Sharing My Own Writing about "Early Child Marriage in Bangladesh".

First of all, despite significant progress in many gender and reproductive health indicators, two out of three girls in Bangladesh get married before 18. Most of them become mothers while they are still children. When girls get married early, they are more likely to drop out from school (Population Council, 2020). This is the major problem in Bangladesh now.

After marriage, they cannot continue their studies because of household work and maintaining a family. They are always busy working in a family, how will they continue to study? They need to cook, wash clothes and dishes, and take care of husbands and family members. It is really tough for underage girls to manage everything. They always feel a lot of pressure being married in their teenage years. When they are children, they need to take care of a family and work so hard as a housewife. It is really a big tragedy for underage girls.

Moreover, after marriage they do not have the right to share their opinions about study whether they want to study or not. But, it is really true that after marriage, girls cannot continue their studies. They drop out from school and focus on their married life. Sometimes, early marriages happen because of cultural beliefs. In my culture, it counts as good luck if people are able to marry their daughter before eighteen. If they fail to do that then people from society start to criticise it badly. Moreover, if any dangerous thing happened in that family, people count it as the punishment for not marrying that girl. This so lame thought that my community has.

According to UNICEF research 54% of girls in Bangladesh will be illiterate in 2030. We must invest now to secure girls’ rights to life and education, and reduce their exposure to violence and exploitation,” said Veera Mendonca(UNICEF, 2020). It is really urgent for us to take necessary steps to stop early marriage. Otherwise, we will be in trouble. Without an educated mother, we cannot imagine an educated nation said by Napoleon. Therefore, we should take steps and work on it as soon as possible.

Secondly, around 5200 women die every year in Bangladesh because of early pregnancy. Teenage girls do not have proper ideas of birth control. Because of lack of knowledge about protection they got pregnant before they became 20. And, during childbirth 21% of mothers die because of early pregnancy. Bangladesh is a first ranking country because of maternity deaths. It have high rank of maternal death in all over the world(Chaity, 2017).

The new estimates reveal that 6.2 million children under 15 years of age died in 2018, and over 2,90,000 women died due to complications during pregnancy and childbirth. Since 2000, child deaths have increased by nearly half and maternal deaths by over one-third, mostly due to early marriage and unhealthy condition((UNB, 2019)
“Ending child marriage is a duty for both the Government of Bangladesh and people. However, Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target to end child marriage by 2030, and the national target to end child marriage by 2041(UNICEF, 2020).” This is an unacceptable thing. Why is our country so late to take steps on early marriage? Bangladesh requires more efforts to bring change. They should take steps immediately to abolish early marriage from society.

Early marriage only does not have these two problems. There were a lot of problems because of early marriage. Some of them are violence, dowry and gender discrimination. Many girls have been victims of dowry after marriage. It was really horrible to see how their husbands beat them up for dowry(Islam, 2020). It is one kind of violence for money. This is the worst thing in Bangladesh in my opinion. Some people think that they cannot continue to educate their daughter because of financial problems but at last their daughter has been beaten up for dowry.

I think we need a society where people will not think that girls are weak and a burden. Cultural and religious belief should stop from now on.