Safety of early marriage in sub-Saharan Africa is a faulty presumption.

She has found that married adolescent girls face higher risks of HIV-infection than sexually active unmarried girls their own age. She finds three reasons for this. First marriage effectively means the end of condom use Clark said both because of the desire to become pregnant and because condoms are taken as a sign of distrust. Second sexual frequency rises dramatically with marriage. And third married girls at a given age have husbands who are older and more sexually experienced–and therefore more likely to be infected–than boyfriends of single girls. For all of these reasons Clark explained “girls fare far worse after marriage than before.” (excerpt)