Five pages of statistics capped by five lines detailing a solution, not one word explaining why this is any of "our" (Meaning of course White peoples) business much less our problem.
If the role of the AFA is to promote the ideals of "traditional" marriage then the idea of there being some arbitrary but universal age limit imposed upon brides and grooms in spite of the dramatic racially based differences in child development and adult lifestyles is, dare I say it, White supremacy.
Fourteen or fifteen is not too young an age to be married for people with an average life expectancy of 55.

Time to grow to & look at the bigger picture Terri.

What do you reckon? Better pregnant at 15, & a single mother at 16, as is increasingly the case in Europe the US & here, or a bride at 15.

I'm afraid your prejudices are showing in this. Just because you, & many in the western world, were still children at the end of their teens doesn't mean this applies in all cultures.

Just what does a young lady in an agrarian village in India or New Guinea gain by waiting until her 20s to marry.

Perhaps the problem is more with western mothers wanting to keep their progeny as children long after they should be off doing something useful.

The problem is easily solved. Stop defining ordinary consensual human behaviour as abusive. Stop defining someone as a "child" for purposes of a discussion of sexuality merely because they are under an arbitrary politically-determined one-size-fits-all age limit of 18. Recognise that the age of consent bears no relation to any identifiable biological stage of development. Recognise that the claim that consensual sex is somehow intrinsically physically or emotionally damaging is complete nonsense. Recognise that, by your method, if the State defined a child as anyone under 20 or 21, as has been the case in many places in history, all of a sudden you'd be squarking about an epidemic of "child sex abuse" even when you're talking about married couples who already have children. Recognise that you don't know better than other people what their values should be. Recognise that all talk of political "empowerment" exalts the use of political force and threats over society's voluntary and peaceable relations. Recognise the blatant racism in what you have said. Recognise that other people's consensual sexual relations are none of your business.

I doubt this author is talking mostly about 15 year old brides, but rather those not yet in their teens who are 'promised' and then 'given' to their much older male husbands.

So, to me, this issue is not about race, culture or religion, but about paedophilia on a grand scale.

It is a terrible situation that 'developed' countries should try all they can to put pressure on those counties that allow practices like this to stamp it out.

What else would you expect in India, which also boosts the rape capital of the world.
All of these little kids are real people, with dreams, hopes and expectations, which never ever, dare I say, become being the sex slaves of men, with absolutely no moral scruples whatsoever!
And reportedly around 40% of these barely nubile girls, will die in childbirth!
It'd be a different story, I dare say, if it were our own daughters, being taken, forcibly wed, then raped daily, by some dirty old, completely indifferent man?
It may well be common practice here there and virtually everywhere in the dark continent, which can never ever make it right or justifiable!
Any more than criminal rape in Deli can be!
And yes, western women do get pregnant at similar young ages, usually after being lied to and used by a man, with few if any moral scruples! So?
None of that makes anything like the topic under discussion right, except say in the eyes of demonstrably, patently heartless men, or the criminally insane!
We need to ensure these little, immature, often prepubescent girls, get an education, and the right to simply say no! Or not yet?
Or, I am a person, with my own dreams and rightful expectations, not property!
In any event, it should be her personal choice, inclusive of gay marriage?
And isn't all that already enough of a problem for most parents, without force, kidnapping and coercion, becoming or remaining standard practice, or so called custom.
Let them grow up to become Doctors, Lawyers, electricians, mine truck drivers, midwives, vets, pilots, plumbers and Leaders, who as at long last emancipated women, get The Final Say, in who they wed or bed!
Rhrosty.

no suse,
It's all about race and tradition, pedophilia has nothing to do with it from our end it's about our desire to silence batty PWMU types who've yet to grasp the notion that White supremacy over the "darkies" ended sixty years ago.
Articles like this are just an embarrassment in a pluralistic, multicultural society.

It's called 'culture', Suse :)

Amazing, I fully expected the usual Left suspects to charge out in defence of reactionaries around the world, and attack the writer of this article, and thereby implicitly support pre-teen marriage, genital mutilation, honour killing and the whole kit and kaboodle, on those grounds of 'culture'.

But no, some of the usual RIGHT-wing suspects trot out reactionary arguments in favour of child-brides etc.

Gosh, it's so hard to know these days what is Right and what is Left, their paths cross more and more. Perhaps they could share placards at the next demo.

Joe

Suse if she is talking about prepubescent children she should say so, rather than try to mix some ideological waffle in there.

If she really wants to make a difference, there is plenty to do at home. She could try doing something about 8 year old girls with venereal diseases in some aboriginal communities. Not nice, & these girls don't even get to be married.

I suppose it is too much to ask a do gooder to castigate aboriginal behavior when another branch of the do gooder industry depends on them for their livelihood. If they want their name up there in print, better to attack someone far far away, so you don't tread on any toes.

Hi Hasbeen,

Good point, about a scandal far too common. Tiny 'communities' are strange places, where not only does everybody know each other up, down and sideways, and going back one or more generations, but most of the blokes have beaten the crap out of each other at some time, and most of the girls have been had by most of the blokes. And most likely, they will have to marry each other. Ghastly lives.

Usually in tiny 'communities', there have never been any police to oversee anything, so it's open slather. Yes, it may take an entire healthy community to raise a child, if one can ever be found, but it takes only a few rapes and beatings to destroy any of that potential: trust, solidarity and dedication tend to get knocked around somewhat.

You can get away with a hell of a lot more abuse in a small 'community' - Indian villages and Aboriginal communities are cases in point - than in any city.

Joe

Joe,
It's not a Left vs Right issue, it's Left & Right vs the truth
Feminism is all about female supremacy, Traditionalism is based on female superiority, the views expressed in this article by a right wing author are just "the other feminism".
I'm defending culture and race and pointing out the inherently White supremacist and orientalist underpinnings of this misguided "child bride" thesis.
It's a fact that teenage girls the world over fall in love with men in their twenties and thirties and that under the circumstances in which most third world families live an older man is a usually a more responsible choice of husband for parents trying to arrange a marriage.There's a cycle of poverty, a poor couple gets married and they can survive OK, even live relatively well until the first child comes along, from then until the first child starts working the family dips back into poverty, when the last child leaves home or is earning their keep the couple lives relatively comfortably until they cannot work anymore then they fall back into poverty and die poor.
Face reality, as fathers we all want the best for our girls but imagine that your options are keeping your daughter at home and impoverishing the whole family for life or sending her off to be supported by the groom's household?

Loudmouth:
There's clearly no left or right, just an up or down, or a right way or a wrong way!
Nor is there a white way or a black way, just a right way or a wrong way.
And those whose only remaining resort, is to play the race card, are not only a significant part of the ongoing problem; but, are going the wrong way, or trying to play the race card, to somehow justify the unjustifiable!
I agree mostly with Susan, in as much as, a preference for prepubescent child brides, is just another version of pedophilia!
Your point about very small and entirely unpoliced small communities is very well made.
Little wonder the suicide rate is where it is, in many small Aboriginal communities!
Rhrosty.

Sorry Jay, I don't think you know what you are talking about.

Rhosty,

Yes, the suicide rate in Indigenous communities, remote and not so remote, is appalling and covered over by lumping all the Indigenous figures together. So across Australia, lumping urban and rural and remote communities together, the rate of Indigenous suicides, usually young people, is many times higher than in the non-indigenous population.

BUT if you differentiate the urban, especially the urban WORKING population, from the 'community' populations, it is a very different picture - the urban working population has probably a similar rate to the rest of non-Indigenous Australia, but the rate in 'communities' is perhaps twenty times higher.

Not four or five times higher, but twenty times higher.

Traditional-oriented and non-industrial societies tend to deal with young women in similar ways, to use them to build relations between families by marrying them off as soon as they reach puberty, and as cheap labour once they are married off.

So in many countries, they have to endure genital mutilation, and we see the horrific rates of young girls in Ethiopia and other countries with difficult births and burst birth canals, fistulas, holes, which break through the bladder and bowel walls. Traditionally, in Australia, it was not unknown for a girl to have her passage enlarged - 'make hole bigger' - to suit their mature husbands' needs.

In a very real way, the improvement of universal human rights means the improvement of women's rights, especially their right to marry when, and whom, they choose.

Surely the feminist agenda has barely begun, when the rights of young women around the world continue to be ignored ? This is surely an issue for all of us ?

Joe

The only context where the arbitrary age of '18' means anything, is within the Western culture. It's this culture that requires every boy and girl to study for many years, so they are indoctrinated into its unnatural lifestyle and become cogs in its economic machine.

Whoever wrote Genesis chapter 3, had good insight that human life is a curse, but a different curse for men and women:

16) To the woman He said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

17) To Adam He said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life."

Western culture seeks to impose mens' curse on women as well.

What is interesting is that through out history, certain groups try to impose their values, mortality and beliefs on to the 'uneducated'.

In recent times before feminism, it was 'Christianity' that tried to impose it's values onto 'savages'. There is no denying that many missionaries did some good whilst others blinded by their belief system did a lot of damage.

Sadly, in the belief that they are doing some good, zealot missionaries are blind to all except their rigid belief systems and woe betide anyone who choose to challenge their rigid beliefs.

No Joe, I do know what I'm talking about and so do you, these are the real choices that parents in the third world have to make, either live in poverty supporting unmarried daughters, cast them out on to the street or marry them off. That's the reality I'm talking about and it's the reality which silly White Feminists and Traditionalists refuse to accept,they might as well all just kneel down and pray together for all the good these programs will do. The idea that UNICEF or any other group can change the condition of billions of people is laughable, they could re colonise the old empires then exhaust the coffers of the Western world in one gigantic redistribution of wealth and still not make a dent.
This is White supremacy, Orientalism, neo colonialism...disguise it with whatever flowery Liberal names you will but we know that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..it's a duck.

Mohammad (peace be upon him) married Alisha when she was 11 years old. Therefore, marrying 11 year olds is permitted by God.

End of story.

The age of consent is 13 in Spain, 14 in Italy, 15 in France, and 16 in most North European countries. The USA is totally bizarre. The age of consent is nominally 18, but then there is the "three year rule" in many states. This states that a male may have sex with a female who is 16 years or older, provided that he is no more than three years older than the female.

Traditionally, females have always married son after the onset if puberty. This is getting out of kilter today, as young females are reaching puberty at earlier and earlier ages. Nobody knows why. It is thought that increases nutrition is causing young female bodies to react to what seems to be an ideal time to breed. Some girls are reaching puberty at 6 years old and special drugs have been developed to suppress the early onset of puberty.

Males are hard wired in their DNA to be sexually interested in females who capable of breeding. That this is happening to females at younger and younger ages does not alter that biological imperative. Couple this to the very sexy fashions now prevalent among very young females and it is hardly surprising that males of all ages are getting interested in very young females.

There seems to be a lot of people who are rather laid back about this. Do they have a daughter themselves. I often hear of people who say that it is OK for a woman to be a "sex-worker". To which I would say is it OK for your daughter to be a "sex-worker" or your sister or some other person for whom you have affection? If it isn't then it's not OK for anyone else's daughter, sister etc. If you have way-out liberal views about any such topic the same applies.

It's all relative, Gadfly:

A Catholic father came to know that his daughter has come to no-good: he was so sad and upset that he wouldn't eat and became ill. His daughter then came to see him on his death-bed and the father, with his very last bits of strength whispered: "Why, Why did you do it, why have you become a protestant?", so the daughter replied: "Me a protestant? Never! You didn't wear your hearing-aid, father, I said that I became a prostitute, not a protestant!". The father sighed with relief, asked for some food and soon after recovered.

There is no harm in a humorous response but I would hope that I have made my point. Whether we are talking about child brides or young prostitutes these people are vulnerable and deserve our help and protection. What happens with older women (20+) is their business but as far as I am concerned a person under 18 is entitled to have us speak out for her. Of course it is probably different in an agrarian society (in so far as girls mature younger) but even they are entitled to our protection and I think we should err on the side of being too protective.

Gadfly

You're not making any distinction between your personal sexual opinions, and whether other people should be physically attacked for not complying with them.

People aren't entitled to "protection" against their own consensual activities. That's not protection. That's bullying, that's intolerance, that's bigotry, that's violence.

"it is probably different in an agrarian society (in so far as girls mature younger)"

The age of sexual maturity in females is younger in modern western societies than it has ever been in any society in the history and pre-history of the world. In the last 100 years, since the age of consent laws were passed, it has fallen by three years. It is the single biggest change in human physiology EVER.

For purposes of a discussion of sexuality, it is simply nonsense, and deliberately misleading, to call these people "children". They're not children; they're young women making consensual sexual choices that you happen to disagree with. So what? You don't have to agree with them. It's none of your business.

The age of consent laws should be amended so that the age of consent is the age of puberty in the individual case.

Jardine,

So being forced to marry at puberty is 'consent' ? What an appallingly conservative and reactionary viewpoint.

But I guess it passes for 'left' these days. Shameful.

Joe