In recent years, the international community has increasingly directed its attention to reducing the prevalence of child marriage, which is defined as marriage before the age of 18. Child marriage has been shown to disproportionately affect young women in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, and to have a range of adverse health impacts, particularly for women. This special issue demonstrates empirically the complexity of drivers of child marriage, contributing to emic understandings of the circumstances in which families and young women consider an early marriage the most secure pathway. The special issue calls for moving beyond girls and families as sites of intervention, and beyond programmatic emphases on individual choice and ‘tradition.’

In this introductory article, we draw attention to the consequences of the exclusive focus on negative consequences of child marriage, arguing that this (a) obscures the complexity of the structural issues driving child marriage, (b) hinders developing understanding of (perceived) positive outcomes of a marriage before the age of 18, such as (short-term) physical and economic security, and (c) forms an impediment to efforts to identify alternatives to child marriage which can produce similarly positive—and more long-term—results. Rather than departing from the premise that certain choices are better than others, we call for research and interventions that seek to understand and respond to the broader context in which choices are made.

近年来，国际社会越来越关注减少童婚的流行，童婚的流行被定义为18岁之前的婚姻。事实证明，童婚对南亚和撒哈拉以南非洲地区的年轻妇女的影响尤其严重，并对健康产生一系列不利影响，尤其是对女性。该特刊从经验上证明了童婚的驱动因素的复杂性，有助于对家庭和年轻妇女认为早婚是最安全的途径的情况的理解。该期特刊呼吁超越女孩和家庭作为干预的场所，超越对个人选择和“传统”的程序性重视。

在此介绍性文章中，我们提请注意仅关注童婚的负面后果的后果，认为这（a）掩盖了导致童婚的结构性问题的复杂性，（b）阻碍了对（感知的）积极婚姻的理解18岁以下婚姻的结果，例如（短期）人身和经济安全，以及（c）阻碍了努力寻找童婚的替代方案，这些替代方案可以产生类似的积极的和更长远的结果。与其脱离某些选择要优于其他选择的前提，我们还要求进行研究和干预，以理解和应对做出选择的更广泛环境。