People familiar with the Saudi culture and traditions know that marriages are carried in an undisciplined way. Many families marry off their daughters or sons quickly because they believe that marriage is the solution to various problems associated with adolescence. They rely on the philosophy that the institution of marriage is primitive and people can get married regardless of their age, qualifications and maturity.
For instance, teenagers start practicing strange habits when they first approach the age of puberty. They start smoking, drinking and staying out till late in the night. Their problems with people increase and parents find that marrying off the girl or the boy is a perfect solution to such problems.
Therefore, a woman who ends up marrying this type of a man and assumes the role of the young man’s parents. The idea is simply a way of relieving most parents who expect the wife to fix their troubled son’s behavior. It seems that parents want to marry their children to nurses or psychiatrists instead of a human being who dreams of a husband compatible with her intellectual and emotional state. This kind of a mismatched marriage creates many family problems. As a result there will always be tension in the relationship between the husband and wife that might end up in divorce or suicide.
There are many agonizing stories about young girls who are married to old men that have been rejected by mature women. How can parents do this to a young woman who hasn’t even fully grown up yet? Al-Watan newspaper reported recently about a 16-year-old girl whose parents married her to a 56-year-old man. It is only normal that this girl will end up tormented both physically and psychologically by marrying a man her grandfather’s age. Driven by frustration and depression, the 16-year-old pretended to be sick and demanded to be taken to hospital. When she arrived at hospital, she begged nurses to save her, but they couldn’t. After she lost hope, she pretended that she needed the toilets and ran away.
I honestly would like to analyze the father’s mental and moral state that allowed him to “sell” his daughter to a man 49 years her senior. How could the courts allow such a thing? Where is the human rights committee in helping this girl who was deprived of a bright future? She could have been a doctor, an author or a teacher contributing to the well-being of society. Instead, she was buried alive.
Another story I would like to share with readers is that of the 13-year-old daughter of a security guard who was married off to a 45-year-old school bus driver. Because she was so young to accept this insanity, she ran away only to be caught and brought back by the bus driver and the girl’s father. After continuously running away on a number of occasions the bus driver gave up.
It is obvious that these types of marriages are not done with the aim of building stable families. How can a 13-year-old develop a healthy family environment with a bus driver? How can an old man in his 50s or 60s fulfill the emotional and instinctive needs of a 16-year-old? We can’t keep fooling ourselves believing that these types of marriages are acceptable.
Marriage is a union of a man and a woman who may be able to join each other intellectually, psychologically and physically. Marriage is about creating a family and bringing up children who may become valuable individuals in our society. It can’t be counted as a joke for amusement or considered a way of sexually gratifying people.
I hope that society reacts positively to these types of marriages. Instead of having rules that prevent older people marrying young girls, there must be awareness campaigns educating people about marriage. Young girls must also be taught how to have self-confidence and how to feed their ambitions of wanting to build a better future.
(Maha Al-Hujailan is a medical researcher at King Khaled University Hospital in Riyadh. She can be reached at [email protected].)