Drivers of Child Marriage in Pakistan
A qualitative study exploring how communities understand childhood, child marriage, and the social norms that influence them.
Highlights
This qualitative descriptive study on child marriage in Pakistan explores how communities understand childhood, the wellbeing of girls and boys, the meanings attached to child marriage, and the social, economic, and institutional factors that sustain or challenge it. Conducted across Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Balochistan, the research combined individual interviews, focus group discussions, workshops with children, social network analysis, and power mapping with more than 400 men, women, boys, girls, and key informants from diverse contexts.
Findings on the child marriage drivers highlight the interplay of social norms, traditional power relations, gender dynamics, and material factors (such as poverty and distance from schools). Parents and girls (and, to a lesser extent, boys) are under enormous social and financial pressure to celebrate a marriage soon after the child reaches puberty. These social norms are upheld through networks of parents, elders, religious leaders, and extended family members. Among these drivers, digital technology has become a new arena of both risk and transformation: families fear their “moral dangers” in ways that support child marriage (because children see on social media adolescents having premarital romantic relationships), but also recognize its potential for information, learning, and positive role-modelling.
