UNDERAGE MARRIAGE

I have previously expressed my views on underage marriages however I was talking about it from a different angle. The angle where older men married underage girls. One of my major concerns was the emotional maturity of let's say a twelve-year-old girl going into a marriage with a man old enough to be her grandfather but it never for once occurred to me that it could be the other way round, a seventy-year-old woman marrying a boy of nine, too young to fully grasp any concept about life or to carry out his duties as an equal partner in a marriage. Although I will admit that I wasn't sure how to react to the article at first why should it be in my view, so wrong in many ways for a man and not a woman? Then I tried to look at it from a maternal angle until I saw the affectionate display between both of them which am sure the child doesn't fully understand yet. I believe this is a cultural practice in that part of the country but so is underage girls in an Islamic state. I am talking about this because I haven’t seen the same level of opposing reaction as I did with the men who decided to marry underage girls. Although there is clearly a ritual practice and according to the article, the boy would be free to marry a woman much closer to his age in the future unlike the underage girls, so one is left to wonder the purpose of the nuptial but more importantly why isn't there a hashtag campaign, an emotional outburst and parliamentary discussions to try and stop these kinds of practice.. or is it because the vulnerable in this case is a male and society fails to see them as such even when they are still children.