As we continue to dwell in the joy of the birth of our Saviour, I continue to ponder on the Holy Family. While our own seasonal busyness is comparable to the flurry of festivities in our liturgical calendar, our recent Advent journey should be reminding us to be watchful and intentional, or else we might miss something.
For example: did you ever notice that we don’t hear about how Mary and Joseph transition from being engaged to being married?
And by extension, as last month I commented on Mary’s status as a teen mom, we must also recognise her here as a teenage bride – and likely one of an economic arrangement between Mary’s father and Joseph (who, fortunately, we know was a good guy). And while child marriage was not uncommon in those times, we would be shocked to see it happening today.
Or would we? Because some 650 million women today were married as minors. Every year, 12-15 million girls are married under the age of 18 – that’s around 1 of every 4-5 girls, or at a rate of 23-29 every minute. In times of crisis, rates of child marriage tend to increase; and early data in this COVID-19 pandemic support this as our current situation.
This is a complex global reality, and while Canadian law sets the legal minimum wage for marriage at 18; this can be reduced to 16 with parental consent. This consent is often given, with around 3500 marriages of 16- and 17-year olds (over 85% of these are minor girls to older men) since 2000. However, we are called to open our eyes to the reality of common-law marriages of girls in Canada; there are also Canadian girls sent abroad to legally marry and return with their husband (still as minors).
Distressingly, many of these foreign marriages take place in the United States (where legal age can be as low as 12, or lower if the girl has born a child).
Part of our response is being an educated and aware church: and to hold before God those times we simply did not see, and to ask God to support us as we open our eyes:
- To recognise that the euphemism “underage woman” actually means girl child.
- To understand the correlation between lowering the age of legal sexual consent and the age for legal marriage.
- To learn how child marriage generally leads to a lower level of education, a higher number of children, a lower incidence of receiving medical care, higher exposure to medical need, a higher rate of poverty, a higher incidence of gender-based violence, and a lower lifespan.
Lord, as we celebrate your Son, born of a child bride, help us to work towards ensuring girls may enjoy their entire childhood before becoming brides.
