Of Early Marriages

My just-turned-twenty friend tries to maintain a balance between the robust baby in her right arm, and her large, stuffed hold all in the other. She tells me he’s being naughty today; he isn’t this bad tempered usually. He’s crying at the top of his lungs now. Embarrassed by irritated looks from nearby tables, she attempts at drawing away attention, breaking into an abrupt tirade against her mother in law who made some snide comment about her going out today, then remembers to ask me how my papers went, and how was my sister, and so on. The baby has grown quiet now, and clutches at his mother’s arm suspiciously staring at me and the other five people on the restaurant table. We all start with the ooh-ing and aah-ing all over again, one of the guys taking the baby from the exhausted mum’s arms and walking toward the little play area nearby. My friend keeps looking back at them, still expecting wails, afraid her little brat will break his neck somehow if left without her for a minute. We try to engage her into conversation. Fat chance.

Okay, I love the baby. He’s adorable; he even looks like her. The only problem is, she just doesn’t look like a mom! Until she starts to speak of course. Two years ago, she was this bubbly teenager forever cracking jokes, loud and boisterous, and very beautiful. She’s still beautiful, that...tired-beautiful sort you know. But no more loud jokes now, no merciless teasing of the badly dressed, no wild laughter and infectious enthusiasm. She somehow manages to look serene even, something I never in my life expected I would come to see of her. And hell, I don’t like it. I don’t like serene, not on her.
The story isn’t very novel, I know. Just an account of a meeting with an old school friend, now married with *gulp* a kid; one of those school friends’ reunions in which everyone comes looks at everyone and tortures each other by reminiscing about days gone by, when life was simple and sweet and free of worries(etc). It was just seven of us, including Nida (the mom). Nida had been my best friend at school, and got married right after giving her first year FSC exam. I went on to persue a bachelors in business, the others scattering at different universities, in and out of the country, and of course, we all sort of lost touch. The get-together was my idea; we all hadn’t seen each other in two years since Nida got married, and none of us had seen her kid, who was brought especially for our appraisal. After the initial hoopla, when everyone settled down, it hit us. Our beloved class clown had changed. And none of us thought it for the better, unfortunately. But then again, what did we expect? She’d been married for two years, gone through childbirth, the usual package of in-laws conflicts, housewifery responsibilities. She had to change. But it just wasn’t that easy to digest somehow.
Perhaps if she had always been the homemaker type, little concerned about trivialities such as education and career before marriage and kids, it would have been easy. But she hadn’t. She was a great student, always been, very ambitious and a true go-getter where academics had been concerned. Though marriage had always been part of the plan, as the family she came from had the marry-young tradition intact; being a very pretty girl proposals began dropping in from early adolescence. But I doubt she ever really thought about the responsibilities and perils marriage really entails. She was so happy-go-lucky it hardly ever crossed her mind what she was getting into when she got engaged right after school. Now, sitting across me at the table, she listened with a wistful smile on her face as we recounted our experiences of college education and discussed our career plans. The concerts we’d been to lately, the university events, new friends, new lives...she broke in with questions, an avid listener, keenly aware of what she was missing out on, and what she would have enjoyed so much knowing her as I did.
I had to hear a million pieces of advice from my friend that day, and later on the phone. All centered on the same theme: Don’t marry early. Even though I wasn’t in any danger of doing that any soon, she insisted I pay heed to her, vehemently elaborating on the limitations of a married life, all that tremendous responsibility that should be only taken up when you’re fully equipped to, and when you have had your taste of a carefree life at its best. Young marriages are evil, young marriages are stupid don’t marry till you’ve had your education. Don’t let that right be taken away from you, and so on.
It’s easy to understand the rationale here. But early marriages in girls are common phenomena in our society. And I am not referring just to the less educated faction. In this case, there are little limitations. I’ve seen highly educated families whisk away their daughters from schools and colleges to marry them off. Strong knit communities especially follow the tradition; the determination to marry into family or community as soon as possible. With the lucky ones, education is allowed after marriage, with the others, it isn’t an option. But for all those parents who airily inform their daughters that they can always continue with the studies after they get married, an eye-opener: For girls, marriage brings solid responsibility. This often not just includes being a companion to her husband in thick and thin and caring for their home, but also of the entire family she’s marrying into. Not negating in anyway the wonders of married life; it’s very presumptuous and almost cruel to expect a girl to juggle yet another task before all these. Her education is, first of all, her parents’ responsibility. It’s an obligation for every resourceful parent to cater to her education. It’s an integral part of a good upbringing. Flinging that responsibility toward the husband and the daughter after they marry is just simply shirking their own. Heck, it’s just too hard after marriage! I’ve seen a myriad girls try, and then give up, continuing their education after marriage and kids. The few, who make it, never proceed into a career they might have dreamed of in other circumstances. But at least they have the necessary equipment, the others don’t even get to that.
This is something parents of both sexes must think about carefully before binding their kids into marriage: What they’re giving them, and what they are taking away from them. With years and years to come before them, your kids don’t need to be bound just as soon as they hit adulthood. Give them a chance to enjoy a little of the carefree, wonderful element of single life before making them forcefully exchange it for marital pleasures, which, however unique in their own right, will never replace this particular period of their lives that they lost on because of your haste.
Not every girl is a mature young woman right from age sixteen; negating the popular concept that girls attain maturity before boys and are equipped to handle the burden of marriage right from early adulthood. A lot of them don’t even understand what marrying a ’family’ means, which is the reason most have a lot of trouble adjusting with a whole new set of people in the early years. A friend of mine nearly got divorced after tiffs with her in-laws that her husband was simply incapable of solving; she was 19, the hubby was 34. Just look at this age difference. It’s ridiculous! What are parents thinking? Just because in old days age difference between husbands and wives didn’t matter, and all girls used to be married at thirteen, and everybody lived happily ever after, does that make the old tradition right? Or fair to your beloved child, even? Do parents even realize what prospective hell they are willingly pushing their daughters into when they don’t analyze age differences which indicate complete generation gaps sometimes. Would two personalities with a gap like that between them be able to blend and attain love and happiness? Or will it just be an arrangement, a compulsion to endure instead. I guess though, in our society, unless the compulsion is being endured, however painfully there is nothing to worry about for parents. And the fact that the daughter is unhappy and forlorn in her marriage, as long as she doesn’t decide to get out of it, is just as well too. Even if the age difference isn’t humongous, what on earth makes child-brides of seventeen and eighteen and equally child-like husbands of twenty-two and twenty-three as perfect pairs? These are ages when a young man or woman is beginning the process of experiencing life, and learning from it. Not jumping into the ring right away! How can they be expected to be happy when they see their counterparts going to colleges and universities, with no worries greater than those of studies on their minds, tasting their rightful freedom and independence with their own like. While our child-couple here are busy rearing a baby and managing their finances to make a good living. And trying to get used to the concept of the end of their individual freedom.
Early marriages are truly, a stupid act if held just for the sake of tradition. It’s about time parents realized their responsibility to ensure their children’s happiness apart from making them a suitable ’alliance’. And early marriages seldom lead to both together.