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| Photo by E. Diop on Unsplash |
There was a question Zainab asked so often that everyone in the house could answer it before she finished speaking.
“What do you think I will become when I grow up?”
On Monday, she wanted to become a nurse because she liked the way the women at the health centre calmed crying children with gentle smiles. By Wednesday, she had changed her mind. Her teacher had returned her English essay with a bright red Excellent, and suddenly she wanted to become someone who wrote books that people would read long after she was gone. On Fridays, when the evening sky swallowed the last streaks of sunlight and an aeroplane stitched a white line across the clouds, she dreamed of becoming a pilot. Some mornings she imagined standing in a courtroom as a lawyer, defending those whose voices had been ignored. On other days, she pictured herself as a doctor, saving lives, or an engineer designing bridges that connected communities. Sometimes she wanted to become a professor whose words inspired generations. Other times, she dreamed of becoming a successful businesswoman who would create opportunities for others.
She was twelve.
Changing her mind was one of the many privileges of being a child.
Adults laughed whenever she announced a new dream.
“You will figure it out,” they would say.
“You still have plenty of time.”
So she believed she did.
She did not know that somewhere between family conversations she was never allowed to hear and decisions she was too young to understand, time had already been taken from her.
It happened quietly.
Not with a loud announcement.
Not with a question directed at her.
Not even with her permission.
Long before Zainab understood what marriage meant, other people had decided it would one day define her life.
She continued to attend school, recite multiplication tables, race her friends home after lessons and fill the margins of her notebooks with little sketches of hospitals, classrooms and aeroplanes. Childhood has a beautiful way of protecting children from truths they are not yet ready to carry.
Until one day, it no longer could.
The whispers in the compound became conversations.
Conversations became preparations.
Preparations became a certainty.
Suddenly, measurements were being taken—not for a new school uniform, but for clothes she never asked to wear.
Visitors she had never met smiled at her a little too long.
Her mother began crying when she thought no one was watching.
No one explained why.
Children rarely question the adults they trust.
They simply notice that something has changed.
Then came the morning she reached for her school bag and her aunt gently took it from her hands.
“You won't be needing this today,” she said.
No one said she would never need it again.
Sometimes, the cruelest endings are the ones that arrive disguised as ordinary mornings.
Every child enters the world with permission to imagine.
One dreams of becoming a doctor because she wants to heal people. Another imagines standing before a courtroom as a lawyer, defending those whose voices are ignored. Someone else dreams of becoming a pilot, watching the clouds from above, or an engineer designing bridges that connect communities. Another hopes to become a professor whose words inspire generations, or a businesswoman who creates opportunities for others.
None of them dreams of having their future decided before they are old enough to understand it.
Child marriage does not begin on a wedding day.
It begins the moment a girl's dreams become negotiable.
It begins when adults decide that her future can be traded for survival, tradition, honour or convenience. It begins when a little girl is seen not as someone becoming, but as someone to be given away.
By the time the wedding comes, the greatest loss has already happened.
Her choice has disappeared.
Her voice has been overlooked.
Her future has already begun slipping away.
That is the quiet cruelty of child marriage.
It does not only take a girl's childhood.
It takes the woman she could have become.
It takes the doctor who might have saved lives.
The lawyer who could have defended the vulnerable. The teacher who might have inspired generations. The engineer who could have built stronger communities. The entrepreneur who might have created jobs. The leader who could have transformed her nation.
When a girl is married before she has the opportunity to discover who she is, society does not only lose a child.
It loses possibility.
That is why child marriage is more than a family decision. It is a social injustice whose consequences reach far beyond one household. The scars do not end with the wedding ceremony. Many girls never return to school. Some become mothers before their own childhood has ended. Many face health complications because their bodies are still developing. Some lose the confidence to dream because they spend years living a life they never chose. Others grow up believing that sacrifice is all they were ever born for.
And perhaps the deepest wound is this: A child who once asked, “What will I become?” slowly stops asking altogether.
Not because she found the answer.
But because someone else answered it for her.
Child marriage is often explained through poverty, conflict, harmful social norms, insecurity, or family pressure. These realities are important to understand, but they should never become reasons to accept a practice that steals childhoods. A difficult circumstance may explain why a decision was made, but it cannot erase the lifelong consequences for the girl who must live with it.
Ending child marriage means more than changing laws. It means changing the stories we tell about girls. It means believing that a daughter's education is just as valuable as a son's, that her ambitions deserve protection, and that her future should never be negotiated without her voice.
Imagine if Zainab had been allowed to keep asking that simple question.
“What will I become when I grow up?”
Perhaps she would have become the nurse who comforted frightened children.
Perhaps she would have stood before a judge as a lawyer.
Perhaps she would have flown across continents as a pilot.
Perhaps she would have become a professor whose lectures inspired thousands.
Or perhaps she would have discovered a dream she had not yet imagined.
She deserved the chance to find out.
Every girl does.
Sustainable Development Goal 5, Target 5.3 calls for the elimination of all harmful practices, including child, early and forced marriage. But this goal is about more than ending marriages before the age of eighteen. It is about protecting a girl's right to choose her own path, pursue her education, discover her purpose, and decide, in her own time, what kind of life she wants to build.
Somewhere today, another little girl is asking what she will become when she grows up.
She deserves the freedom to change her answer a hundred times.
She deserves the chance to become a doctor, a lawyer, a pilot, an engineer, a professor, or a businesswoman—or something she has not yet discovered.
What she should never become is a wife simply because the adults around her decided that her childhood had an expiration date.
At Shades of Us, we believe protecting girls begins with protecting their right to dream. Because every dream interrupted by child marriage is not only a personal loss—it is a loss to families, communities, and a nation that cannot afford to silence the potential of its daughters. Every girl deserves the chance to become who she chooses to be, before anyone else decides who she must become.
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