In rural Nepal, boys and girls are often married off before the age of 10. Picture: Emily Moulton Source: Supplied
ON HIS wedding day, Parshuram Harijan urinated in his traditional outfit, because he didn’t know how to untie it. He felt ashamed and dirty. He was just nine years old.
By 12, he and his wife were living together and were expected to produce a child within a year. “I was overwhelmed,” he said. “I couldn’t do what was expected of me as a married man.”
Physically and emotionally traumatised, Parshuram divorced and remarried by 14.
His story is not unusual in the villages of Western Nepal, where young boys often wed by the age of seven.
In the West, we typically only hear about young girls in the developing world forced to marry older men, and suffering domestic violence or rape. But child grooms exist too, and their lives are wrecked in other ways.
Parshuram Harijan was married at nine, divorced at 12 and remarried at 14. Source: Supplied
Pannilal Yadav married at eight, and hardly remembers his wedding day. “I was just a kid,” he told Care International, which has produced a report called Dads Too Soon: The Child Grooms of Nepal. “I ran into one of my old schoolfriends who is now an engineer. If I wasn’t married so young, I could have had the same opportunity to do just as well ... getting married closed all doors for me.”
Boys who marry in these rural areas usually drop out of school and begin working in rice paddy fields to support their child bride and her family. The girl stays at home to help her relatives or those of her husband with the domestic duties.
The child couples are expected to have a baby by their early teens. Those who don’t risk humiliating their family in the eyes of the community.
Mathura Dhobi’s family couldn’t afford to send him to school, so he left and married at 12, to a 10-year-old girl. At the time, he said, everyone was getting married and he believed it was the right thing to do.
The couple soon had a baby, but neither knew how to care for it. Mathura’s wife, Shivnandani Dhobi, would sit in a corner and weep.
Today, Mathura provides for his elderly parents, his wife and their two children. But he bitterly regrets his decision to marry as a child, he said. “Because I’m not educated, I can’t get any good jobs, so I do temporary jobs working as a labourer around here. There’s a lot of hardship. We are not happy.”
Even Mathura’s mother admits he would have had more opportunities and capacity to care for his relatives if he hadn’t married so young.
Lex Kassenberg, Care International’s Nepal director, told news.com.au: “A very poor family will want a girl out so they have one less mouth to feed. If the family of a boy waits too long, it can be hard to find a bride.
“Normally, the focus is on girls and the impact of early childbirth. The impact on boys is ignored. But boys forced into early marriage suffer a form of psycho-social trauma. At 10, 11 or 12, mentally and physically you’re not ready.”
His bride Shivnandani, now 18, was 10. Source: Supplied
The pressure of fatherhood brings further psychological strain at such a young age.
Care is concerned that April’s deadly earthquake, which devastated the capital Kathmandu and surrounding areas, will further isolate rural communities, increasing child marriage rates and marginalisation.
“You get a lot of disrupted social fabric,” added Mr Kassenberg. “Boy and girls in forced unhappy relationships ... they need to concentrate on being children.”
Women undoubtedly bear the brunt of outdated attitudes in these areas, forced to stay in sheds outdoors during their periods, for example. But Mr Kassenberg says we must not ignore the plight of young boys.
Nepal has one of the world’s highest rates of child marriage. Former child grooms are now emerging as key allies for Care in the movement to end the practice, talking with parents and community leaders about what they went through. “They know what it’s like to be trapped between boyhood and fatherhood,” added Mr Kassenberg.
With Father’s Day falling this weekend, just imagine being a dad by the age of 13.
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