Forced Child Marriage Legal in U.S.

[tinytherese]

This is seriously disgusting. It's often done in order to cover up rapes, including statutory rapes. 

"Child Marriage – Legal in the United States

The minimum marriage age in most U.S. states is 18, but exceptions in 48 states allow those younger than 18 to marry. How much younger? Laws in several states do not set a minimum age below which a child cannot marry.

COMMON EXCEPTION #1: PARENTAL CONSENT

In most states, children age 16 or 17 can marry if their parents sign the marriage license application. Obviously, one child’s parental consent is another child’s parental coercion, but state laws do not call for anyone to ask the children whether they are being pressured into marriage. Even when a girl sobs openly while her parents sign the application and force her into marriage, the clerk has no authority to intervene.

COMMON EXCEPTION #2: JUDICIAL APPROVAL

In many states, judicial approval lowers the marriage age below 16, and many states do not specify a minimum age below which a judge may not approve a child marriage. Typically, states allow judges to approve marriages for couples whose ages or age differences should trigger a statutory-rape charge, not a marriage license.

A GLOBAL PROBLEM

Across the world, like in the U.S., child marriage and forced marriage disproportionately affect girls and women. Globally, 88 percent of countries set 18 as the minimum marriage age, but 52 percent of countries allow girl children to marry with parental consent. As a result, more than 650 million women alive today around the world – and one in five young women – were married as children, including some 250 million who wed before 15. Most live in South Asia or sub-Saharan Africa.

But too many live right here in the U.S."

Source https://www.unchainedatlast.org/child-marriage-legal-in-every-state/

 

"CHILD MARRIAGE CAN EASILY BE FORCED MARRIAGE

American children typically do not yet have the rights of adulthood; those rights are granted at 18 or older.

Children who are not yet 18 usually are not even allowed to leave home, whether to escape from parents who are planning an unwanted wedding for them or to flee from an abusive husband. In many states, children who leave home are considered runaways; police will take them back home against their will. In some states, children who run away can be charged criminally. Further, in many states, advocates like those at Unchained who help a child to leave home to escape a forced marriage can be charged criminally (this actually happened to an Unchained volunteer).

Besides, where would the children go? Most domestic violence shelters across the U.S. refuse to accept anyone who is not yet 18 (unless the child is with a parent or guardian). One shelter refused to accept an Unchained client a day before her 18th birthday. Youth shelters are not a solution: They typically notify parents their children are there and house children only for about three weeks while they work on a reunification plan. Nor are child-protective services a solution: Caseworkers typically point out that preventing legal marriages is not in their mandate.

Those fleeing a forced marriage often have complex legal needs, but contracts with children, including retainer agreements with attorneys, usually are voidable. Only the most generous attorneys who do not care about getting paid (such as Unchained’s pro bono attorneys) would agree to represent a child.

Perhaps most shockingly, children in the U.S. typically are not allowed to initiate a legal proceeding in their own name. This means, in many states, children can be entered into marriages, typically by a parent or guardian, with little or no say from them – and then they are not allowed to file for divorce or annulment in their own name or even to seek a protective order.

Most children who marry in the U.S. are minor girls wed to adult men. The girls face all the hurdles described here, while their adult spouses have no such handicaps. Think about the dangerous power imbalance that creates.

When children reach out to Unchained and learn about their limited options, many of them despair and turn to suicide attempts and self-harm."

Source https://www.unchainedatlast.org/child-marriage-devastating-consequences/

 

Email Your Congressman to End Legalized Forced Marriage 

https://www.equalitynow.org/end_child_marriage_us 

Petition Your Senators https://iwv.org/endchildmarriage 

Edited January 21, 2020 by tinytherese

[Hna.Caridad]

Thank you very much for bringing up this important subject.  I was on an airplane once with a woman from Pennsylvania who had gotten pregnant when she was 13 and whose family pushed/coerced her to marry the baby's father who was significantly older than she was.  Her pregnancy should have led to a statutory rape charge--instead it led to a marriage.  Fortunately for her, she was able to get a divorce when she was 19 and try to restart her life.  (Really, how do you restart a life after something like that?)  I did some research and was shocked to discover that her home state (Pennsylvania) currently has no lower age limit for marriage--if you can find a judge willing to do it, you can marry off your 6 year old (it's hard to tell the difference between "parental permission" and "parental coercion" when you're talking about child marriage).  Apparently, there's currently a bill stalled in the PA Senate that would set the minimum age at 16--still too young, but at least it's something.  

[PaxHominibus]

16 is too young to be married? I seriously disagree with that assessment. It was until only very recently that 16 year olds were considered to be fully-fledged adults, expected to work and contribute to the household, and able to make the kinds of decisions that all adults could make. A very interesting argument exists that it is the advent of adolescence, which previously did not exist, which led to the infantilization of adults. I will try to find the pitch and post it here.

[Dogtag]

16 is too young to be married in American society. There have been societies in the past, there are probably still cultures today, where the web of norms surrounded maturity, adulthood, and people's societal roles did allow for legitimate 16 year old marriage, but we have to use common sense when evaluating how these things work in whatever cultural framework people on this forum are coming from.

 

[PaxHominibus]

11 hours ago, Dogtag said:

16 is too young to be married in American society. There have been societies in the past, there are probably still cultures today, where the web of norms surrounded maturity, adulthood, and people's societal roles did allow for legitimate 16 year old marriage, but we have to use common sense when evaluating how these things work in whatever cultural framework people on this forum are coming from.

 

I don't disagree that most 16 year olds are ill equipped for anything approaching adulthood or, moreso, the tremendous responsibility of married life; but that is not the same thing as saying that 16 is too young for marriage, as a rule. Most 16 year old are, by a long distance, far too childish and immature for their age--so much so that we have accepted that this is normal.

We are not so far removed (80 years or so) from a time when 16 year olds were already proficient either in working a job or in homemaking skills. This has been documented very well by Ben Sasse in The Vanishing American Adult and by other sociologists of good will.

For my own part, I believe that this is connected intimately to the decline of multi-generational households and the advent of the nuclear family.

Edited January 22, 2020 by PaxHominibus

[tinytherese]

I can't wrap my head around how a clerk or judge would go along with wedding when the bride, groom, or both obviously don't want to get married. Even if they didn't show any sign of objecting to the marriage, why would it not occur to them to wonder if someone under the age of 18 is getting married willingly?

Why would a clerk, judge, or CPS worker not contact the police if one party is below the age of consent? You'd think that CPS would especially be concerned about this. How is it in the best interest of a child to be married against their will and raped? Why would the police knowingly send a child who is being forced into marriage back to their family who is doing this to them, especially if it's to marry someone who's old enough to be arrested for statutory rape?

It also doesn't make sense that you can get married while under the age of 18, but can't file for divorce or annulment until 18. 

Edited January 26, 2020 by tinytherese

[Ice_nine]

On 1/21/2020 at 7:41 AM, PaxHominibus said:

16 is too young to be married? I seriously disagree with that assessment. It was until only very recently that 16 year olds were considered to be fully-fledged adults, expected to work and contribute to the household, and able to make the kinds of decisions that all adults could make. A very interesting argument exists that it is the advent of adolescence, which previously did not exist, which led to the infantilization of adults. I will try to find the pitch and post it here.

EDIT: nvm