DP3A Reveals Majority Of Child Age Marriages In Bandung City Triggered By Free Association

Illustration of the love relationship between children or adolescents. (Unsplash-Joyce Huis)

JABAR - The majority of early marriages in the city of Bandung occur due to promiscuity that leads to pregnancy outside of marriage. Lack of sex education is the main factor.

This was said by the Head of the Family Quality Improvement Division at the Bandung City Women's Empowerment and Child Protection Service (DP3A) Felly Lastiawati.

Felly revealed that until July 18, 2023, there were 76 requests for child marriage for the majority because they were pregnant. Meanwhile, throughout 2022, there are 143 child marriages.

"In the Coordination Meeting for the Prevention of Child Marriage, the Head of the Bandung Ministry of Religion explained that of the 76 dispensations, 10 applications were not granted. While the rest were given permission because the reason was already pregnant, hopefully there would be no further additions," Felly said in his statement, Friday, July 21, quoted by Antara.

Regarding the 10 dispensations that were not granted, Felly explained, because after being educated they resigned to get married.

"Usually child marriage occurs because parents are worried that if their child's association gets further away, rather than going too far, it's better to just marry her. Even though actually it can still be educated about the impact if they get married too early. One of them is that the baby who is born later can experience stunting. In fact, pregnancy at a very young time could risk her mother dying," he said.

Felly explained, in the city of Bandung there are four sub-districts with a fairly high number of child marriages, namely Babakan Ciparay, Bojongloa Kaler, Cibeunying Kidul, and Coblong. Where Babakan Ciparay is the highest with 12 dispensations for child marriage.

The factor causing it, he said, was because the function of the family was not optimal in providing care to these children, apart from education problems.

"In Babakan Ciparay, many children were immediately married after junior high school. They were not sent to a higher level because parents thought the school was just a formality. For cases like this, the role of schools through counseling guidance (BK) teachers who have a big task of educating children," he said.

Therefore, DP3A, regional apparatus, Ministry of Religion, and other stakeholders collaborate to continuously educate the public regarding child marriage.

"We are also assisted by Puspaga chaired by Umi Oded for counseling and educating not only from child perpetrators, but also from their families. This sex education is important, do not be considered taboo," he said.

Sex education

The same thing was expressed by the Pandawa Coordinator of the Bandung City Education Office (Disdik), Pathah Pajar Mubarok, who said that sex education should actually be given from an early age or at the PAUD level.

"For elementary and early childhood education, sex education is indeed included in the learning content, so it is not vulgar. For example, in PAUD we introduce the concept of self-security through the song: 'The touch is permissible' is a sex education. What can be held and what cannot be held," said Pathah.

Meanwhile, at the elementary school level, the role is emphasized more by the homeroom teacher. At the junior high school level, the Bandung City Education Office in collaboration with Medicine Unpad runs a "Great" program (healthy living with friends), with one of the intense junior high schools implementing the program, namely SMPN 51.

The Great Program is carried out twice a year, the first semester is taught about education in preventing drug abuse. Then, the second semester is about reproductive health material given when children are in grade VIII.

"We have been working with Medicine Unpad for a long time running the Great program since 2010. It contains preventive material in drug abuse and reproductive health in which there is a "sex education"," he said.

Pathah added that the role of parents is also very important in sex education, therefore, the education office also includes parenting (education conducted by parents) into the school program.

"We discuss it according to the needs, whether it's about sex education, bullying, or more priority matters. In the parenting, it is conveyed to parents of students," he explained.

Thus, things that schools and homes do can be in line. Because according to him, sex education is closely related to the mindset of parents as well.

"We invite, and urge parents to provide a direction. This is indeed our common challenge because it is not easy. For example, the mention of the male and female sex bodies is also carried out scientifically and it also needs a process," he admitted.

To see the success of educational education, Pathah said, there must be an evaluation both in terms of process and in terms of results. The easiest thing to see is the addition of cognitive aspects of children.

"What we need to improve is behavior, this has no empirical evidence. So we have just received the results of the evaluation from their knowledge (cognitive)," he said.

In addition to lack of sex education, he said uncontrolled use of social media was also one of the factors for increasing early childhood marriage. This is because the openness of social media has a tremendous impact.

"Social media is the main gateway for children to get information as wide as possible because there is no filtering. Supervision from adults at school and home also contributes to them. This is a challenge or our common task," he said.