"If you ain't got two kids by 21,
You're probably gonna die alone
At least that's what tradition told you."
-Kascey Musgrave, "Merry Go Round"
That's what tradition tells girls here in Oklahoma, the "buckle" of the Bible Belt. People start to seriously worry about you if you're not married by age 25. And gosh, if you have been married for any amount of time at all, it's only natural that you would begin making 15 babies as soon as possible. In other parts of the United States (New York, for example), most people don't begin thinking about marriage until their late 20's. Kids? Eh, maybe one or two in five to ten years.
I don't know which way I'd rather have it. I was 21 when I got married, and, true to form in Baptist Oklahoma, my husband and I started trying to get pregnant just a year-and-a-half later. I've never regretted our decision, but I can't say I didn't get annoyed when people from less conservative parts of the U.S. would look at me incredulously and ask, "You're how old?!"
I'm just thankful that, no matter where a girl lives in America, she gets to choose when to get married and who she wants to marry. This is obviously not the case in many places around the world, as evidenced in the video below.
"I did not want this man to touch me," says the 15-year-old girl, who was forced to marry someone three times her age. In countries like the one she is from, her situation is called an "arranged marriage." We have other words for those situations in the United States. Some that come to mind are "illegal," "pedophilia," and "child abuse."
Which is worse: the 50 percent divorce rate in America, or the lasting marriages in Asia and Africa in which one or both partners is miserable and can't stand the other person? Ick. That's like having to choose between spending your life in a dumpster or a landfill.
All I know is that the overwhelming majority of marriages in countries around the world (including ours) are not what they were intended to be. Girls like Sahira don't get a choice in the matter at all; we use our power of choice to call off marriages when, at the drop of a hat, we suddenly "aren't in love anymore." Marriage isn't totally about being happy all the time, but it isn't about being miserable, either. It's really about finding an imperfect person and then choosing to love perfectly, despite his or her flaws.
(View this and other videos on My WebTV: http://webtvs.filmannex.com/MaryRachelFenrick.)
