It's really adolescent marriage (the threshold was moved from 16 to 18). Teenage marriages were still fairly common in the West in the first half of the 20th century. Vatican City had a minimum age of 12 on the books until 2013.
Europe is now more or less consistently 18 for parental consent, but marriages at a younger age are still permitted across the EU with judicial consent.
> Vatican City had a minimum age of 12 on the books until 2013.
I mean, are there any children who are citizens of the Vatican City, given its bizarre citizenship situation? (Citizenship is based, essentially, on _employment_, and lapses when employees retire; sole exception, AIUI, is retiring popes, who get a free pass.) I would suspect that this is a holdover from the Papal States (which bit the dust in 1870, when this sort of thing was more acceptable), which someone finally got around to cleaning up.
What they mean is the ability to marry at 16. It's not exactly a small child age, it's teen age.
I suspect that this norm lingers from times of stricter social norms and before the pill, when a marriage would be a way to avoid a scandal when the prospective bride were pregnant.
i don't think it had anything to do with lack of birthcontrol or fear of scandals, but rather with the religious definition of a marriageable age. there is also is also the biological definition which would make you marriageable as soon as you are able to conceive. but it is worth noting that apparently in the 19th century girls average age for puberty was 15 and for boys it was 17.
22 of these are "red" states: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North + South Carolina, North + South Dakota, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.
6 more are blue-leaning "purple": Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico and Wisconsin.
Only four are "blue": California (ban coming into effect 2027 as per article), Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland.
I don't understand why the ban cannot come into effect immediately. Like, wouldn't want to spoil someone's child marriage plans in the next year or so because it would be rude?
> I don't understand why the ban cannot come into effect immediately.
This is the default in Californias constitution:
> Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3) of this subdivision [Article 4, section 8], a statute enacted at a regular session shall go into effect on January 1 next following a 90-day period from the date of enactment of the statute.
There are additional legislative hurdles to enact legislation faster than that.
Kentucky had a bill up for vote this year, passed the senate but died in the house. One of the lawmakers specifically amended it to exempt cases where the child is pregnant.
> But a report by the International Center for Research on Women found that teenage girls who are married are more likely to live in poverty, more likely to drop out of high school and more likely to develop diabetes or cancer.
Such a study needs thorough review for confounders, and direction of causation.
I hate to upend your "lulz red states" Reddit zinger, but the fact is the law doesn't take effect until January 2027, so until such time there is NO age limit in California.
The limit is 16 in Colorado and Illinois, 15 in Hawaii, and no limit in New Mexico.
I have a personal theory that making first or second cousin marriage illegal would result in a great deal of complaining and likely legal challenges from certain groups that they're being discriminated against on the basis of racial/ethnic origin. Take a look at a global map of the percentage prevalence of first-cousin marriage.
I say this having discussed the phenomenon with friends who immigrated from Pakistan and all of whom have met first-cousin married couples that had one or more children with birth defects or mental disabilities that could very well have been the result of it.
If you immigrate to the US, there is an expectation you leave any barbaric (by American standards) practices home.
For example, dog meat is still legal in South Korea (until 2027), but trying that here would not be acceptable nor would any reasonable person think it's discrimination.
Not true, you can certainly enter into military service contracts and student debt obligations! And unlike marriage, there is no easy way to dissolve those.
The Findings section has a long, detailed list of child marriage harm. In short, preventing marriage before 18 provides for immense harm reduction in the aggregate and improved odds of life success. I’d push the age to 21 if I could. Rental car companies always had it right to restrict rentals to <25 age cohort due to frontal lobe development timeline.
(The US allows student debt and military obligations at an age when this cohort is vulnerable to systemically exploit young people, these should not be used as examples imho)
You assume harm reduction is everyone's goal. Some people just want to fuck young girls. Many of the current political party in power included. It's pervasive. Just grab them by the pussy and no one takes the victims seriously. If you go after them for their many crimes it's "lawfare".
Oh no, I agree there are predators out there everywhere and support anything that protects people from them. My comment tone is intentionally academic, as well as facts and evidence based.
(I am also a small annual donor to the non profit performing this state by state advocacy work, no other affiliation)
I also think you shouldn't be able to enter into those.
Honestly, if anything the gray area should work in the other direction: no entering into life -changing legally-binding contracts until you've had the full right to vote, work, and to self determination for...oh, let's say one to two years?
I don't get how child marriage can be legal. Like, yeah, they get permission from their parents. But does the fact that they're married negate other laws??? I mean, it's still rape. It's still like child abuse. Does marriage = emancipation?
if its not statutory rape before they get married, it doesn't suddenly become it afterwards.
and, as far as i am aware, it requires judicial approval right now. presumably, if it were a case constituting statutory rape, the marriage wouldn't be signed off.
this isn't about 9 year olds getting married to 30 year olds.
Statutory rape in California is sexual intercourse with anyone under 18. It’s a misdemeanor if the age difference is less than 3 years, but a felony if the adult is 21. So yes, a lot of these marriages would, in fact, constitute statutory rape.
That being said, the law makes an exception for married couples.
No age limits in Guam and Saipan. Age limit of 15 in ¿Kansas? according to a page someone linked to somewhere else in the thread. Also that site claims the youngest marriage in the US since 2000 was a ten year old.
In the majority of US states the age of consent is 16 but the general marriage age is 18 so there quite a few states where you can have a child marriage without it being statutory rape.
If anyone is curious, the age of consent in the US is 18 in 11 states: Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
It is 17 in 6: Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, New York, and Texas.
In the other 33, and also DC, it is 16.
It's interesting to compare to Europe. There it is:
18 in 3 (Vatican City, Turkey, Malta)
17 in 2 (Cypress, Ireland)
16 in 20
15 in 12
14 in 14
Like the US the general marriage age is 18 in most of Europe, but several countries allow exceptions for 16-17 with parental or judicial consent.
from what I gather from lurking reddit out of morbid curiosity, it's currently en vogue to brand age gaps as grooming, even when the younger party is in their mid-20's.
meanwhile in the real world, 60% of men under 30 are single vs 30% of women, because women overwhelmingly prefer older men and men overwhelmingly prefer younger women.
I've seen a pattern of judgemental women and men saying they are thinking of the children, while not understanding or not giving a shit, just how much hurt they cause those same children.
Our "justice" and "health" systems in New Zealand can cause lifelong harm to kids by black-and-white following the rules (at best, because wisdom is difficult or caring is risky).
You are just repeating the framing of the article. Next you'll mention a citation from a biased source.
Tht article doesn't mention the majority of those marriages between 17 year old female "children" marrying male "adults" (that are 18, 19 or 20 years old).
Another comment pointed out that the article is sensationalist.
If you bucket all the marries this law would affect, the 50 year old marriage is a far outlier. Most of the marriage gaps for these minors are < 1-2yrs.
Goes without saying nobody should be married before they're 18 (or probably 25, for that matter, but that's another story), but it seems performative and disingenuous to call this 'child marriage'. A child is a person who hasn't yet reached puberty - clearly that isn't applicable to, say, a 17 year old.
It would be more accurate (but of course garner less headlines) to say California has made it unlawful for a minor to get married.
This pits the developmental/medical definition against legal status. Nevertheless, under the technical definition a child is necessarily a minor but not every minor is a child.
Thus, saying that California banned minors from being married would cover both cases accurately and be less clickbait-worthy, while saying 'California bans child marriage' is not fully accurate because it doesn't convey the full extent of the ban (viz., minors).
As a side note in the legal profession when discussing wills and estates the term 'minor children' is used for a reason.
> In the state, there had been no legal age to wed, allowing children to get married as long as their parents consent and a judge signs off on the nuptials.
I don't even think the headline was sensationalist.
My point was that saying 'California bans child marriage' is less accurate than 'California bans minors from being able to wed', since the latter (arguably) encompasses a larger group of people. I don't think most people consider a 16 or 17 year old a child in the way a 5 or 8 year old is a child. Put another way, an 8 year old girl being forcibly married to, say, a 30 year old man (as happens in certain places in the world) is, I would put to you, much more offensive and viscerally disgusting than a 17 year old girl being married. Neither should be lawful, but child marriage conjures up images of actual children, surely.
> I don't think most people consider a 16 or 17 year old a child in the way a 5 or 8 year old is a child.
Did you read the article? There was no minimum age before this bill, so yes, they banned child marriage (by all definitions of it).
> In the state, there had been no legal age to wed, allowing children to get married as long as their parents consent and a judge signs off on the nuptials.
FWIW the situation in the UK, that the BBC doesn’t mention, is similarly muddy.
In England and Wales, since 2022, the minimum age is 18. Previously it was 16 with parental consent, which is the situation in (the rather more religious) Northern Ireland.
In Scotland the age is 16 and parental consent is not required.
So, well into the 20th century young English couples would flee across the border and get married there; most famously at Gretna Green, a town just inside the border.
Scottish marriages involving English/Welsh people under 18 are now not legal.
Campaigners always use examples of old men marrying young girls but that’s not common at all.
96% of children getting married were 16 or 17, and 85% of the adults marrying those children were 18-23. Not quite the horror show that campaigners push.
I agree that no one under 18 should be getting married, I just question their tactics.
It's clear to most people that a marriage between someone 50 and someone 14 is a serious power imbalance, coercive beyond the younger person's ability to consent, and nearly everyone in our society thinks it seems gross and wrong. But as far as I can tell such marriages have not been happening in California. Prior to the new law, the consent of the parents and a judge was required.
(Personally I think a marriage between someone 50 and someone 18 still seems bad. But the way our legal system works, once someone is 18 anything goes.)
It's less clear that a marriage between a 17-year-old and a 16-year-old or between a 19-year-old and a 17-year-old is inherently problematic. If, for example, the woman of such a couple gets pregnant, being married could give helpful legal protection/advantage, since most of our laws are written around the default expectation of married parents.
According to a news article from a few years ago, groups opposing a previous ban on child marriages in California included the ACLU (who claimed that it "unnecessarily and unduly intrudes on the fundamental right of marriage without sufficient cause") and Planned Parenthood (who said the law should "not impede on the reproductive rights of minors and their ability to decide what is best for them, their health and their lives").
A law saying 18 is minimum marriage age (pretty much all across the world), is simpler to implement that
Marriage OK if (p1>18 && p2 > 18) || (p1>16 && p2 <20) || (p1>17 && p2 <22) ..
Marriage is a civil institution that provides social advantages, and waiting till 18 isn't really a burden for a 16 and 19yo that want to get married, and get those benefits.
Yeah, I also question the distinction between a 17 year old marrying a 50 year old and an 18 year old marrying a 50 year old. Does your judgement suddenly magically get better after you turn 18?
At 18, you magically become fully legally responsible for your actions, while at 17 years 11 months 25 days of age much of the responsibility rests on your parents.
> Does your judgement suddenly magically get better after you turn 18?
What I see is that we shelter kids from reality because they're just kids, then these kids grow up to be irresponsible adults, then in turn we create more rules about sheltering "young adults" from consequences. It's a feedback loop.
I’ve thought, since I myself was a child, that the reason adults “shelter” kids from reality is that the adults would have to explain their actions to their children. Modern life is predicated on allowing injustice to persist that is incomprehensible to children. If we don’t keep this from kids, then we have to justify our own actions. Can’t have that! Not in this society. Maybe if society was good and just in any way we wouldn’t need to lie to our kids about it.
The thing you should be feeling now after reading that is shame.
Part of the age line is the fact that we're all admitting that keeping kids in the public school system is keeping them steeped in avoiding thinking for themselves and making their own decisions.
Adulthood used to begin at 13 or so across the world. That didn't mean a 13 year old was going to run the tribe or anything, but then, a junior developer doesn't run the software company either at 25. But adulthood meant having responsibilities, obligations, and being expected to make your own decision. Our school system is designed very specifically to prevent this from happening.
Given that, it does sort of make sense that IF you're being subjected to that sort of psychological abuse, perhaps we can't expect you to be able to make responsible decisions. Those who can generally are the exception, not the rule.
Perhaps rather than drawing all these lines though, we should be seriously considering getting rid of a school system that was modeled off of the Prussian model, which the Nazis were known to enforce, and which is still the ONLY option even in modern day Germany, regardless of how much the parents want to or are capable of home schooling children.
It's because of arguments like these that people like Stallman fell into disgrace. There's no logic in defending pedophilia and definitely no benefits in defending it, it doesn't matter if you think it's a good argument.
> In the state, there had been no legal age to wed, allowing children to get married as long as their parents consent and a judge signs off on the nuptials.
> There was also no mechanism for people under 18 to get divorced and many girls say they were trapped in abusive and predatory relationships.
Call me misguided, but I don't necessarily see 16 year old and 20 year getting married as equally problematic as the provided examples of 30+ year age gaps.
I think the real issue people are dancing around right now culturally is that these extreme age gap relationships are beginning to make everyone feel very uncomfortable. The difference between a 17 year old and and 18 year old doesn't make them feel less gross and exploitative.
You can drive a car at 15-16 most states, which puts other people's lives in your hands. You can get married between 16 and 18 depending on the state. You can join the army, take on debt, and do pornography at 18, all three of which will completely alter your life long term. You can drink, buy a gun, or enter a casino at 21. These feel someone nonsensically ordered to me. Seems like we should just pick one age for "you can now make and be responsible for your decisions" and stop talking about all of these weird edge cases as if we need the law to deal with all of them.
There is an argument that people should marry when they are (*both*) younger. More time to be fruitful and multiply. More time together, instead of encouraging high "body counts" and high-risk behavior. Delaying marriage is not as altruistic as it sounds.
It does help. Older parents tend to have better mechanisms for coping with stress, and are less likely to physically abuse their kids, as just two examples.
You’re gonna be out of touch with your kids’ generation basically no matter what.
I would not want 23 year old me raising a child, I was way too status and money obsessed then and could not provide my son with the model of what I personally deem a good man.
My wife had (too) young parents and it left lasting damage, they dragged her into interpersonal spats and their worries about money before she had the tools to properly process it.
At least for me it did, 10 years ago I was in the first year of my career so all I wanted was to climb, with no regard of what bridges need burning to make that happen. I'm now at a stage where I have is less to prove so those toxic traits have faded.
My Wifes parents on the other hand might not have grown up but on the other hand they would have divorced way sooner without a child forcing them to stay together
but then it's not the age that made the difference, but the focus in your life. you had other interests, and that also told you that it's not the right time for you to have children. not everyone has the same focus at 23. i wasn't interested in getting married at 23 either. but other people are. did your wife's parents want to have children that early, or was that unplanned? you don't need to answer, but i think that question makes a difference. i don't believe people chose to have children if they don't feel ready for it.
In my mind age and this shift in focus are at least somewhat linked. 23 year old me would be pissed at 30 year old me for not moving to a FAANG company and instead focus on marriage, those 7 years did teach me a lot of important things about myself and the world.
My Wife comes from a country where getting married and having kids before the age of 20 was very much the norm at the time, which led to a lot of people having children at a time where they were not ready for that responsibility.
would you mind sharing the country/culture? as i said elsewhere, in china people also marry and have children young, and they are ready. but they also have a lot of support from their parents and society. young couples normally live with their parents who help them raise the children and run the household, allowing the young couple to learn but also focus on work and career.
This would be Romania, specifically shortly before and during the fall of communism, there were all kinds of weird incentives in place to encourage the birth rate, for example military engineers (like my FIL) where able to get out of deployment to rural infrastructure projects if they had a (pregnant) wife or a newborn. So a good chunk of his unit had children in a span of give or take 4 months, which coincidentally was about a year after an upcoming deployment to build a dam in a godforsaken area of the country was announced.
30 year old me looks back at 20 year old me and wishes he had known better.
40 year old me looks back at 30 year old me and wishes he had known better.
50 year old me looks back at 40 year old me and wishes he had known better.
60 year old me looks back at 50 year old me and wishes he had known better.
I believe generally most people do grow and mature over time. Sometimes it's not that obvious externally or even internally without reflection, but it's a natural part of aging IMHO.
In tight/smaller communities having kids younger has one massive advantage: your parents/grandparents are actually young and energetic enough to help raise them.
Having active grandparents around to pass down wisdom and share the load beats waiting until your late 30s or 40s just so you can afford to hand your kids off to expensive daycare.
Losing that family safety net is a one reason people are having fewer kids now, and I really doubt it’s making society any happier.
china's TFR comes from the one-child policy. now abolished, the effects still linger. and it also comes from many people not getting married at all mostly because of financial concerns, or maybe women not interested in having a family at all.
what works is that when people get married, many marry young and when they have children the grandparents are around and help as described. i haven't seen anyone with children where the grandparents were not around to help.
Let me describe a few ways why child marriage should be prohibited without any exceptions anywhere:
1. When a minor marries someone of age, their spouse becomes their legal guardian until they become of age (or become emancipated, which is a difficult process generally). Why is that an issue? Well, in abuse situations, it can be incredibly hard for the minor to leave their spouse who is their legal guardian. It's not much different to runaway children being returned to their parents, even when their parents are the source of the abuse. Certain states are worse for this than others, so called "reunification states" where they will absolutely try and return you to your legal guardian unless there's clear and convincing evidence why they shouldn't;
2. A lot of child marriages happen so an adult can escape a statutory rape or rape charge as prosecutors don't tend to prosecute when it's a spouse. It should be noted that spousal rape only became a crime in all 50 states of the US around 2005 (IIRC) and this only really picked up steam around 1990 or so;
3. Because of this lack of power, it creates a whole host of other problems, such as exploitation to the point of trafficking.
Politically, preserving child marriage is a uniquely Republican issue [1].
When a minor marries someone of age, their spouse becomes their legal guardian until they become of age (or become emancipated, which is a difficult process generally).
that sounds totally wrong. not as in you are wrong, but as in this reality is bad. apparently, according to wikipedia at least in some US states, marriage automatically emancipates a minor, but not in massachusetts.
how does that protect 18yr olds from being forced into marriage? a 16yr old can not consent but an 18yr old can? i was hardly any smarter at 18 than i was at 16. in my opinion the problem is not the consent or lack thereof, or the age, the problem is the inability legally or maturity wise, to say "no".
with the right culture and support there is nothing wrong with getting married early.
the problem comes from arranged marriages, especially if there is a large age difference.
instead of setting a minimum age, which does not help much, it should be easier to refuse, and even if agreed, it should be possible for anyone under say 25 to simply have a marriage annulled or a divorce if there are obvious problems (such as the age difference).
but if both are young, then marrying young has its benefits. the younger we are the more adaptable we are, and that helps to build a relationship and makes it easier to get along.
the idea that we should be fully matured adults before getting married doesn't actually work, because living together is part of the process of maturing, and the older you are the more difficult is it to develop certain skills and attitudes that you need for a successful marriage.
in china, people get married much earlier than in the west, but they also have strong family and social support for doing so.
I think "until you received base education and an ability to work/sustain yourself" is a good cut off for woman.
What's disturbing about 16yo marrying 20yo is that in most cases the girl just moves from abusive household to another, now with additional risk of pregnancy (read: another 2 year of total dependence on the sole provider)
18yo is a good cut off not because everyone is suddenly smarter and know what's good and bad, but because by that age people have the ability to leave bad and go live on their own.
The real scandal is not so much that there are still 32 states allowing child marriage, but that efforts to end the practice are successfully resisted as in Wisconsin:
toomuchtodo | 19 hours ago
djvu97 | 19 hours ago
ImPostingOnHN | 18 hours ago
NDlurker | 18 hours ago
NewJazz | 18 hours ago
AzzyHN | 18 hours ago
gedy | 18 hours ago
NewJazz | 18 hours ago
GeekyBear | 18 hours ago
socializer | 18 hours ago
Europe is now more or less consistently 18 for parental consent, but marriages at a younger age are still permitted across the EU with judicial consent.
rsynnott | an hour ago
I mean, are there any children who are citizens of the Vatican City, given its bizarre citizenship situation? (Citizenship is based, essentially, on _employment_, and lapses when employees retire; sole exception, AIUI, is retiring popes, who get a free pass.) I would suspect that this is a holdover from the Papal States (which bit the dust in 1870, when this sort of thing was more acceptable), which someone finally got around to cleaning up.
nine_k | 16 hours ago
I suspect that this norm lingers from times of stricter social norms and before the pill, when a marriage would be a way to avoid a scandal when the prospective bride were pregnant.
em-bee | 15 hours ago
kazinator | 18 hours ago
6 more are blue-leaning "purple": Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Nevada, New Mexico and Wisconsin.
Only four are "blue": California (ban coming into effect 2027 as per article), Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland.
I don't understand why the ban cannot come into effect immediately. Like, wouldn't want to spoil someone's child marriage plans in the next year or so because it would be rude?
plandis | 18 hours ago
This is the default in Californias constitution:
> Except as provided in paragraphs (2) and (3) of this subdivision [Article 4, section 8], a statute enacted at a regular session shall go into effect on January 1 next following a 90-day period from the date of enactment of the statute.
There are additional legislative hurdles to enact legislation faster than that.
malfist | 18 hours ago
Aeolun | 18 hours ago
malfist | 10 hours ago
NewJazz | 18 hours ago
https://calmatters.org/politics/2026/09/child-marriage-ban-n...
everybodyknows | 17 hours ago
Such a study needs thorough review for confounders, and direction of causation.
walrus01 | 18 hours ago
Roll tide...... I guess....
sippingabonedry | 18 hours ago
The limit is 16 in Colorado and Illinois, 15 in Hawaii, and no limit in New Mexico.
Might want to update your notes.
walrus01 | 18 hours ago
sippingabonedry | 18 hours ago
Bizarrely, the map for cousin marriage is roughly the inverse of the age map, with it being permitted on most of the East coast, CA, CO, NM, AK, & HI.
walrus01 | 18 hours ago
I say this having discussed the phenomenon with friends who immigrated from Pakistan and all of whom have met first-cousin married couples that had one or more children with birth defects or mental disabilities that could very well have been the result of it.
sippingabonedry | 17 hours ago
For example, dog meat is still legal in South Korea (until 2027), but trying that here would not be acceptable nor would any reasonable person think it's discrimination.
tstrimple | 15 hours ago
kyleee | 18 hours ago
kspacewalk2 | 18 hours ago
avrong | 18 hours ago
zeroonetwothree | 18 hours ago
selcuka | 18 hours ago
teaearlgraycold | 18 hours ago
legitster | 18 hours ago
toomuchtodo | 18 hours ago
The Findings section has a long, detailed list of child marriage harm. In short, preventing marriage before 18 provides for immense harm reduction in the aggregate and improved odds of life success. I’d push the age to 21 if I could. Rental car companies always had it right to restrict rentals to <25 age cohort due to frontal lobe development timeline.
(The US allows student debt and military obligations at an age when this cohort is vulnerable to systemically exploit young people, these should not be used as examples imho)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31590741/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3621648/
tstrimple | 17 hours ago
toomuchtodo | 17 hours ago
(I am also a small annual donor to the non profit performing this state by state advocacy work, no other affiliation)
BobaFloutist | 3 hours ago
Honestly, if anything the gray area should work in the other direction: no entering into life -changing legally-binding contracts until you've had the full right to vote, work, and to self determination for...oh, let's say one to two years?
Plasmoid | 18 hours ago
jerkstate | 18 hours ago
NDlurker | 18 hours ago
john_strinlai | 18 hours ago
im not in support of under-18s getting married, but, what?
NDlurker | 18 hours ago
BobbyJo | 18 hours ago
john_strinlai | 18 hours ago
and, as far as i am aware, it requires judicial approval right now. presumably, if it were a case constituting statutory rape, the marriage wouldn't be signed off.
this isn't about 9 year olds getting married to 30 year olds.
vigilantpuma | 18 hours ago
That being said, the law makes an exception for married couples.
john_strinlai | 18 hours ago
okay, so we're back to marriage != rape.
vigilantpuma | 18 hours ago
belorn | 8 hours ago
em-bee | 5 hours ago
NDlurker | 18 hours ago
tzs | 18 hours ago
If anyone is curious, the age of consent in the US is 18 in 11 states: Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
It is 17 in 6: Colorado, Illinois, Louisiana, Missouri, New York, and Texas.
In the other 33, and also DC, it is 16.
It's interesting to compare to Europe. There it is:
Like the US the general marriage age is 18 in most of Europe, but several countries allow exceptions for 16-17 with parental or judicial consent.em-bee | 17 hours ago
vlyan | 17 hours ago
meanwhile in the real world, 60% of men under 30 are single vs 30% of women, because women overwhelmingly prefer older men and men overwhelmingly prefer younger women.
robocat | 18 hours ago
I'm not talking about older men here.
I'm saying that we need to be careful to avoid creating harm where there was none.
kazinator | 18 hours ago
robocat | 18 hours ago
Our "justice" and "health" systems in New Zealand can cause lifelong harm to kids by black-and-white following the rules (at best, because wisdom is difficult or caring is risky).
NDlurker | 18 hours ago
robocat | 17 hours ago
Tht article doesn't mention the majority of those marriages between 17 year old female "children" marrying male "adults" (that are 18, 19 or 20 years old).
Children versus adults is a common framing, that is repeated by even the less biased sources such as the BBC or PBS: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/interactive/child-marriag...
Crossing a legal line from a "child" of 17 to an "adult" of 18 doesn't have the implications about real world differences in wisdom we might hope for.
wallst07 | 11 hours ago
If you bucket all the marries this law would affect, the 50 year old marriage is a far outlier. Most of the marriage gaps for these minors are < 1-2yrs.
vigilantpuma | 18 hours ago
avazhi | 18 hours ago
It would be more accurate (but of course garner less headlines) to say California has made it unlawful for a minor to get married.
Also see the technical definition of child here: https://archive.org/details/mosbysdictionary09edunse/page/34...
This pits the developmental/medical definition against legal status. Nevertheless, under the technical definition a child is necessarily a minor but not every minor is a child.
Thus, saying that California banned minors from being married would cover both cases accurately and be less clickbait-worthy, while saying 'California bans child marriage' is not fully accurate because it doesn't convey the full extent of the ban (viz., minors).
As a side note in the legal profession when discussing wills and estates the term 'minor children' is used for a reason.
lazyasciiart | 18 hours ago
avazhi | 18 hours ago
EDIT: Can't reply: 'You're posting too fast'
lazyasciiart | 18 hours ago
itslennysfault | 18 hours ago
> In the state, there had been no legal age to wed, allowing children to get married as long as their parents consent and a judge signs off on the nuptials.
I don't even think the headline was sensationalist.
avazhi | 18 hours ago
selcuka | 18 hours ago
Did you read the article? There was no minimum age before this bill, so yes, they banned child marriage (by all definitions of it).
> In the state, there had been no legal age to wed, allowing children to get married as long as their parents consent and a judge signs off on the nuptials.
wallst07 | 11 hours ago
You could say the same thing, "California bans babies from marriage" technically true but wrong in context.
selcuka | 18 hours ago
This is incorrect. According to UNICEF, "a child is any person under the age of 18." [1]
> California has made it unlawful for a minor to get married.
There was no minimum age limit in California before this bill.
[1] https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention/convention-te...
dofm | 18 hours ago
In England and Wales, since 2022, the minimum age is 18. Previously it was 16 with parental consent, which is the situation in (the rather more religious) Northern Ireland.
In Scotland the age is 16 and parental consent is not required.
So, well into the 20th century young English couples would flee across the border and get married there; most famously at Gretna Green, a town just inside the border.
Scottish marriages involving English/Welsh people under 18 are now not legal.
xvxvx | 18 hours ago
96% of children getting married were 16 or 17, and 85% of the adults marrying those children were 18-23. Not quite the horror show that campaigners push.
I agree that no one under 18 should be getting married, I just question their tactics.
porkshoe | 18 hours ago
Weird.
jacobolus | 18 hours ago
(Personally I think a marriage between someone 50 and someone 18 still seems bad. But the way our legal system works, once someone is 18 anything goes.)
It's less clear that a marriage between a 17-year-old and a 16-year-old or between a 19-year-old and a 17-year-old is inherently problematic. If, for example, the woman of such a couple gets pregnant, being married could give helpful legal protection/advantage, since most of our laws are written around the default expectation of married parents.
According to a news article from a few years ago, groups opposing a previous ban on child marriages in California included the ACLU (who claimed that it "unnecessarily and unduly intrudes on the fundamental right of marriage without sufficient cause") and Planned Parenthood (who said the law should "not impede on the reproductive rights of minors and their ability to decide what is best for them, their health and their lives").
anilgulecha | 16 hours ago
Marriage OK if (p1>18 && p2 > 18) || (p1>16 && p2 <20) || (p1>17 && p2 <22) ..
Marriage is a civil institution that provides social advantages, and waiting till 18 isn't really a burden for a 16 and 19yo that want to get married, and get those benefits.
tasuki | 10 hours ago
malfist | 18 hours ago
No one is saying it's common. They're saying it shouldn't happen at all.
Aeolun | 18 hours ago
john_strinlai | 18 hours ago
nine_k | 16 hours ago
fragmede | 16 hours ago
anal_reactor | 13 hours ago
What I see is that we shelter kids from reality because they're just kids, then these kids grow up to be irresponsible adults, then in turn we create more rules about sheltering "young adults" from consequences. It's a feedback loop.
Henchman21 | 7 hours ago
The thing you should be feeling now after reading that is shame.
cykros | 7 hours ago
Adulthood used to begin at 13 or so across the world. That didn't mean a 13 year old was going to run the tribe or anything, but then, a junior developer doesn't run the software company either at 25. But adulthood meant having responsibilities, obligations, and being expected to make your own decision. Our school system is designed very specifically to prevent this from happening.
Given that, it does sort of make sense that IF you're being subjected to that sort of psychological abuse, perhaps we can't expect you to be able to make responsible decisions. Those who can generally are the exception, not the rule.
Perhaps rather than drawing all these lines though, we should be seriously considering getting rid of a school system that was modeled off of the Prussian model, which the Nazis were known to enforce, and which is still the ONLY option even in modern day Germany, regardless of how much the parents want to or are capable of home schooling children.
owebmaster | 10 hours ago
legitster | 18 hours ago
> There was also no mechanism for people under 18 to get divorced and many girls say they were trapped in abusive and predatory relationships.
Call me misguided, but I don't necessarily see 16 year old and 20 year getting married as equally problematic as the provided examples of 30+ year age gaps.
I think the real issue people are dancing around right now culturally is that these extreme age gap relationships are beginning to make everyone feel very uncomfortable. The difference between a 17 year old and and 18 year old doesn't make them feel less gross and exploitative.
BobbyJo | 18 hours ago
Aeolun | 18 hours ago
accountrequired | 18 hours ago
para_parolu | 18 hours ago
qwertytyyuu | 18 hours ago
Aeolun | 18 hours ago
vigilantpuma | 18 hours ago
You’re gonna be out of touch with your kids’ generation basically no matter what.
stnikolauswagne | 17 hours ago
I would not want 23 year old me raising a child, I was way too status and money obsessed then and could not provide my son with the model of what I personally deem a good man.
My wife had (too) young parents and it left lasting damage, they dragged her into interpersonal spats and their worries about money before she had the tools to properly process it.
Aeolun | 17 hours ago
stnikolauswagne | 17 hours ago
My Wifes parents on the other hand might not have grown up but on the other hand they would have divorced way sooner without a child forcing them to stay together
em-bee | 17 hours ago
stnikolauswagne | 17 hours ago
My Wife comes from a country where getting married and having kids before the age of 20 was very much the norm at the time, which led to a lot of people having children at a time where they were not ready for that responsibility.
em-bee | 17 hours ago
stnikolauswagne | 16 hours ago
unsnap_biceps | 17 hours ago
I believe generally most people do grow and mature over time. Sometimes it's not that obvious externally or even internally without reflection, but it's a natural part of aging IMHO.
john_strinlai | 18 hours ago
wallst07 | 12 hours ago
Having active grandparents around to pass down wisdom and share the load beats waiting until your late 30s or 40s just so you can afford to hand your kids off to expensive daycare.
Losing that family safety net is a one reason people are having fewer kids now, and I really doubt it’s making society any happier.
em-bee | 5 hours ago
vigilantpuma | 5 hours ago
em-bee | 2 hours ago
what works is that when people get married, many marry young and when they have children the grandparents are around and help as described. i haven't seen anyone with children where the grandparents were not around to help.
bryanlarsen | 6 hours ago
jmyeet | 18 hours ago
1. When a minor marries someone of age, their spouse becomes their legal guardian until they become of age (or become emancipated, which is a difficult process generally). Why is that an issue? Well, in abuse situations, it can be incredibly hard for the minor to leave their spouse who is their legal guardian. It's not much different to runaway children being returned to their parents, even when their parents are the source of the abuse. Certain states are worse for this than others, so called "reunification states" where they will absolutely try and return you to your legal guardian unless there's clear and convincing evidence why they shouldn't;
2. A lot of child marriages happen so an adult can escape a statutory rape or rape charge as prosecutors don't tend to prosecute when it's a spouse. It should be noted that spousal rape only became a crime in all 50 states of the US around 2005 (IIRC) and this only really picked up steam around 1990 or so;
3. Because of this lack of power, it creates a whole host of other problems, such as exploitation to the point of trafficking.
Politically, preserving child marriage is a uniquely Republican issue [1].
[1]: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/repu...
em-bee | 17 hours ago
that sounds totally wrong. not as in you are wrong, but as in this reality is bad. apparently, according to wikipedia at least in some US states, marriage automatically emancipates a minor, but not in massachusetts.
enoint | 12 hours ago
em-bee | 7 hours ago
em-bee | 18 hours ago
with the right culture and support there is nothing wrong with getting married early.
the problem comes from arranged marriages, especially if there is a large age difference.
instead of setting a minimum age, which does not help much, it should be easier to refuse, and even if agreed, it should be possible for anyone under say 25 to simply have a marriage annulled or a divorce if there are obvious problems (such as the age difference).
but if both are young, then marrying young has its benefits. the younger we are the more adaptable we are, and that helps to build a relationship and makes it easier to get along.
the idea that we should be fully matured adults before getting married doesn't actually work, because living together is part of the process of maturing, and the older you are the more difficult is it to develop certain skills and attitudes that you need for a successful marriage.
in china, people get married much earlier than in the west, but they also have strong family and social support for doing so.
NordStreamYacht | 18 hours ago
In some societies it's okay to marry 6-year-old girls.
Slightly more rational societies link it to puberty in the female. Indeed, their leaders have written entire books to justify such behaviour.
lesostep | 13 hours ago
What's disturbing about 16yo marrying 20yo is that in most cases the girl just moves from abusive household to another, now with additional risk of pregnancy (read: another 2 year of total dependence on the sole provider)
18yo is a good cut off not because everyone is suddenly smarter and know what's good and bad, but because by that age people have the ability to leave bad and go live on their own.
fmajid | 13 hours ago
https://wisconsinwatch.org/2026/06/wisconsin-child-marriage-...
uchiha7itachi | 11 hours ago
hackeraccount | 2 hours ago
tartoran | 23 minutes ago