Child Marriage is STILL Legal?!

History is equally as fascinating as it is shocking… much like the present day! 🫢

Child marriage is just one of the things we think of as being ‘in the past’- like the ridiculous number of my ancestors who married under the age of 12 (watch my latest YouTube video for more on that! 🫣)- but unfortunately it’s still very much part of life in 2024, even in ‘developed’ countries like the USA…

So maybe we should do something about that?

Remember to register to vote and/or check you are still registered. Push politicians to pass legislation that could better the lives of young people ♥️

(Because it is absolutely not normal to allow someone to marry a 12-year-old, oof!)

#ChildMarriage #Ancenstry #ShockingHistory

[oliviawolcott]

technically, slavery is also still legal in the united states. people in prison can be used as slave labor. we're a fucked up country.

[hannahbarrett]

I have personal experience with the child marriages of the United States unfortunately. For 3 generations-My grandmother dropped out of school to get married at 16. To a full grown man who was in his mid 20s. My mother always claimed she got married “right after graduating high school”… but my parents anniversary was in March. And I’ve never heard of a school year ending as early as MARCH before. My father was older than her and lived right next door to her while she was growing up…she married the grown man next door. Ick.
Then when I was 15 I was “given” to a man in his 20s. I lived with him for 4 years as his “partner” before I finally got away.
Child marriage is not only legal in the US, it is a HUGE problem that a lot of people don’t realize is still so huge.

[tetsubo]

Not only is it still legal in the US, there are Republicans fighting to keep it that way. The party of 'family values' folks!

[courtney.p.s.]

There was a fight about it last year (2023) and previous years, but certain states are against it because they want self ‘determination’ for their laws. Cultural or not, it is something that needs to federally changed.

[saundraschaefer]

Depending on the state, tons of kids (always young girls) are legally forced into marriages with their rapists because there are companion laws that say it's not statutory rape if it's done by a spouse. It's quite sickening.

Parents have to sign off on the marriage. And they usually do because the person raping the kids are pastors or other (usually christian) religious leaders.

[sigrunludwig]

The US is also the only country in the world, which has not ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child...

[elle]

I've heard my great-grandmother was a mother by 13. I was like... Even for a different time, that's still too young??

[EHB-mvdd]

Ok so let me get this straight. I can (as a woman) marry a child and it’s fine but it’s a whole big deal to marry another consenting adult woman because it’s wrong, sinful, and innapropriate for kids? What is this country?!

[Trixie_Lavender]

I recently discovered that my great grandmother got married on her birthday. How cute. She was 16

[KowaiZuzu]

My aunt was 15 when she got married to a full grown man. Turns out he was a horrible monster. I find it shocking that they didn't know, but I think they knew and just didn't care.

[genwallpaper]

omg! my sister got into researching our family on ancestry and we found the marriage certificate of a great aunt. she was 14 and her husband was in his late 20s

[mysticangel]

PREACH, in many states there is NO minimum age requirement to be wedded/bedded… BUT is for divorce/healthcare access/banking or basically anything that child bride or groom (lets be real whats more common 😒) have anything beyond a childlike dependence on their spouse as they themselves cant act as an individual or adult.

[LetsLeaveSomeCoffeeRings]

It stems from back in the day, incredibly recent history mind you, where it was seen as more wrong for a child to be born out of wedlock, which lead to a socially forced marriage. It was most commonly teenagers getting married from a teen pregnancy.

That why divorce was so common in the early seventies because that's when "no fault divorces" were recognized, along with a lot of other social change for women's rights like not needing to just "be married" for your children. Because as you could imagine a lot of those marriages were not happy ones, and it wasn't uncommon for them to be straight up abusive. Because God forbid a child is born out of wedlock, Divorce spiked at the time because it was finally available to those who really needed it, and then eventually dipped/plateaued. But it's things like that that makes the "50% of all marriages end in divorce" myth still widely believed.

[katwitanruna]

And that’s why I’ll be voting like my life depends on it.

[timalice-]

I saw one politician say he voted against a child marriage ban because he knew a couple where they weee married at 12 and 13 and were still married 50+ years later. Ummm, would the wife have been able to leave and support herself?

I saw another give a speech talking about girls was being “ripe” 🤮 they really want those child brides

[ErynnSchwellinger]

People really don't beleive this is a real problem. It is. Some states on recent years have put in better minimum ages but unfortunately there remains no effective universal minimum age in the usa. That includes state laws, in case anyone was wondering.

[jennifers]

Some old ways of thinking and acting need to be left in the past.

[queenmotherhane]

It’s mainly because of people (mostly religious ones) who think that all sex outside of marriage is immoral, so teenagers are rushed to the altar. A Girl Scout in New Hampshire addressed the state legislature to request raising the age of marriage to 18, and that very conservative body basically told her, “Go away, little girl, and let the grownups talk.” 🤬

[SRCrane]

Unchained At Last has a lot of great information on child marriages. Many states have proposed bills that are shot down for the dumbest reasons—even in California, with a largely Democratic population. There's a stupid belief in the freedom of the child, but at the COST of that freedom being taken away by adults wishing to marry them and terrible parents who permit it. A Democrat in IL (Dick Durban) just proposed a federal bill that would undo much of the work UAL has done in 13 states, and making it nearly impossible to get the marriage age to 18 (no exceptions) in the remaining 37. It's sick and I'm tired of this being something states are pushing back against.

[elisakrivas]

Yup, that's what I said as a polyamorous person. I said something like "Gay marriage wasn't legal in all of the US until 2015 and polygamy, even consensual polygamy, is STILL illegal, but even in the US, child marriage is STILL legal!" I went on in my original post and showed the proof that I wasn't joking and it was real, and ironically, ever since that post, I've been seeing this content about child marriage everywhere. I'm not saying the discussion was popularized by my post, no, because I don't actually know that, but if it was (and it wouldn't surprise me, based on the timeline of this topic's popularity and the fact that I had to research it because it wasn't talked so much about yet), I think I want to acknowledge that this was originally intended to shed light on how conservatives love to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people and claim it's for protecting children when LGBTQ+ people tend to practice consensual relationships (not always, but generally, yes) but never say anything about child marriage that literally attacks and endangers children. I had no idea that my researched post could boom so much discussion, but I think it's important to emphasize that this popular discussion probably originated from supporting LGBTQ+ and polyamory since the timeline fits when I posted. Hey, I could be wrong.