices for a better life to be the basic privilege if not the right, but not for every child. Why not? Because the battle that won this right for children was painful, demanded a high price and we have become wimps to face this challenge.
Thank you for the article.

By: stevedebi

stevedebi — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 21:14:23 +0000

I don’t advocate child marriage, but one should note that it is common in less technological cultures, where children represent workers for agricultural or other duties. This is a function of economics and survival, and not necessarily some kind of attempt by society to reduce the status of women. In these cases the answer is to reduce the poverty. Of course, other cultures do encourage putting down women as a class. That is a more difficult problem to fix.

As a side note, my grandmother married at age 13 (in 1923). That was in east Texas, and she went on to have 9 kids, 7 of which survived infancy – and most of them got a college education, after working in the fields while at home. Everyone graduated high school, but I actually don’t know if the girls attended (or wanted to attend) college.

By: clearance42

clearance42 — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 19:15:46 +0000

JustRealistic – 150 years ago, woman in our society also were disenfranchised, held back, underrepresented, and repressed both formally and informally. You’re right – at the time no one thought to take this tone, however with the benefit of hindsight we realize just how horrid the conditions were under which women toiled. Now, obviously, women are an equally productive part of all facets of society.

In these other regions discussed in the article, this has yet to happen. Instead, women are subjugated in ways even our “relatively recent ancestors” would find abhorrent. This is not an issue of cultural (or temporal-cultural) relativism. This is an issue of extraordinarily harmful subjugation and statutory abuse.