Early Marriage Puts Lives at Risk

To conceive and give birth for the first time is a specially memorable moment for mothers, but for Rasminah, 36, she would rather forget what appeared to be such an excruciating ordeal 22 years ago.

Living at Krimun village, Losarang district, Indramayu regency, West Java, she said she had endured the pain even days before the labor.

“Delivering my first child, what crossed my mind was that I’d rather just die. What an excruciation [experience]. I felt as if I were stuck between life and death,” she said on Monday (19/4/2021).

Also read: More Child Marriages Requested in Pandemic

The delivery was difficult because Rasminah had just turned 14 years old, having gotten married at the age of 13 when she was in sixth grade.

Still, a child who still needed the care of her parents was becoming a parent herself. But she had been helpless against her mother’s wishes that she marry a 27-year-old man she had never met. Her father had been paralyzed since she was a child, while her mother was only a farm worker.

Becoming a bride, she knew little about sex. She did not dare to sleep with her husband. The marriage became consummated only after she was taken by her husband to Jakarta two months later.

Also read: Reproductive Health Increasingly Under Threat

She became pregnant, which she realized only when she was many months along. As her belly grew bigger, she returned home and stayed with her mother until childbirth.

“The pain was so bad I could not eat for days,” she recalled.

Later, her mother did most of babysitting for her.

The child was 2 years old when his father abandoned him, and the marriage broke up.

KOMPAS/MACHRADIN WAHYUDI RITONGA

Sapa Foundation Case Assistance Coordinator, Sugih Hartini (two from right) gave an explanation regarding child marriage during a Bale Istri meeting at RW 13, Cipaku Village, Paseh District, Bandung Regency, Saturday (17/4/2021). Bale Istri is a women\'s group formed by the Sapa Foundation to provide education related to health, roles and empowerment of women.

The later stage of her life saw her getting married to another three men one after another — her mother’s choice on each occasion.

She was made a second wife to a 37-year-old man, who gave her a second child before they separated.

Her next husband was a 50-year-old puppeteer and her third child was born.

Also read: If Only the Clock Could be Turned Back

Amid the burden of raising three children, Rasminah had an accident. She was bitten by a snake. The bite was so serious, she needed to have her leg amputated. Her situation went from bad to worse when her husband died.

She decided to return to her village where she later got married for the fourth time, which gave her another two children.

Perilous

Underage childbirth was also experienced by Annah, now 51, from Cipaku village, Paseh district, Bandung regency. She delivered her first child when she was 16.

"It was very painful. The doctor asked my parents how it came about that a girl of 16 could be giving birth,” she told a gathering hosted by the Sapa Foundation in Bandung, West Java, on Saturday (17/4).

Also read: The Struggle to Unchain the Shackles

Annah got married at 15, with her parents hoping that she could be financially independent.

“My parents were worried about me becoming an unmarried adolescent. So, it\'s better for me just to get married, they thought, while in the meantime, I still wanted to play with the other kids," she said.

KOMPAS/ISMAIL ZAKARIA

LA (17) carries her child AAC (8 months) in a village in East Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, last Friday (16/4/2021). In his very young age, LA has been married three times and divorced twice.

The doctor put Annah on contraception to ensure a safe gap between the births of her children. She had her second child nine years after her first.

“I don\'t want my kids to experience what I did because of being married young. My children must go to school before getting married,” she said.

Besides a difficult labor, the medical risks likely arising from underage marriage include cervical cancer and porous bones for women.

It’s a difficult decision but what else could we do?

Hope for a better economic condition is among the reasons that motivate some parents to seek early marriages for their daughters — only for them to end up in uncertainty.

"It’s a difficult decision but what else could we do? The situation was that we could not make ends meet. Hopefully, she could be more independent and more economically able after getting married,” said Carminah, a 50-year-olf migrant worker from Karawang who had her daughter married when she was 15 years old.

While still needing a mother’s care, a child already has a child to care of.

Sugih Hartini, a counseling coordinator with the Sapa Foundation, said a number of women in her village were victims of child marriage because of low education.

Also read : Eliminating Child Marriage

“While still needing a mother’s care, a child already has a child to care of. Many underage marriages end early,” she said.

Their painful experience encouraged Rasminah and two other victims of underage marriage to file a judicial review at the Constitutional Court (MK) over Law No. 1/1974 regarding the minimum age limit for marriage in 2018. The request was granted.

The MK ruled that child marriage violated the 1945 Constitution.

By the end of 2019, the House of Representatives and the government revised the marriage age limit for women from 16 years to 19 years, the same as men.

This article was translated by Musthofid.