Societal Dynamics of Early Marriages in Pushtoon Society; Evidences from Field Survey of District Mardan Khyber Pakhtunkhwa-Pakistan

Abstract

Early marriage is not new as it has been in practice from early life and still continued. To contribute to the existed literature on the aforementioned debate this study aims to identify the current prevalence of early marriages and its effects in Union Council Daftaru of district Mardan. Primary data were collected from randomly selected 80 male and female respondents by questionnaire through face to face method and analyzed by using frequency distribution and percentages in SPSS. Findings revealed that majority of the respondents were male, married and having different level of education and employment status, living in extended and joint family. Majority of the respondents know early marriages and having the perceptions that it causes mortality, suffer human life, leads to over population, stop future development, destroy individual freedom, leads to early tension and adversely effect on health of both couple. The effect of early marriages were the incidence of different disease arising from early pregnancy, females may tend to suicide, divorce, relation problems, sexual mal-adjustment, destroys individual freedom, human rights violation, causes poverty, negative effects on the offspring, childhood death especially in delivery, school dropout, women powerlessness, gender-based violence, autonomy and decision-making ability problems, domestic violence, crimes, engage in early economic activities, custom and form of slavery. The causes of early marriages were the rural cultural, become burden on family, broken family, marriage couple lost job opportunities, economic burden on family, increase young girl’s risks of HIV and AIDS, flourish hidden crisis and the couple have no mutual understanding.