Two Portraits of Young Married Women

I want to look at two basic portraits of young married women, the first portrait consisting of what commonly occurs in third-world, or developing, countries, a portrait of violence, abuse, suicide, and sorrow. The second portrait consists of the  practice of marriage in traditional Romania, a portrait of happiness, strong families, and cultural values informed organically by the best of the Christian heritage.

Portrait One: Third-World, Developing Countries.

In many parts of the world, women as young as 7 or 8 years old are being married to men as old as 50. In places, such as Afghanistan, Ethiopia, or Nepal, such women will most likely enter into a lifetime of domestic violence, and not a few will attempt to commit suicide. The photojournalist Stephanie Sinclair very powerfully captured this plight in her series Child Brides (http://www.viiphoto.com/showstory.php?nID=712). Sinclair notes that in "Ethiopia and Nepal, girls who try to escape their early marriages are often intercepted by brokers and trafficked to brothels where they are exposed to violence and HIV."

Afghanistan's Ministry of Public Health states that 95% of all suicides are "attempted by uneducated or less educated female [sic]" between the ages of 16-19. 80% of these attempted suicides are by married people. The average age for a single woman to attempt suicide is 14 years old, and out of all women, 19-year-old women attempt to commit suicide the most. As of September, more than 2,500 women in Afghanistan have committed suicide for 2013, increasing the suicide rate since 2012. On the other hand, suicide by self-immolation has decreased 40%.

Source: Ministry of Public Health, "MoPH Marks Suicide Prevention Day," Ministry of Public Health Website, September 15, 2012, accessed November 19, 2013, http://moph.gov.af/en/news/12776.

Feministnews, "Women Commit Majority of Suicides in Afghanistan," Feminist Foundation Majority Blog, September 12, 2013, accessed November 19, 2013, http://feminist.org/blog/index.php/2013/09/12/women-commit-majority-of-suicides-in-afghanistan/.

According to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), Afghan women suffer the highest rate of domestic violence worldwide. Here is a quotation of a 15-year-old married girl named Sadat from UNAMA's December 2012 document Still a Long Way to Go: Implementation of the Law on Elimination of Violence against Women in Afghanistan:

I got married to a man in Sawa village of Anjil district five months ago. My husband and my father-in-law had beaten me without any reason several times. The repeated mistreatment had forced me to complain, but all in vain as the prosecutor overlooked my petition and warned me to either withdraw the complaint or face imprisonment.

Source: UNAMA, Still a Long Way to Go, UNAMA Website, December 2012, accessed November 19, 2013, http://unama.unmissions.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=Qy9mDiEa5Rw%3d&tabid=12254&language=en-US, 1.

Page 23 of the document describes the how the forced and underage marriages in Afghanistan form "one of the most deep-rooted and negative harmful practices." Under-reporting was attributed to the cultural difficulties surrounding such an issue, such as "fear of reprisal, threat to life, and fear of being charged for 'run-away' and adultery crimes."

The World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that an estimated 140 million girls under the age of 15 will become child brides between 2011 and 2020, making a yearly average of 14.2 million and a daily average of 39,000.

Source: WHO, "Child Marriages: 39 000 Every Day," WHO Website, March 7, 2013, accessed November 19, 2013, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2013/child_marriage_20130307/en/.

In this same press release, Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin (don't ask me how to pronounce that), the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), commented that "child marriage is an appalling violation of human rights and robs girls of their education, health and long-term prospects. A girl who is married as a child is one whose potential will not be fulfilled. Since many parents and communities also want the very best for their daughters, we must work together and end child marriage."

And such young women are statistically "more vulnerable to intimate partner violence and sexual abuse than those who marry later." Complications in pregnancy and childbirth, such as fistula (see Sinclair's Child Brides), "are the leading cause of death in young women aged 15-19," said Flavia Bustreo, M.D.

Other interesting statistics: by their 18th birthday, 50% in South Asia and ≥33% of sub-Saharan women are married. "The 10 countries with the highest rates of child marriage are: Niger, 75%; Chad and Central African Republic, 68%; Bangladesh, 66%; Guinea, 63%; Mozambique, 56%; Mali, 55%; Burkina Faso and South Sudan, 52%; and Malawi, 50%." This discounts India, which due to its population, clearly surpasses all other countries; "in 47% of all [Indian] marriages the bride is a child [i.e. below 15 years old]."

Portrait Two: Romani and the Romanians.

Romania is a bit complicated because there are two groups that sometimes get confused with each other: the Romanians proper and the Romani, who form 2.5% of Romania's population.

Source: Central Intelligence Agency, "Europe: Romania," The World Factbook, November 4, 2013, accessed November 19, 2013, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ro.html.

The photojournalist Maria Sturm came out with a photo series called Be Good (http://www.mariasturm.com/be-good), depicting not ethnically Romanian, married teenagers but those we have commonly called "gypsies," or more properly speaking, the Romani (or Roma) people. This ethnic group is spread all across Europe, America, and even Russia, and they may have come from northwest India.

Source: Elena Marushiakova and Veselin Popov, "Roma Muslims in the Balkans," Project Education of Roma Children in Europe Website, accessed November 19, 2013, http://romafacts.uni-graz.at/images/stories/pdf/c_1.3_roma-muslims.pdf.

Isabel Mendizabal, Oscar Lao, Urko M. Marigorta et al., "Reconstructing the Population History of European Romani from Genome-wide Data," Current Biology 22 (December 18, 2012): 2342-2349.

Sturm clarified in an interview,

In our understanding the definition of youth is tied strongly to freedom and individuality; [something] we cannot imagine growing up without. It’s something we see as a [human] right; it’s something we would fight for! Because of this upbringing we can’t understand a different way of life, or at least it is very hard for us. The way we have been taught is the ‘right’ way, therefore we feel pity for those who don’t have our choices. Of course I wouldn’t let my child marry at such a young age, but I didn’t grow up among those traditions....

I was surprised that even among the poorest families not even one person had a materialistic or egoistic wish: they all wished for health, good understanding in their families and that their children will have an easier life....

Individuality is something that doesn’t exist in their society, their language. Imagine a family living together in a house with one room—there’s just no room for individuality to develop. The children and family come first.

Source: Sahara Borja, "Portraits of Married Teens in Romania," Feature Shoot Website, November 4, 2013, accessed November 19, 2013, http://www.featureshoot.com/2013/11/portraits-of-married-teens-in-romania/.

For the Romani, underage marriage is common, and because this group suffers from poverty, antiziganism, and outright persecution, much of the criticisms towards underage marriage from the WHO can apply. Consider, for example, the following passage from a news article from 2005:

In the Czech Republic, 79% of respondents to a 2003-04 survey said they wouldn't want Roma as neighbors, according to an EU report released in November. The report also said leaders in the Slovak village of Svinia refused more than a million euros ($1.3 million) in aid because the funding would have helped the Roma.

Source: Mary Beth Marklein, "European Effort Spotlights Plight of the Roma," USA Today, February 1, 2005, accessed November 19, 2013, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-02-01-roma-europe_x.htm.

The fact of the matter is that for those living in the United States, such concerns are literally most foreign.

But then there is the traditional culture of Romania itself, which is a different picture. The predominant religion of Romania is Orthodox Christianity, specifically under the Romanian Orthodox Church. Civil marriage was not introduced until 1864, and even then, it remains a formality.

Source: Pavel Suian, "Marriage in Romania," accessed November 19, 2013, http://www.law2.byu.edu/page/categories/marriage_family/past_conferences/oct2006/pb_chapters/13%20-%20Suian.pdf.

After joining the European Union in 2007, the same union obliged Romania to eliminate the illegal status of homosexual relations. Interestingly, homosexuality and radical feminist ideas have increasingly weakened traditional Romanian values, especially in urban areas. The outcry of conservative Romanians is quite similar to Muslims with respect to Western culture in itself: it is a decadent culture. Of course, these two cries are only materially the same, and I would argue that the Muslim reasoning for post-Enlightenment decadence is quite different from the traditional Christian reasoning although some critiques may overlap. One need look only towards the statistical prevalence of actual and severe domestic violence in Muslim relationships, especially in third-world countries, compared to the absence of such violence in even the poorer Romanian village communities.

Marriage in traditional Romanian culture is not an individual ordeal but a communal one, one that is supervised by the family and the Church, and "is assumed by most of Romanians like in the Bible, to be normative for human beings. The responsibilities, duties, and joys of marriage are understood as matters of spiritual significance." It is not a mere human or culturally-created institution/invention, but is for God's glory through the right ordering of man and woman.

Source: Ibid., 200-201.

Polls conducted as recently as the mid-2000s show that between 92-96% of young Romanians consider "marriage and children as their most important goals and achievements in life." And to get a further sense of a traditional culture organically influenced by a living faith, consider that Romanians consider family to be the basis of society, and family is intrinsically related to a "true vocation ot holiness," receiving graces from the sacrament of Matrimony.

According to statistics from the WHO, suicide rates in Romania between 1990-2009 remain around 12%, and 3.5% of those people were female. The largest percentage of suicides committed by women in 2009 were between the ages of 45 and 75+.

Age: Percentage
5-14: .9%
15-24: 2.6%
25-34: 1.9%
35-44: 3.9%

Source: WHO, "Suicide Rates, By Gender, Romania, 1990-2009," WHO Website, 2009, accessed November 19, 2013, http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/romania.pdf.

And as of 2009, according to Romania's National Institute of Statistics, the average age of Romanian women getting married is between 20-29, the mean being 27.5 years old. Interestingly, for the past few years, there has been a decline in the marriage rate, and the decrease in urban areas is 2.3 times higher than rural areas. In fact, the birth rate is much lower than the death/mortality rate, leading to a shrinking population.

Source: "Româncele se căsătoresc la 27 de ani şi divorţează la 36. De ce au început să fugă de măritiş," Gandul.info Website, June 30, 2010, accessed November 19, 2013, http://www.gandul.info/magazin/romancele-se-casatoresc-la-27-de-ani-si-divorteaza-la-36-de-ce-au-inceput-sa-fuga-de-maritis-6466978.

CIA, "Europe: Romania."

My Point—Given in a Long-winded Way.

The differences here are not explained so much by location as by living conditions that work together to form a "culture." These conditions include the material and the spiritual. Wealth, education, and faith all work together. What is interesting to me is that organizations, such as the WHO, the UN, and the EU, darken the causes of violence and "bad" practices to vague, and therefore generally agreeable, terms. For example:

Child marriage, which has existed for centuries, is a complex issue, rooted deeply in gender inequality, tradition and poverty. The practice is most common in rural and impoverished areas, where prospects for girls can be limited. In many cases, parents arrange these marriages and young girls have no choice....

Social pressures within a community can lead families to wed young children. For example, some cultures believe marrying girls before they reach puberty will bring blessings on families. Some societies believe that early marriage will protect young girls from sexual attacks and violence and see it as a way to insure that their daughter will not become pregnant out of wedlock and bring dishonour [sic] to the family.

Source: WHO, "Child Marriages."

I find the above analysis somewhat funny because it repeats itself. For example, "child marriage" comes partly from "poverty." It is most common in "impoverished areas." Well, if poverty is the cause of child marriage, then of course it occurs in impoverished areas, and of course prospects for anyone will be limited. Another example: "social pressures within a community...." From where else do social pressures originate? An individual? An ant?

The above quotation as well as the entire preamble for the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union is filled with the discourse of the autonomous individual with his (her/its) rights, freedoms, capital, property, choices, equalities. I could start listing random words from this discourse, and you'd know exactly what I'm talking about, perhaps without even being able to say what I in fact am talking about: peoples, union, peaceful, future, common, values, conscious, spiritual, moral, heritage, founded, indivisible, universal, human, dignity, freedom, equality, solidarity, principles, democracy, rule, law, individual, heart, activities, citizenship, security, justice, preservation, development, respect.

Source: European Union, Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Official Journal of the European Union, March 3, 2010, accessed November 19, 2013, http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2010:083:0389:0403:EN:PDF.

In fact, the way I generated that list was by going straight through the preamble I mentioned. It goes on, but you get the point.

Now, consider how I have included both third-world and developing in this post. "Developing nation/country" has replaced "third-world" because the popular implication is that the "third-world" is inferior to the "first-world." I found an interesting analysis of the change in this brief essay here: http://tailsteak.com/archive.php?num=159. It considers that "third-world" comes from the French Tiers Monde, an allusion to the Tiers état of the French Revolution (where the first state was the royalty, the second state was the Roman Catholic Church, and the third state was the peasants. In other words, the article goes on to suggest that "third-world" is politically incorrect not because of the "sensitive self-esteems [sic] of the impoverished, but because the linguistic powers-that-be are uncomfortable with the idea of" a revolution from the "rural," "impoverished," and backwater parts of the world who continue to justify their continued practices that offend our post-Enlightenment sensibilities. In fact, we, the European Union (in this fantasy dialogue of mine), might get so offended that we might force Romania to legalize homosexual relations even though we respect "the diversity of the cultures and traditions of the peoples of Europe as well as the national identities of the Member States." What, then, is respect but one more manifestation of a discourse signifying nothing?

Now, certainly there is a difference between the abuse that occurs in Ethiopia or Afghanistan and what occurs in rural Romania. But it seems strange that the "developed" nations are the arbiters of what is meant by "undeveloped" (and therefore "uncultured"), and this judgment is based on a way of thinking solidified by Western European, bourgeois philosophers in the 18th-19th centuries.

People who buy into this liberal discourse will probably take offense at my implication that poverty, domestic violence, and gender inequality are not important issues. Of course, in doing so, they would ignore the rather belabored citation of multiple credible sources that bring attention to these very issues occurring in places that your average American would have no clue about (including myself). But yes, I am suggesting that there is a deeper issue, more important than the very grave evils of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and it is the bedrock of human culture itself: the human family and the divine.

As Suian writes,

The advance of decadent ideologies and the incorporation in several UN documents of phrases and so-called "principles" contrary to all major religious beliefs, contrary to all moral values, and based on the wrong way of understanding the idea of human rights and the protection of minorities was possible only because the rest of the world gave up without a struggle....

By accepting the dissolution of the natural family including divorce, same sex marriage, pornography and other such "new propositions" we are forgetting that divorce is not just a legal question, it is not a passing "crisis," but affects the human being, destroys relations among many persons, will adversely affect forever and mark each member of the family, and most of all will negatively affect children....

The truth is that even those who seek religious marriage are not always fully conscious of the religious teaching on the goods of marriage....

The present young generation is raised under essentially the same desire of getting "everything they ever wanted" from their parents and, as a result, they are often unable to give of themselves when sacrifice is required....

Couples could benefit from greater formation in an understanding of permanence as a "process," or as a way of living "unconditionally" mirroring Christ's unconditional love for His Church.

Source: Suian, 206-207.

These portraits are indications that there is a deeper, spiritual warfare going on, and it is away from that reality that we shouldn't allow ourselves to become distracted.