This Book, Based On The 2004 National Consultation Organized By Human Rights Law Network, Haq, Establishes That The Incidences And Causes Of Child Marriages Haven`T Been Documented Adequately, And That The Position Of Law Itself Is Dubious.

"Updated with an epilogue ..."--P. [4] of cover.

An innovative study of the establishment of 'age' as a political category in late colonial India.

Love, Labour and Law: Early and Child Marriage in India is a path-breaking book on an issue that has not been analysed in depth for a while, perhaps since it does not affect the elite. Today, the child brides are usually from poor families. They are of 1517 years as compared to much younger brides in the earlier times. The book discusses why child marriages persist despite numerous legislative and policy initiatives to eliminate the practice. The chapters examine social and legal reforms to raise the age of marriage; contemporary education and health-related policy attempts at prevention; relationship of child marriage with child labour, sex work, human trafficking and other issues. Increasingly, there is greater resistance to marriages arranged by parents from the child brides themselves who can now access institutional and bureaucratic support. How hopeful are these developments? The book goes beyond a simple policy focus on elimination and provides a much-needed understanding of marriage and womens agency within the context of the Indian marriage system.

Child marriage has been given a pre-eminent place in agendas addressing “harmful practices” as defined by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. India leads the world in the number of women who marry below the age of 18 and is therefore of unique interest to international and national forums. Refusing simplistic labels like “harmful practice”, this book explores the complex history of child marriage as a social and feminist issue in India across different domains. It critically reviews a wide range of historical, demographic, and legal scholarship on the subject. Major concepts relevant to child marriage – such as childhood, adolescence, the girl, and marriage − are analysed in a comparative framework that uncovers the unnoticed presence of the practice in the USA and China. The volume questions existing approaches, analyses the latest data sources, and develops a new concept of compulsory marriage. A definitive study of child marriage in India in a changing global context, this book will interest scholars and students in the fields of women’s, gender and sexuality studies, childhood studies, development studies and the social sciences. It will also be of great appeal to all those working with civil society organisations, NGOs, states and international agencies in India, and globally.

Ending child marriage is not only a moral imperative—it is a strategic imperative that will further critical U.S. foreign policy interests in development, prosperity, stability, and the rule of law.

One-third of the world's girls are married before the age of eighteen, limiting both their educational and economic potential. Child marriage is damaging to global prosperity and stability, yet despite the urgency of the issue, there remains a significant lack of data on the subject. Senior Fellow Gayle Tzemach Lemmon discusses both the factors that contribute to and strategies that have proved effective against child marriage.

Most in the United States likely associate the concept of the child bride with the mores and practices of the distant past. But Nicholas L. Syrett challenges this assumption in his sweeping and sometimes shocking history of youthful marriage in America. Focusing on young women and girls--the most common underage spouses--Syrett tracks the marital history of American minors from the colonial period to the present, chronicling the debates and moral panics related to these unions. Although the frequency of child marriages has declined since the early twentieth century, Syrett reveals that the practice was historically far more widespread in the United States than is commonly thought. It also continues to this day: current estimates indicate that 9 percent of living American women were married before turning eighteen. By examining the legal and social forces that have worked to curtail early marriage in America--including the efforts of women's rights activists, advocates for children's rights, and social workers--Syrett sheds new light on the American public's perceptions of young people marrying and the ways that individuals and communities challenged the complex legalities and cultural norms brought to the fore when underage citizens, by choice or coercion, became husband and wife.

This is a book about embodiment and identity in the context of particular women’s lives in an urban setting. It is concerned with the development of a sociology of embodiment in the context of women’s lives in contemporary, urban India. The focus on embodiment is mediated by gender and class, two critical elements that constitute identity in relation to embodiment. The study is based on material collected from interviews with working class women in an urban slum and with professional, upper class women, with young women in secondary schools and from material from a women’s magazine.