youth are either saying no to
traditional marriage or are delaying
this decision young people today want to
complete their education establish their
careers make sure they’re financially
stable maybe travel the world and once
these things have been achieved some
people but certainly not all will seek
to marry as a result marriage as an
institution has been undergoing radical
change for instance the median age of
first marriage for women in Canada has
increased to 30 and for men it has
increased to 32 today many young people
are able to support themselves
financially and they don’t feel the need
to get married to secure their economic
futures think of this as you may but it
does represent more choice and more
independence it is expected that overall
marry traits may decrease to as low as
70% in an unprecedented number of
Millennials are expected to remain
unmarried through to age 40 in our
Western culture if and when we choose to
marry it’s a conscious choice about who
we want to spend the rest of our lives
with it’s a choice about love about
fulfilment about enrichment and about
lifelong companionship these Western
perceptions about marriage are
incredible ideals but unfortunately this
is not a luxury that people everywhere
in the world enjoy in some corners of
the globe marriage is perceived
differently sometimes marriage is a
means of realizing one’s needs rather
than being about love and enrichment and
sometimes marriage is a means to an end
these ideas may seem a little odd to you
right now and that’s okay
to illustrate the dramatic contrast to
marriage in our Western context let me
share with you two stories this is Xena
Xena is a 14 year old girl Xena and her
family were displaced from Syria after
the war started and they settled in
Lebanon and not long after they settled
sane as parents informed her that they
had accepted a marriage proposal on her
behalf and before Xena knew it she was
married to a 47 year old Lebanese man
that she had only barely just met and
now at the age of 15 rather than go to
school Xena does the household chores
and she cares for her newborn son how
does this story make you feel did these
parents actually marry their
fourteen-year-old daughter to a man more
than three times her age that they
barely knew did they not know the Xena
ought to be in school that she’s still a
child and she’s not mature enough to be
a parent
did they not realize that this was
against Xena’s rights how does this
story make you feel does it make you
feel enraged and indignant let me
introduce you to Xena’s parents their
pre-war life in Syria had been very
happy they both worked and they owned a
home in a safe neighborhood Xena
excelled in school and wanted to be a
nurse or a doctor when she grew up but
as the fighting escalated they both lost
their jobs and so they decided it would
be best to flee Xena’s family
experienced discrimination in their
daily lives and feared for their safety
in Lebanon school fees were were
prohibitively expensive and classes were
taught in a different dialect of Arabic
that made it difficult for Xena to keep
up with her peers and so she was no
longer able to go to school unemployment
rates were extraordinarily high
the Lebanese government had refused to
set up refugee camps for displaced
Syrians and so zina and her family were
forced to live here in a tent in the
Baca Valley you will note that there’s
no electricity there’s no running water
and there are no toilets
zena’s family rents the land on which
the tent is set up but because they have
no money to pay they are obliged to work
for the landlord on his farm even
children as young as age 8 work on the
farm for as little as $1 a day just to
keep their tents and to have a little
money for food
so Xena’s parents decided that the best
way to protect her the best way to
ensure that she could live a comfortable
life was to marry her to someone who
zena’s mother explained we were
compelled to marry her since we couldn’t
put her in school and our financial
situation was terrible she has been
married for a year now and she has a
baby this marriage was forced upon zina
by her parents who believed it was in
her best interest after all it’s not
like a teenage girl would choose this
herself or would she let me share with
you my second story
this is Salma Salma is a 15 year old
girl who lives in Tripoli Lebanon she
lives in a one-bedroom apartment with
her family of six before being displaced
to Lebanon selma had wanted to become a
lawyer at the age of 15 selma herself
decided that she wanted to marry it did
take a little persuasion but she was
able to convince her parents that she
was ready for marriage and before long
she was engaged to a neighbor who had
lost his wife the year before and
left with two young children and now at
the age of sixteen rather than go to
school
Selma does the house chores watches her
stepchildren and is pregnant with her
first baby how does this story make you
feel did this fifteen-year-old actually
decide to get married didn’t she know
that that would mean giving up her
dreams of going to university and
becoming a lawyer did she not know that
having children so young would increase
her risk of dying in labor or delivery
did Salma not know that child brides are
increased risk of intimate partner
violence that the age in equality
compounded with the gender inequality
would mean that she’s unlikely to ever
have a voice in that marriage let’s get
to know Selma a little better and to
understand what her life was like that’s
a refugee Salma lived here in this
one-bedroom apartment with her family of
six selma had been pulled out of school
after there were credible reports of
girls being sexually harassed and after
two girls were abducted and raped school
had been the only reason that Selma ever
really left the apartment and so now not
only was there no school but there was
no extracurricular activities there was
no way to socialize with peers or
friends not even running errands unless
she was accompanied by a male adult
family member and so Selma’s life once a
promising and vibrant had been reduced
to sitting in the apartment discouraged
and dispirited selma explained after I
met my husband we got to know each other
for a week and then we got married my
parents had imprisoned me at home and I
was not allowed to go out I wanted to
get married to get away from my parents
treatment but marriage is even worse if
you could talk to Selma you would
realize how shelter
she felt in her parents home Selma felt
suffocated
she felt suffocated to the point that
although she didn’t know that man who
had just proposed she was willing to
take her chances on him rather than
spend her days imprisoned in the
apartment zena’s and Selma’s stories are
taken from research conducted in Lebanon
in 2016 in cooperation with the Abad
Resource Centre for gender equality the
research was investigating the
underlying factors that were
contributing to increased rates of child
marriage within the Syrian crisis if we
had asked zena’s parents do you think
it’s right or good to marry a girl at
the age of 14 they would have most
likely said no and yet the following
month or the following year they may
have found themselves in a situation
where the best option was to marry zina
at the age of 14 and if we had asked
Selma three years ago whether she would
be willing to give up her dreams of
going to university and becoming a
lawyer to marry an older man that she
didn’t even know and take care of his
children you probably would have gotten
one of those are you out of your mind
looks that teenagers tend to do so well
the problem with asking these questions
is that the world is not black and white
human beings are innately complex and
the environments in which we live are
complicated and ever-changing perhaps
even more so when you live in a refugee
setting so what we believe is right or
good is sometimes irrelevant when our
circumstances change and we find
ourselves in a situation that we could
never have imagined so in our research
we didn’t actually ask these or any
other questions about marriage because
it didn’t matter whether people thought
it was good or bad right or wrong what
mattered was that it was deemed to be
the best option at that
regular point in time instead of asking
direct questions we ask people to tell
stories storytelling is a natural way
for people to convey complex information
and a way for people to make sense of
their own and their communities
experiences these are the antidotes that
people tell their friends about the
strange thing that happened in the
library last week or about the
unexpected thing that happens at the
party last weekend so we asked girls
their parents and community members to
tell stories about the experiences of
Syrian girls in Lebanon and we then
asked participants to interpret their
own stories by plotting their
perspectives between three different
options on a tablet as shown above we
knew from earlier work that education
safety and financial resources for
issues that were of great concern to the
families that we were talking to in
total we collected fourteen hundred and
twenty-two self interpreted stories
about the experiences of Syrian girls in
Lebanon each of these blue dots
represents how an individual participant
interpreted the experiences in their
story as you can see there was quite a
bit of focus about safety as well as
about financial security zena’s parents
just wanted to make sure that she was
financially provided for and Salma’s
parents just wanted to make sure that
she was safe we started by talking about
how marriage is perceived here in Canada
as a deep emotional connection to a
partner of your choosing on Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs
most of us would place marriage at the
very top as we have seen though our
experiences of marriage are not
necessarily shared by others whose life
circumstances are very different
think about Xena think about her
family’s experience remember that they
have been displaced they lost their home
they were living in a tent and they were
struggling to find enough food all
Xena’s parents wanted was to ensure that
she had adequate warm shelter and to
make sure that she wasn’t hungry think
about Selma and her parents
remember that her parents were worried
that she would be attacked harassed or
sexually assaulted all Selma’s parents
wanted was to protect her to make sure
that she was safe and think about what
Selma herself wanted remember that she
was not able to leave the apartments
unless she was chaperoned by a male
adult family member Selma felt
completely socially isolated she was
just trying to secure that sense of
when you first heard the stories about
zina and Selma you likely focused on the
top of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs if
you were like me you thought how could
sameness and Selma’s parents take away
their dreams of going to university and
having careers how could they be so
short-sighted and limit their futures
but zayna’s parents were just ensuring
that her most basic physiological needs
were met and Selma’s parents were just
making sure that Selma was safe and
Selma herself was just securing that
sense of belonging and that ability to
socialize that she wanted so you see it
is through a very privileged lens that
we judged Zenith parents and Selma
herself for most of us are fortunate
enough that we will never have to make
these difficult decisions between
meeting our basic needs today and having
the opportunity to realize our full
potential in the future these parents
want the same things for their children
that your parents want for you and the
same things that I want for my children
the only difference is that we face
different circumstances and that these
circumstances dictate what
on the hierarchy we must focus our
attention as we reacted to the stories
about Xena and Selma originally we may
have thought the government should
introduce new legislation against child
marriage men who marry child brides
should be penalized or parents who marry
but these strategies are based on a very
limited understanding of the
circumstances that these families find
themselves in it’s not about penalties
and laws strategies to address child
marriage have to focus on the root
causes they have to focus on meeting the
basic needs of the girls and their
families because only once these needs
have been adequately met can we
reasonably expect people to focus on
higher-level goals on things like self
esteem and self-actualization because at
that point there would no longer need to
be a trade-off between meeting your
survival needs today and having the
opportunity to succeed tomorrow and
marriage would no longer be a means to
an end so the next time you come across
someone’s decision that you disagree
with or that you don’t understand I want
you to pause I want you to take a long
pause to think deeply about why people
make the decisions that they do given
the circumstances that they find
themselves in as we’ve discovered the
decisions and actions of others are
often based on circumstances that we
cannot understand it wasn’t natural for
us to think that Xena’s and Selma’s
marriages were in their best interest
but if we can take a step back to
understand and appreciate the motives
behind people’s decisions and actions
rather than jumping to conclusions and
making judgments then we will be in a
better position to help so I challenge
you the next time you hear a story on
the news that on
first glance seems absolutely outrageous
well the next time you hear about
somebody of a different race ethnicity
or culture who behaves differently from
you I want you to pause because at the
end of the day we are all human at the
end of the day we share the same basic
needs
zena’s and Selma’s families are striving
for the same things that we strive for
the only difference is the level of
needs that were fighting to fulfill most
of us are fortunate enough to be focused
on higher level goals but the needs
themselves are common and shared across
all ethnicities races and walks of life
so I urge you to make these small but
critical adjustments in your thinking
focus on our similarities and our shared
experiences remember your place in the
world and the place of others and be
aware of your own biases so that
together we can create a positive space for real and meaningful change thank you