Supporters of child marriage have come out of their burrows to bark against the UAE judiciary’s verdict imprisoning and fining a citizen who incited the marriage of Moroccan minors.

In their view, the fifty-year-old man did not do anything wrong by marrying a minor or by promoting his office specializing in arranging such marriages.

They argue against the ruling, claiming that young girls have always been married off and have formed families without it harming them or destroying their societies. They also maintain that such marriages were considered acceptable and legitimate as long as the brides had reached puberty.

Perhaps they are right: perhaps childhood is indeed a fixed biological reality, not a shifting social and cultural concept reshaped since the time of our grandmothers, who were married off at the age of 13. Perhaps the world was right before the Industrial Revolution, when most societies classified children only as “young adults,” offering them no protection or special treatment. But why do they only extol the virtues of marrying minors to elderly men?

First, forget the school benches where their male children cling until they are older, requiring their care and support. Let them start sending their boys to work from the age of seven, as happened in the past, to earn their living by the sweat of their brows, and adapt to the return of their child with a severed finger or a bent back due to exhausting physical labor, and not despair if he finds a “mentor”—not in the academic sense—to insult and beat him.

Let them accept that their male child travels alone for work purposes, as circumstances once forced. I remember reading the biography of Khalifa Al Faqai, an Emirati captain or ship owner from the pre-oil boom era, who stated that he began working on commercial ships before the age of eight, taking him—without a companion, of course—from Ras Al Khaimah, crossing seas and oceans alone.

Let them get used to their male child—especially since he will be financially independent—making decisive decisions about migration, settlement, and life, as adults do. Here, I recall the story of Saudi businessman Mohammed bin Sayyar, who built a thriving real estate empire. When he was 10 or 11, in 1911 or 1912, he decided to stay in Al Ahsa, 500 kilometers from his hometown of Tharmada. His father left him alone, respecting his independence.

They should stop condemning the Houthis and the Iranian regime for recruiting children and sending them to battlefields; that was a familiar sight before societies became “addicted” to pampering male children and being overly cautious with them. Do they not realize that boys no older than 10 joined the Hitler Youth and rose to defend Berlin during World War II?

Unfortunately, the vast majority of outspoken supporters of child marriage do not possess the courage to return their male children to those outdated definitions of childhood. So do the hands of evolution only turn back to serve and justify the desires of pedophiles towards young girls?

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Annahar.