End child marriage? Good luck.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that child marriage is bad. Yes, it’s just wrong, on the simple moral level when an 11-year-old is pushed into marrying someone four or five times her age. But the practice causes plenty of harder-edged problems too — ranging from early pregnancy (the leading cause of death for girls aged 15 to 19 worldwide) to lost education opportunities and the psychological burdens of running a household from an early age. It’s commendable that there are so many organizations, both at the global and grassroots levels, that are committed to stopping child marriage. But now, thanks to the first ever International Day of the Girl Child, you can too! Here’s the hashtag: #DayoftheGirl. Problem solved.

Awareness is always fantastic, and so are opportunities to fundraise for worthy causes, but let’s be serious: You can’t simply demand that "child marriage must end." Countries can enact all the minimum-age laws that they want (India’s dates back to 1929, by the way), but that doesn’t mean they’ll have an effect. And there’s a more important point to keep in mind: There are deeply entrenched reasons why child marriage exists in lots of societies throughout the entire world. It’s not because people are inherently misogynistic.

Don’t get me wrong. Children shouldn’t be compelled to bear the burdens of marriage before they’re ready. But the reality is that this is something you can’t always petition a government to enforce. Child marriage is a cultural institution that has its roots in economics. We won’t be able to change that until people realize that they don’t need to marry off their children at an early age any more.

When people live in highly insecure conditions where it’s difficult to stay fed or plan for the future, they tend to create safety nets. It’s the same logic that pushes strangers to live together as roommates or to stay in soul-sucking jobs. You need to do certain things to get by. Child marriage forms relationships between families who can then depend on each other, sharing access to resources like food, seeds, or capital. This spreads risk among several families and reduces the chances of abject poverty and destitution. Personal happiness takes a back seat when an arranged marriage can support a family’s longevity. These alliances can be life-saving if drought or famine hits. Clans, villages, and regions endure by pooling their resources, and arranging marriages among each other’s children creates necessary partnerships.

Marrying off your kids is a fast way of making this happen. Many children who marry young don’t actually leave their parent’s homes or consummate the marriage for several years. Also, since daughters are ultimately going to leave their parent’s homes anyway, the length of time their parents have to support them decreases. When people live in very poor conditions, thinking of children as an economic burden makes sense in many ways. And when your life expectancy is 40, the definition of "childhood" is probably going to be different from what it is in the West.

Things are getting better for most of the world’s poor. Theoretically this means that they wouldn’t need to barter their children for a bite to eat. The problem is that, over time, economic practices become embedded into culture. And if everyone around you expects that your daughter is supposed to be wed to the richest suitor by age 20, having an unmarried one is a big social stigma. It’s a snub to family honor.

As long as these economic and social conditions exist, in other words, stopping child marriage is nearly impossible. Families who refuse to marry off their daughters off at an early age will have to be willing to endure mockery from the communities they rely on.

So yes, let’s educate people. Let’s convince them that child marriage is wrong. But let’s try to be smart about it. When that’s all you know and all you expect, you may not enjoy being told that your entire way of life is wrong. Everyone has pride, no matter how poor or uneducated. Serious change will take time, as families and entire societies adapt to the possibilities of new social norms. Yes, there are many stories of child brides who land in abusive marriages. But many girls who refuse to marry don’t necessarily have happy endings, either. They’re often condemned to live in (entirely unjustified) shame and social isolation, cut off from all networks of support. Unless the necessary social and economic institutions are in place to help young women, it’s highly unlikely that they’ll choose the single life anyway.

So, yes, let’s support civil society grass roots organizations through money and awareness. But let’s just bear in mind that this isn’t something that tweeting will solve.

Neha Paliwal is an editorial assistant for Democracy Lab. Her twitter handle is @nehapl