Under-aged Mothers: Curse for the Infants

If a girl becomes pregnant before attaining the age of 18 years and gives birth to a baby, then that innocent baby has to bear the burnt of the same. The babies who happen to have under-aged mothers are under-nourished, under-weight, under-sized and almost half-starved.This has been pointed out by Professor Anita Raj of the Boston University School of Public Health and is the effort of her research based on the data of 1,24,385 mothers between the age group of 15 years to 49 years. The National Family Health Department of India has provided the statistics to Prof. Anita Raj and the data is for the year 2005-2006. She has made a deep analysis of the data. Besides, Prof. Raj has gone through the case studies of 13396 mothers between the ages of 15 to 24years who gave birth to 19,302 children during a period of five years.The study points out that 67% of such infants are malnourished, 24% of such infants are under-weight and 22% of such infants are under-sized. If the mother is a minor herself, the baby has the more risk of malnutrition. The study also points out that 44% of the girls between the ages of 20 to 24years get married in India and a quarter of the same become mothers during this age. The study further revealed that if the mother is under-aged, then the infant mortality rate will be higher.It is unfortunate that India stands at # 1 position as regards the infant mortality rate of the babies between the age groups of 0 to 5 and that is despite the hue and cry of India being on the path of modernization and industrialization. It is high time, thus, that our Government must take stringent action against the child marriages. The state of Rajasthan, where the child marriages are quite common, should be asked to be very strict in this matter. The society should also be made aware of the results of the research and guided properly against this evil.