Nowadays, more and more teenagers get married in Taiwan. The reason is unlike the older generations’ that may be helping supporting family; however, it is mostly because Taiwan is becoming a sexually open society. Out of curiosity, teenagers have sex, and, because of the lack of contraception, accidentally, they get pregnant. Not knowing what to do, many of them choose the seemingly “easiest” way—marriage. Teen marriage seems to be a common phenomenon in recent year. However, our government is thinking about modifying female marriageable age recently. Many people doubt the modification, questioning officials why they want to rise the age now that there are more and more teen marriages. Will our government disobey public opinion and attempt to retrogress conservative condition? Apparently, there are indeed some concerns that need to be taken into consideration instead of following the masses blindly, drifting with the tide.
The most apparent reason to disallow underage marriage is the misgiving of adolescences’ intellectual immaturity. At such ambiguous ages, teenagers have feelings that they are old enough to make decisions correctly, take responsibility, and make a living; however it is not the case. Here is an example. The Tyra Bank Show invited a 15-year-old American girl, Kaitlin, and his 18-year-old boyfriend, Ryan, to talk about their attitude toward marriage. The following interview excerpts show us:
Tyra: Why do you want to marry him? Why not just be his girlfriend?
Kaitlin: Because I feel like I’m very mature than some most teen and stuff. I watch my sister and my mom and at work. And I just feel like… that’s what I want to do. I know I am gonna be with him for the rest of my life. You know we are right for each other.
The feeling of finding out her true love is rooted in the young girl’s heart. She has even prepared to become a mother, and tries hard to have a baby.
Tyra: When did you lose your virginity? What age?
Kaitlin: I was 13.
Tyra: Okay. What do you do for protection? Protection of against having a baby.
Kaitlin: No. Umm…I’ve tried a year to have a baby.
Tyra: Trying to have a baby? So no protection, no condom, no nothing?
Kaitlin: No.
Tyra: So you are trying to have a baby just like an adult woman tries to have a baby. And what happened?
Kaitlin: It wasn’t working. So I do some research and I order the fertility drugs on my mom’s credit card.
The following interview excerpt is Ryan’s response:
Tyra: Why do you think you are ready to get married?
Ryan: Look…Listen Tyra. Me and Kaitlin are mature. We are both mature. She needs everything to me. I love her so much. I will do everything for her. And I have a job, doing pizza man.
Tyra: Okay, you do a pizza man job. I am gonna ask how much money you make per year.
Ryan: I only make, I think, at least a ticket for a thousand.
Form the above excerpts, we can see what the teen couples do does not correspond to what they say. Actually they are not as mature as they think they are. The young girl even hurts herself by taking unidentified drugs. And her boyfriend does not stop her. They only see the good sides of marriage, and are blinded by sexual happiness. Once they get old and are no longer addicted to sex, they will be overwhelmed by reality. There are too many things needed to be taken into consideration when marriage is being involved. Without basic economic supports and mature minds, how you can say that you are ready to have a family, and be parent?
Kaitlin and Ryan are not the minority. A 15-year-old girl, Victoria, is long to have a baby. Maury show invited her and her mom. The following conversation tells us the girl’s deed and her own thought about the whole thing:
Maury: You find your 15-year-old daughter in your bedroom, naked, having sex with a strange man in your room. Vicky, her daughter Victoria, sexually active, says that she wants to have a baby. She even collects hundreds of baby outfits, baby toys. What’s more, Victoria brags about having unprotected sex over 300 times!
Victoria: My mama thinks that I’m not ready to have a baby. But I have everything my baby needs. I want to have a baby so I sleep a lot of man. That’s right. I’m a player because I get it like that. That’s cool. I don’t care what you think. I am who I am.
It is a lot of women’s plan or dream to have a lovely home and a cute baby. It sounds like the most normal and blithest thing in the world. But when a teenage girl has the kind of notion and puts it into practice seriously, it may be something. Although Victoria says she is mature enough and thinks those who discourage her from having babies do not know her at all. They are just a group of arrogant old farts, who always want to instill their clichéd and out-of-date notion to her. Again, what she says implies her childishness. She not only denies her mom’s apprehensions, breaking her heart but ignores the potential terrible consequence that complicated sex may lead to. How can such a self-centered girl say she is capable of becoming a mother, having her own family?
Once teenagers get married, they put themselves in a sticky position where a series of problem show up and need to be solved. Ironically, only when they face these troubles, they know the fact they are not as independent as they think. While encountering difficulties, teen couples may not have enough ability to handle that, and thus, tragedies happen. ”In Taitung County, the method of a young mom to teach her 2-year-old daughter discipline, is to grab her head and hit it against the wall. The next day, unfortunately, the poor little girl died.”(PTS) The mom in the piece of news is just 19 years old. She gave birth to her daughter at the age of 17. Their family’s economic situation has been bad for a long time. Her husband is a laboring worker, and spends most of his time working instead of accompanying his kids. Living this way, little by little, an original happy family ends up in tragedy.
People get married so early that they don’t even have financial ability to raise the family. Many of them can only earn very little amount of money, or rely on their parents. Some worse cases choose to rob people. If young couples live in this way for a long period of time, they must feel a lot of pressure and their emotion must be bad and down. Arguments and conflicts, then, take the place of the love they once had. Underage couples need to give up studying to support their family. In general, however, it is more difficult for the underage to find a stable job. First, their education is relatively low than those who graduate from colleges. In addition, even a graduate has problem finding a job in Taiwan, not to mention those who only have high school or junior high school educational background. Second, many jobs, even part-time, requires a minimum age of at least 18, which is another restriction for them to get one job. Without a stable salary, it is extremely hard to maintain a marriage. Delaying the marriageable age can give young people more time to think twice if they are really ready to get married instead of just from an impulse.
In addition to discussing whether teen marriage is proper or not, we should also make healthy and psychological concerns included, leaving common people’s bias away first. “An underage woman who has already had sex experiences, the chances that she will get cancers such as cervical cancer are 2.5 times higher than do adult women.”(Apple Daily, 2008) Despite the various motivations that drive teenagers into marriage, inevitably, the chances of having sex after getting married is high now that they become couples. Medical evidence also indicates that “the probability of too-early sex causing barren is 10 times higher than those who have sex later and do not infected by virus.”(Apple Daily, 2008) If one of couples gets ill, one needs to take care of the other, which is not an easy task at all. It is a torture not only to a patient herself but to her husband and family since it is a difficult and long process. If a man really makes his wife get cervical cancer due to his temporary lust, he needs to pay a lot to make up the mistake he made when he was too young.
Face-to-face interviews with nearly 25,000 women who were at least 18 revealed that 53 percent of those who had been child brides had some psychiatric disorder, such as depression or anxiety. Of the women who married as adults, that figure was 49 percent. Former child brides were also more likely to be diagnosed as "nicotine dependent" and with "anti-social personality disorder. (Reuter Health, 2011)
The above excerpt suggests that teen brides are more likely to be diagnosed with mental diseases. It may be because that both young wives and husbands need to deal with many household affairs and some other thing, which are burdens. When they see their friends, dressed up gorgeously, going shopping and have fun all the time with a carefree mind, they may feel unfair because could have enjoyed lives as others do if they did not get married so early. They may think why cannot do and buy whatever their wants at will; instead, need to worry about money and haggle over every ounce. Additionally, both of a boy’s and a girl’s roles change dramatically. Before getting married, their parents prepare everything for them, although they may consider them unnecessary. Overnight, however, they become the ones who need to take care of others. This shift is not easy to accept and to get used to. Gradually, both of you couple may suffer from psychological problems which may lead to further smoking and drinking which are as vents. No matter psychological diseases or its additive behaviors can worsen a marriage.
The two objective factors influence if a marriage will be happy and blissing profoundly. If a man really loves his lover, why can’t he just wait for her a bit longer until her body is mature enough? After all, marriage is a long road that you spend most of your life there.
People who disagree with the modification may say that time is changing and society is becoming open. Besides, humans in nowadays are more early-maturing than older generation. Why does law intervene? Now that more and more teenagers get married, we should accept the truth and go with the stream. Modifying the law cannot stop them or change anything. However, there are some logical problems. Humans are indeed more early-mature than before. Many girls have their periods around 12. Then does it mean that we should drop the marriageable age down to 12 because girls’ bodies are mature enough? Bodily mature does not mean mental mature. We cannot compare today’s situation with traditional agricultural society. They are totally different time and environmental background. In addition, we all know that teenagers cannot drink and smoke because they will hurt them, thus we make law to warn them not to do that. The truth is, still a lot of people drink and smoke before 18. So should we abolish the law? Law is set up to build a set of rules that people can follow, helping them distinguish the right from the wrong. Although some ones break the law, there are still a lot of people obey it. Modifying the marriageable age can deter some people from getting married too early, or at least achieve declaring effect.
The central challenge to my point is that how we can help those who are influenced by the modification of law. Women who want to get married at very ages are mostly lack of education, financial basis etc. The reason that drives them into marriage is not merely about love. Now that she is hard to make a living by herself, and happens to have a baby with a guy she thinks he is nice, why not she settle down with him? Marriage seems to be a good choice. In fact, teen marriage still has many difficulties mentioned previously, they need to deal with. When facing those problems, they may feel stressful, and even suffer from the marriage, but the plight is, there is no other choice left. So the fundamental way to avoid unhappy marriage is to give those marginalized young people help.
The modification of female marriageable age to 18 is the main law; however, there must be relative laws to support. Our government needs to offer enough welfare. They have already had maternity leave and parental Leave. In addition, government should further provide some allowance for them to buy baby stuffs and send kids to kindergarten. With these helps, teen moms can finish their studies; so that they can find jobs more easily in the future. They are no longer to rely on men, and still have ability to raise their babies and themselves. Although, undeniably, it’s harder for them to live lives than normal family, it can stop avoidable tragedies from happening. Of course, if a guy is right for her, others have no rights to oppose them, but under the premise that they are at least 18 years old, and both their parents agree with their decision.
Modifying marriageable age can prevent some tragedies mentioned in preceding paragraphs. However, society should not blame on those teenagers who cannot help but get married once they suffer from their marriage, or something bad happens. Instead, what we need to do is to give them a hand. Law is inactive and ramrod. Humans are not. People, who argue about the modification of female marriageable age, are usually not the very group facing the problem. Sarcastically, those who are really in need seldom speak for themselves. Thus when discussing the problem, a sympathetic point of view should be in place of critique, and political struggle.
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