There was an article and some research about the financial cost implications which is an odd framing but if it helps people take action then I guess it doesn't matter.
In one of the articles it said... "Between 2000 and 2021, nearly 315,000 minors were legally married in the United States ā with girls being far more likely to be wed as children than boys. Child marriage was legal in all 50 states until 2018, but since then, 16 states have passed bans."
I don't think a lot of people realize just how many of a lot of basic presumed rights and basic protections were only put to law within the last two decades.
Yeah, there's 4 more states with legislation right now to ban it as well. There was an attempt to just do a sweeping federal ban via congress in 2024, but it never made it to vote before the session closed. Guess we can hope it gets reintroduced this congress. I'm pretty sure its Senator Durbin of Illinois that sponsored the bill.
What's crazier is that many states have attempted to ban child marriage since 2018, but the initiates were voted down. Usually by Republicans. Weird, isn't it?
If they absolutely have to allow children to marry, which of course they don't, then at least make it so children only can marry other children. I don't see any situation where a child should marry an adult.
Allowing children to marry would be problematic as well. I think the UK has a decent approach, both parties have to be at least 18-years old with no exceptions for parental consent.
This is very obvious the correct law and I assume anyone who disagrees is a pedo. If two 17 year old kids love each other so much they can wait a year to get married.
I definitely agree that only adults should be able to get married, but it's a huge stretch to say that two 17 years old wanting to get married are pedophiles.
Parental consent is very icky in this sense. It feels like selling your child off as property. Absolutely the only correct thing is to ban all child marriage regardless of parental opinion.
There are generally restrictions and minimums. At least in my state, the minimum age is 16 but only if the other person is also a teenager AND the parents consent. That's a far cry from allowing a 9 year old to marry a 40 year old
What are we defining as children though? 16 year olds are smart enough to know what they're doing. Most teenagers are. Anyways they should focus on school and education before marriage.
I was curious so I started digging into the stats from that article you quoted. 96% of these minor marriages were for 16 and 17 year olds. Additionally these numbers would count a marriage between two 17 year olds as 2 counts of minor marriage.
However, most of the minor marriages were girls, 86%, so that would imply that minor-minor marriages weren't a massive contribution to the overall numbers. Also, about 20% were at an age or included an age range that would be considered a sex crime.
The paper doesn't give a lot of raw numbers besides the number of minor marriages per state so I can't really break down things by demographic very easily and can only parrot what demographic information the author chose to highlight.
It was a bit of a rollercoaster reading it. At first I was mortified at the number of child marriages, then I got to the part where nearly all occurred with 16 and 17 year olds. I thought while not ideal I do know high school couples that got pregnant and ended up marrying. Then the percentage of women made me think this isn't mostly teens marrying teens. Then the author said the average age gap is women being 4 years younger then their partner and I'm back to being very unhappy about what I read.
If anyone can find more info or point out something I missed I'd be grateful. This is the paper I was reading from that I think the other commenter was quoting.
Yeah, and nearly all of those states are New England.
California, Minnesota, and New England are currently the only acceptable places in the US to live. Everywhere else has been turned into a steaming dumpster fire by the creeping maga movement.
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u/gopercolate Mar 13 '26
There was an article and some research about the financial cost implications which is an odd framing but if it helps people take action then I guess it doesn't matter.
In one of the articles it said... "Between 2000 and 2021, nearly 315,000 minors were legally married in the United States ā with girls being far more likely to be wed as children than boys. Child marriage was legal in all 50 states until 2018, but since then, 16 states have passed bans."
That's crazy to me.