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Child brides? Child grooms? Does age really matter when it comes to love? 

PHOTOS: WTF?! 8-Year-Old Boy Marries 61-Year-Old Woman To Make Ancestors Happy! 

We have to disagree with Aaliyah on this one, because it absolutely does. Especially when a grown ass person marries a child!

When news that an 8-year-old boy married a 61-year-old woman in South Africa, we were shocked, but it happens more often than you’d think. In a few cultures around the world, child brides are the norm and arranged marriages are even more common.

But the unions pose more problems than just shock.

Husbands have reportedly raped their child brides and while these girls, usually in their early teens, should be running around playing, they are birthing children and enduring abusive relationships.

But forced early marriages are a way of life in some cultures, performed as a way to ensure a young girl loses her virginity respectfully.

More than one-third of all girls under 18 are married in 42 countries, according to the U.N. Population Fund.

The highest number of cases occurs in some of the poorest countries, the agency figures show, with the West African nation of Niger at the bottom of the list with 75 percent of girls married before they turn 18. In Bangladesh the figure is 66 percent and in Central African Republic and Chad it is 68 percent.

Figures also show that child marriages take place in South Asia and rural sub-Saharan Africa. But in terms of absolute numbers, India, because of its large population, has the most child marriages with child brides in 47 percent of all marriages.

PHOTOS: Not Again! 12-Year-Old In Argentina Gives Birth To Twin Boys! 

Shocking? Maybe to us, but here are a few cases that we’ve heard about over the years.

1-year-old and a 3-year-old

She’s grown now, but when she was married, Laxmi Sargara was just 1-year-old! Her union was to a then 3-year-old child from another village and the two families promised their babies to one another. When Sargara was of age, she wasn’t feeling the fact that she was already married when she was a baby, so she took matters into her own hands and annulled the union.

17-year-old and a 70-year-old

In many rural areas of Africa, child brides are given away to pay debts. Uness Nyambi, now about 17, was married off as a child so her parents could finance her brother’s choice of a bride and now has two children and a husband around 70.

10-year-old and a 58-year-old

The man pictured above married his 10-year-old niece and justified it through the Bible. James Wallace Fall married the girl in Yellowstone National Park during the summer of 2001 and promptly began alternating nights in the beds of his 49-year-old wife and his new “bride.” The almost 60-year-old was arrested on child and sexual abuse charges.

7-years-old/17-year-old

In Afghanistan, a 7-year-old bride was forced to marry a 17-year-old groom. Police apprehended all that were involved in the shocking marriage.

8-year-old and a 61-year-old

Yep, the latest in child marriage cases and the first on this list to include a consenting child groom. Sanele Masilela tied the knot with Helen Shabangu, who is already married and a mother of five other children, because the ghost of his dead ancestor told him to. The marriage is recognized as a ritual, but is not legally binding.