Stories from within A narrative study focusing on females’ experiences, actions, choices and understandings of child marriage in Zimbabwe

Sammanfattning: The female child marriage research landscape in Zimbabwe concludes reasons, consequences, and solutions as a means to bring awareness. However, there is an absence in the current literature of an individual perspective focusing on rural females experiences of child marriage and a theoretical contribution that highlights their actions, choices, and understandings before, during and after the marriage in Manicaland. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine how females in Manicaland experience child marriage. Furthermore, how their actions, choices, and understandings can be understood via Social practice theory, Coping strategies and Sense of coherence. The methodology is a narrative-and fieldwork approach and the data was collected through eight semi-structured interviews and analyzed through a thematic- narrative analysis using the mentioned theories above. The findings indicate that females have limited knowledge of marriage and are limited in their choices and actions by gender structures. To escape negative events, they act via emotion-focused and problem-focused coping and follow gender norm and enter marriage. For many participants, marriage resulted in negative experiences but chose to stay due to recognition, dependence, and fear. Others had positive experiences as they gained love and safety, which eased their ability to adapt and accept their lives as child brides. When gaining a higher sense of coherence, some changed their actions and chose to leave their marriages and others chose to stay due to motherhood and socioeconomic dependence. The majority of the participants do not advise girls to enter marriage at an early age.