What families look like in Nepal | Let's End Child Marriage

I am so happy to be working with CARE again. I have read so much about the organization, their missions, there purpose, their involvement on the ground world wide and on the stairs of the capitol in Washington D. C. 

This Father's Day, I just want to share a little about our family and families around the world. 

This is us.  

Wesley and I met while I was in college and he was working, both by choice. We knew each other for three years or more before we decided to make the commitment of marriage. We then made the decision that we wanted children and wound up with those two little rascals that we love and adore so much. We chose this typical life for American twenty-somethings turned thirty-somethings, but I would be lying if I didn't say these simple things we chose aren't hard. Daily, we do hard things, we struggle, we argue, we make the wrong choice. At the end of the day though, we are warm in our beds and we know we can feed our children tomorrow.

Our lives are SUCH a contrast to many families around the world. Through CARE, I got to learn about families in Nepal. Families in Nepal can start as young as 7 and 8 years old, at which point their parents decide who they will marry and it's mostly based on how much the other family can provide financially. We aren't just talking about girls being married off either, but boys and girls just starting their schools years are married and the girls often stop going to school at that point. There are many reasons, traditionally, why families begin this way in Nepal and you can read more about those here.

Photo Credit: CARE

Photo Credit: CARE

The boys often begin their duties as husband, father and provider shortly after they hit puberty. They are forced to grow up, stop going to school, find work and expand their family. While the legal marriage age remains 18 years old, Pannilal Yadev can’t remember much about his wedding other than the carriage he was carried in to meet his bride, 7-year-old Rajkumari. At the time he was a year older than her. They moved in together at age 13 and 14 and when she became pregnant with their first child, Pannilal dropped out of the 10th grade. 

Photo Credit: CARE

Pannilal told the Daily Beast, “I would have liked to have gone to engineering school. If we were allowed to finish our educations, Rajkumari and I would have learned about family planning. Maybe I would have gone to college. Forcing children to marry doesn’t JUST push them deeper into poverty and threaten their health; It crushes their ambitions—whether they are girls or boys.”

Now 25, Yadev is working for The Tipping Point, which is collaborating with CARE to fight child marriage in Nepal. 

Photo Credit: CARE

CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. CARE is committed to its mission to serve individuals and families in the poorest communities in the world. CARE seeks a world of hope, tolerance and social justice, where poverty has been overcome and people live in dignity and security.