Social norms, agency, and marriage aspirations in Malawi

Abstract

This study evaluates whether community norms, caregiver beliefs, and adolescents' own beliefs and perceptions, focused on early marriage, predict adolescent marriage aspirations in a low-income context. Background: The processes that contribute to adolescent marriage aspiration formation have received little attention in low-income contexts, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. Understanding how marriage aspirations are formed is important because they are associated with critical education and health outcomes. Method: Using data that links Malawian adolescents (N = 2089) with their caregivers (N = 1452), gender-stratified ordered logistic regression models were used to examine key relationships. Results: Results show that community norms for youngest acceptable marriage age predict when boys want to marry, but there is no conclusive evidence that they predict when girls want to marry. This study also shows that adolescents who believe it is acceptable to marry at an early age are more likely to want to marry early themselves. Conclusion: Both community norms and adolescents' own beliefs are central to the formation of their marriage aspirations. Implications: This study recommends that programs incorporate adolescent beliefs and perceptions when designing child marriage interventions and measuring their impact. In addition, theory-driven measurement of community norms is encouraged to better evaluate their impact on both marriage aspirations and marriage age.

Cohort profile: the Adverse Childhood Experiences cohort of the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health

“…More than 55% of adolescent respondents and 70% of caregivers declared that the youngest age acceptable for girls to marry was 18 years or older. Critically, 97% of sampled girls declared that they aspired to marry at age 18 and above 24…”

Scope, range and effectiveness of interventions to address social norms to prevent and delay child marriage and empower adolescent girls: a systematic review

“…A large body of research has now established the importance of social norms in shaping child marriage7 8, particularly those related to gender and power, sexuality and life aspirations 9. Discriminatory norms perpetuate the view of marriage as the only viable alternative for girls, so working to transform inequitable gender norms and provide education and employment opportunities for girls can improve child marriage outcomes 10. As a result, addressing norms is a logical and relevant approach to preventing and mitigating child marriage.…”

“… 9 Discriminatory norms perpetuate the view of marriage as the only viable alternative for girls, so working to transform inequitable gender norms and provide education and employment opportunities for girls can improve child marriage outcomes. 10 As a result, addressing norms is a logical and relevant approach to preventing and mitigating child marriage. Norms are relevant in every region, for example, in Latin America 11 and in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.…”

Communication with Kin in the Wake of the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Recent research has estimated the incidence of family bereavement due to COVID-19 in the United States (Verdery et al 2020; Zahra, Kidman, and Kohler 2021) and in cross-country analyses (Snyder et al 2022) and the mental health repercussions of losing a loved one (Wang, Smith-Greenaway, et al 2022; Wang, Verdery, et al 2022). Other studies have focused on the extent to which stronger family ties (or tighter intergenerational relationships) may explain more severe outbreaks or diffusion of the virus across different populations, as found by Arpino, Bordone, and Pasqualini (2020) in Europe and by Dowd et al (2020) in Italy and South Korea.…”