The United States is absolutely terrible when it comes to establishing laws on child marriage. In a country that comes down hard on statutory rape and labels many people as sex offenders, the lax approach on child marriage is unsettling.
The Atlantic reports that in places like Russia, China and Ethiopia, it is illegal to marry before the age of 18. As early as 2004, the Chicago Tribune reported about a study that found that “teen marriage in the U.S. increased by nearly 50 percent in the 1990s thanks to ‘the spread of abstinence-only-until-marriage sex education at American schools, a shift toward cultural conservatism among some teens and a growing fear among youngsters of contracting AIDS through promiscuity.’” The U.S. is a black sheep of underaged-marriage law in the International community. The United Nations Population Fund reminds everyone on its front page that child marriage is a “human rights violation.”
Between 1995 and 2012, at least 3,449 children were married in New Jersey, according to The New York Times. However, child marriage has two sides: There is a more widely accepted practice in the U.S., in which a teenager can get married between the ages of 16 and 18 with a legal guardian’s consent. This would account for most of the 3,499 aforementioned child marriages in New Jersey. But there is a darker side to child marriage as well. When a child is between the ages of 10 and 15, they can still be legally married by a judge in certain states, including New Jersey. This amounts to 178 of the child marriages in New Jersey that were mentioned above. And remember, this is over just a seven-year period.
Sadly, the number of these marriages is staggering. The NYT reported that “91 percent of the children were married to adults, often at ages or with age differences that could have triggered statutory-rape charges, not a marriage license. A judge in 2006 approved the marriage of a 10-year-old boy to an 18-year-old woman. A judge in 1996 allowed a 12-year-old girl to marry a 25-year-old man.” The statutory rape menace is especially important in these cases. The Chicago Tribune story, mentioned earlier, reported that a 14-year-old girl married her 18-year-old boyfriend in order to keep him out of jail.
Let’s go to the other side of the world. In Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa, the government has installed a ban on marriage with anyone who is younger than 18, as of February 2015. Reuters reported that Malawi, “a country where half of girls end up as child brides,” pushed hard for this legislation. Parliamentarian Jessie Kabwila said: “The country will for the first time clearly articulate that we are saying ‘no’ to child marriage.”
The U.S. is still not saying “no” to child marriage. As of today, the U.S. arguably has worse laws regarding child marriage than a country where, according to Reuters, “half of girls wed before their 18th birthday, and nearly one in eight is married by 15.” We rest our case.
