When marriage is the best available option: Perceptions of opportunity and risk in female adolescence in Tanzania

ABSTRACT

Global health studies typically characterise adolescent marriage as a fundamental risk to female wellbeing. In contrast, ethnographic research among communities ‘at risk’ identifies that early marriage is often viewed as an opportunity weighed against locally feasible alternatives. Addressing this contradiction, we document perceived risks and opportunities of marriage, positioning them among wider concerns facing female adolescents in north-western Tanzania. On the basis of these data, we then provide recommendations for global efforts to end the marriage of minors. Thirteen focus groups and 26 in-depth interviews were conducted in 2019 with female adolescents, young women and men, and parents of female adolescents from a semi-urban community where adolescent marriage is normative. Data were compiled to synthesise narratives of adolescent risk and opportunity. Marriage was viewed as an opportunity for adolescent girls, bringing benefits such as increased social status. Risks sometimes outweighed benefits of marriage, but marriage remained desirable when structural constraints, like poverty, limited feasible alternatives and when adolescents faced similar risks, like pregnancy, outside of marriage. We conclude that remaining unmarried does not shield adolescents from adversity, and campaigns targeting adolescent marriage via criminalisation, without diminishing other risks of adolescence, may further limit rather than expand options for adolescent girls.

KEYWORDS:

• Child marriage
• adolescence
• Tanzania

Acknowledgements

We thank the directors of the NIMR Mwanza, study participants and our data collection team: Yusufu Kumogola, Rebecca Dotto, Irene Mazanda, Ernest Sebarua, and Elisha Mabula. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation (Award Number: 1851317). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation [Award Number: 1851317].