Child marriage
Stercus Tauri
Shipmate
in Purgatory
Someone raised the question of the age of consent. In the US, the unrestricted age of consent ranges by state from 16 to 21 (19, 20 and 21 are rare). The federal age of consent, is, I believe, 18, relevant if people cross state lines. The whole issue is confused by matters such as "Romeo and Juliet" exceptions, parental consent, court consent, whether one party is in a position of authority over the other, and so on.
Rather than add a diversion to the (former Prince) Andrew discussion, perhaps this might be added food for thought, under the headline Why Do We Allow Child Marriage in America? in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/01/opinion/child-marriage-us.html
More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage_in_the_United_States
According to the article, child marriage is banned in only 16 of the fifty states, with no minimum age imposed in some places. To me, this reads as legalised child abuse; another of the gaping holes in the American constitution that some of us never knew about.
On the surface it appears that our 8 year old granddaughter could be married in California. Any thoughts on this?
Comments
Unfortunately even some usually-progressive voices such as the ACLU are opposed to a federal ban on child marriage.
Your granddaughter would need parental consent and a court order. Name one judge in California who would issue such an order for an 8-year-old.
I'm not wild about laws that rely on "no-one would ever do that" to avoid being awful, but it does seem to be the case that California hasn't in practice married pre-teenagers in recent years. It's places like Kentucky and Louisiana that are the most troubling. It looks like a lot of states have reformed their laws since the detailed study of the data completed in 2017:
http://apps.frontline.org/child-marriage-by-the-numbers/
There are now only 4 states with no legal minimum (compared with 25 a decade ago), and a further 2 with the minimum at 15. All others are 16 or above.
16 remains the minimum age for marriage in Scotland, but that's likely to rise to 18 soon. Scots law has traditionally held that adulthood begins at 16 but that is increasingly out of step with international norms that consider everyone under 18 a child.
I suspect most of those who do marry at 16 or 17 are members of the Travelling Community where early marriage is still the norm.
One of the issues surrounding marriage at 16 in Scotland is that it provides an easy way to get round the age limit in England. The whole Gretna Green marriage industry arose from the fact that parental consent was not required for under-18s to marry here.
Pre-teens aren't being married in California, but thousands of girls ages 15-17 are, and it's increasing. Numbers through 2021 - California isn't in the Frontline data: https://calmatters.org/politics/2023/06/child-marriage-california/
The highest rates of US child marriage now seem to be - the data are still incomplete - in Nevada, Idaho and Utah. Why Nevada I don't know, but in Idaho and Utah I'd be looking at the Latter Day Saints pretty hard.
Source: https://www.unchainedatlast.org/united-states-child-marriage-problem-study-findings-through-2021/
You can't vote in the US if you're not 18, and you can't buy a drink if you're not 21. But yeah, in many jurisdictions you can be married well before that - and all too often it's just legalized rape.
I don't begin to understand their reasoning. Something about impinging upon teenagers' rights, which is baloney because all sorts of rights are reserved for adults.
Iirc the ACLU oppose state restrictions on marriage in general, which I can understand the logic of in terms of adults but not for children.
I went to school with the tail end of the large franco-ontarian families, with several classmates from families of 15 or so brothers and sisters. They often had grandmothers married at 15 or 16, and one of my French tutors had a grandmother married at 14. This took place in rural societies where babies meant prospective farm help and were not cost-line items, and early marriage was commended as a way to keep illegitimacy down and teenagers busy; a large cohort never went to secondary school.
With the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s and the modernization of Québec (and francophone Ontario and New Brunswick), and the availability of birth control, early marriage has almost totally disappeared.
My francophone friends told me that their agèd grandmothers express delight and envy with their grand-daughters' freedom (sometimes quite explicitly!!) but were still satisfied at the decades of work in raising a large brood. The grand-daughters and great-grand-daughters listen to tales of that time with horrified disbelief.
Under-18 marriages are apparently more common with Canadian-born people than with immigrants; the highest rates are on the prairies, possibly because of Mennonite and Hutterite and Old Believer communities.
Some years back I was working for a local council, and one of my colleagues was also one of the registrars. She said that the easiest marriages to do were when people from one of the travelling families showed up to get married, despite both bride and groom being 16 about 90% of the time. Since both sets of parents (and usually the grandparents too) had been married by register at 16, they knew exactly what paperwork was required, the parents came along to give consent, and there were no complaints about the compulsory waiting period between submitting paperwork and being able to be married.
For what it is worth, my sister-in-law was just under 18 when she married my brother. He had just turned 18. They had been together for 4 years through high school. If I recall, her 18th birthday was just three days away. She had to have parental consent. They have been married over 50 years now.
In Scotland and Northern Ireland the age is 16.
However, if a person normally resident in England and Wales marries under 18, anywhere, that marriage is void in England and Wales, irrespective of whether it would be recognised in the place where celebrated.
The law was changed in England and Wales from the end of February 2023, so as to protect minors from forced marriage, including marriages that might have taken place in countries where forced marriages are prevalent.
The Kristof article is behind a paywall.
If we’re going to be looking at religious groups in Utah, Nevada and Idaho with child marriages in mind, I think I’d be looking at the various Mormon fundamentalist groups rather than the LDS Church.
My grandmother in Kentucky was married at 13 (my parents had me when they were around 39, so there’s kind of a skipped generation there) in the early 1900s, not sure what year.
(Googled) Aha, 1921. She was 13, he was 26. (Possibly 14 going by the dates but I’ve always heard she was 13.)
Only about 32% of LDS males between 18-21 go on mission. See: https://www.deseret.com/1992/9/26/19006885/32-of-young-lds-males-serving-church-missions/
It has been that way since the 60s.
When they do go on mission, they or their families have to pay the full cost of the mission which is a two-year expense.
Yeah, upon reflection that makes more sense.
Figures I’ve seen suggest that 30+% of young Mormon men overall go on missions now, but that the percentage is much higher—80–90%—for young men from families that are very active in the Church. It’s pure speculation on my part, but I would suspect that young Mormon men from Utah are more likely than average to go on a mission.
My mum was 3 weeks shy of her 20th birthday on her wedding day. I, on the other hand, was 4 weeks past mine. Looking back further it seems that most of my ancestors married in their early to mid 20s, some of the men in their early 30s. I didn't spot any other teenagers but a lot of the marriage dates are missing.
Back then, age of parental consent was lower because I remember being in grade 7 (age 12 - too young to work I know but I was tall for my age and the money was very good and nobody was checking) and girls I knew who were in grade 9 were getting married to their high school boyfriends and living in a trailer on their parents' farm. That would have put them at 15 years old max.
The reasoning behind it was the very pragmatic kind of approach to life, sex and death on the farm - they were going to have sex anyway so the parents wanted to make certain it was done, and any issue from such activity, happened within socially sanctioned boundaries. I do recall one girl I knew was married at 15 to great ballyhoo and romantical fantasizing and then divorced at eighteen. I myself couldn't imagine being an 18 year old divorcee with two children but there it was.
I think that the legislation has changed since then, I think it's now min 16 for parental consent for boys and girls.
AFF
That said, in the US if one says “Mormon” without any qualification such as “fundamentalist,” LDS is generally assumed. Though I should also add that the LDS Church has been trying to move away from “Mormon,” and in my first post I was careful to use “LDS” rather than “Mormon.” In my response to Gramps49, unlike my earlier post, I was not as careful in that regard.