I have always had high hopes of becoming a mother someday, and I still cling on to that desire. However, I do not believe women should be married or bear children at an early age. Mothers need to be both emotionally and physically ready for those experiences. The issue of child brides and mothers is damaging to not only women themselves but also to poverty on a national scale. There are many severe cases of young mothers around the globe, but one of them specifically is in Guatemala, a developing nation in Latin America.
According to World Health Organization reports, pregnancy at an early age is risky for both mothers and babies. The foremost concerns are the health complications. Babies born to mothers younger than 20-24, the most reproductively viable ages, have a 50 percent higher chance of dying during or after birth. They are more likely to be born premature or weigh little and have life-long health risks. In addition to health deterioration, it indicates the likelihood of girls dropping out of school. They will be given limited chances to improve their skills or knowledge, which will lessen their chances of finding a job. This will result in the overall loss of annual income that a young woman could have earned over her lifetime if she didn’t become a mother early.
On top of this, Guatemalan society is strongly patriarchal. Men are given absolute authority to determine the fates of females. They can leave or abandon them however they like. Often times, women are abandoned by their men, forced to face the whole matter of childcare by themselves. Therefore, many girls become objects for family wealth or desires of male adults. Although Guatemalan laws state that the legal age of marriage for girls is 18, many get past this with bribery or illegal methods.
There are many medical and emotional pains that are associated with pregnancy among young females. The birth process is very dangerous for young girls. Because of their younger age, their hips and pelvis structures are not mature enough to support full vaginal births, which means that their labor is going to be incredibly painful and difficult. Labor is more likely to result in worse complications for the mother even if the baby is born safely. According to the International Health Alliance, the region of Petén has the highest rate of maternal mortality in Guatemala at 172 deaths for every 100,000 births and the infant mortality is also high at 40 deaths for every 1,000 births.
Other than being physically abused, women are left with the hard responsibility of taking care of someone during the difficult time of puberty when it is natural to experience emotional struggles. Economically they are in the cycle of poverty where they are completely locked to their husbands and cannot support the family financially because they have not received enough training or education for work. Guatemala is already poor due to unequal distributions of wealth, and many people in the country have turned into gangs and drug transporters to survive. Such trends have become a great social problem, and young women with children are more vulnerable to the country’s poor economy. The widespread presence of poverty and other social problems accumulates as unstable unions between men and women occur under the less than careful eyes of the government.
What should be done to help these mothers and their children? The government should make family planning or health services more accessible. Hygiene campaigns should become more common, and people should be provided basic education focusing on sex and marriage. Or, that basic education should be required as a civilian duty so that girls could be more educated and grow up to be more independent and able to support themselves financially. Women should be given more powers to protect themselves and more independence to break the ties of poverty and miseries of early marriages. Parents of girls should expose them to the dangers of early marriage and explain how they continue to roll the wheel of poverty as girls continue to be deterred from supporting families, deprived of basic rights due to submission to patriarchy and then passing that poverty on to their own children.
Childbearing should be the representation of hopes over dismay, equally for all poor and wealthy families. I understand that poverty and hardships will never disappear completely in this world, yet, we can at least try to lessen the pains of it to the furthest extent possible.
Hae Rin is a freshman majoring in history. Do you agree with her take on this? Should more be done to prevent teenage pregnancy? Please send all comments to opinion@dailycardinal.com
