Teen Marriage

Teen marriage is typically defined as the union of two adolescents, joined in marriage from the age range of 14–19 years old. Many factors contribute to teen marriage such as love, teen pregnancy, religion, security, family and peer pressure, arranged marriage, economic and political reasons, social advancement, and cultural reasons. Studies have shown that teenage married couples are often less advantageous, may come from broken homes, may have little education and work low status jobs in comparison to those that marry after adolescence.

Although a majority of teen marriages suffer from complications and often lead to divorce, some are successful. For example, in India, where teenagers are sometimes forced to marry by arrangement, more than 90% of these marriages will not end in divorce. In the United States, half of teen marriages dissolve within 15 years of the marriage. The rate of teen marriage, however, is decreasing due the many opportunities that are available now that previously were not available before. Presently, teen marriage is not widely accepted in much of the world. Teen marriage is most prevalent in culturally or geographically isolated parts of the world and it is decreasing where education is the focus of the population.