America’s Child-Marriage Problem

I just don't know if you're going to get a whole lot of people trying to defend this as a tradition because it's just not one in the U.S. It is outside the norm, both contemporarily and even historically. I have done a lot of research in genealogy and I can tell you that I was surprised that the vast majority of people, male and female, get married in their late teens and early 20's. We have this false lore that "that was how they did things", but for the most part, it absolutely was not. I have ancestral lines that have been in this country since the 1640's (and it may go back earlier) and in my research, overwhelmingly, child marriage is just not a tradition in the United States. Maybe I've got this wrong but it seems like some posters are dancing around the idea that we are hypocrites in this country for "condoning' this as some sort of tradition and condemning it in other cultures. It is Just. Not. part of the cultural landscape here.

I was an statistical outlier, and if it does happen it should be a red flag for some other statistical outlier; such as abuse. It's not intrinsically supported by the culture; in fact there is a stigma associated with getting married as a teenager, especially for girls, and so if someone chooses to do that there may be underlying circumstances pressuring that choice that don't have anything to do with parents leaning on kids to get married. I think that judges should be mindful that there is certainly more going on under the surface and I wish there was a mechanism in place so that these kids felt like they have another way out besides getting married.

In my own family line, there is me at 16 and then there is my great grandmother who was married at 15. Both were unusual circumstances; in my case I was trying desperately to leave an abusive home, and my great grandmother was essentially given in marriage to a man twelve years her senior because he was financially responsible and otherwise, her family would have lost everything they owned. Her father was a drinking, gambling, nasty no-good son of a.... Fortunately for her, the man that she married was kind and stable. They all came from Czechoslovakia/Moravia so for all I know it could have been a tradition there but in the U.S... Nope, and your own statistics prove that. This is really uncommon, although, I do wish it didn't happen at all and some of those outliers that you mentioned are weird and horrendous.

I think we see numbers differently.

Where number of 3,499 children were married in New Jersey between 1995 and 2012 might sound like a small percentage of kids, in my view its 3,499 more then what should be!!

It is also hypocritical to talk about other countries, while we have something like this even possible in developed country like USA.

www.huffingtonpost.com...

www.independent.co.uk...

This kind of things should be prevented...

a reply to: SuperFrog

The article says this is a problem but there were 3499 people in 17 years. That's 206 people per year. Expanded to the entire population that's roughly 10,000 people per year. There's about 2.1 million marriages per year so we're talking about less than 1/2 of 1% of marriages, about 1 in 212. That's more than it should be happening but 99.96% of marriages aren't involving young children, and of those that are they're mostly people near the age of 18 in the first place.

Hardly an epidemic.

The only reason there is a "child marriage problem" is because we have extended the definition of "childhood" way past puberty. Historically--and I'm not talking 200 years ago but 200,000 years ago--people were considered "adult" when they reached puberty, and THAT'S when women were married off. This was of necessity because the combination of a lifespan that rarely exceeded 28 and a high infant mortality rate meant you only had a few chances to replace yourself.

These days we have prolonged "childhood" and invented "teenagers" to keep them out of the workforce and away from reproducing. To some extent this is also of necessity because today's workforce needs technically trained people, not just physical labor. Also, we expect young married people to fend for themselves. Unlike the past, there is no extended family under the same roof that would never dream of throwing their younger members to the wolves.

And when we are "shocked" when an 18 year old has sex with a 16 year old and force the 18 year old into jail and on a sex registry for life, THAT is the aberration right there because that behavior is completely natural and built into our genes as a survival characteristic. That we find this behavior abhorrent is simply a reflection of our contemporary social conditioning.

I am not arguing in favor of coerced unions or young marriages, but the fact is that has been the way of the species far longer than living in a puritanical America with its rather odd attitudes toward sex and marriage.

originally posted by: Aazadan
a reply to: SuperFrog

The article says this is a problem but there were 3499 people in 17 years. That's 206 people per year. Expanded to the entire population that's roughly 10,000 people per year. There's about 2.1 million marriages per year so we're talking about less than 1/2 of 1% of marriages, about 1 in 212. That's more than it should be happening but 99.96% of marriages aren't involving young children, and of those that are they're mostly people near the age of 18 in the first place.

Hardly an epidemic.

This article is a case study on how progressive mathematics to create an alleged epidemic. You know the other topic you see similar fudging of numbers? Gun violence, in particular, mass shootings and crimes committed with "assault rifles".

So I guess you guys don't see a problem with children as young as 10 getting married...

Interesting...

originally posted by: SuperFrog
So I guess you guys don't see a problem with children as young as 10 getting married...

Interesting...

No one said that... however, it is not an epidemic. One or a handful of cases, does not make an epidemic. The author doesn't even delve into why this marriage occurred. While I can't think of any reason a 10 year old should be getting married, it is certainly not unusual for 14 or 15 year olds to get pregnant. As stated earlier, these marriages are probably shotgun weddings due to a pregnancy.

The numbers from the article clearly show this isn't something that really warrants some sort of govt intervention as it clearly isn't happening that often.

Not epidemic? So if only 1 in 50 get murdered, why have murder laws? Should be fine to hack someone pieces, since its so damned rare.

In a world you ensure that horrible things do not happen to others. You Serve and Protect Children. You ensure there are no loopholes where grotesque abuse of children is occurring. You do that before you dot another i, or go to work, or go the mall, or watch a football game, because you're not a demon and don't want to go to hell, or be reincarnated and forced to go through that, because you're human right?



And I not only believe in strong federal laws protecting human rights ,but universal ones, global ones.

It wouldn't happen in Saudi either!

originally posted by: SuperFrog
So I guess you guys don't see a problem with children as young as 10 getting married...

Interesting...

No, there's a problem with it but there's no reason to be alarmist. We're talking about 178 cases over 20 years. Those cases shouldn't have happened but even an ideal society is full of minimal amounts of things that should never have happened. I'm very much against child marriage and I still just don't see a problem here that warrants fixing outside of laws removing parental consent for marriage for minors. But even that takes the risk with just hiding the situation as we now don't have official marriages, but we have families who treat them as marriage, and in my mind that is a much bigger danger.

a reply to: schuyler

Did you ever stop to think that part of what has lead to longer average life spans is the fact that women wait until they're a bit older to have children in the first place? In a world where child birth is very often fatal, doesn't it make sense to have a kid at 30 rather than 16?

originally posted by: deadeyedick
a reply to: SuperFrog
Srry the world will not revolve around what you personally feel is abuse.

Their is real violence taking place against some that can not stop it and what you have highlighted only takes away from real victims.

It is simple that if a person chooses to be involved in an act then that is not rape.

We have no child marriage problem

That's kind of missing the point, I hope you realise that. The age of consent was never meant to be some silly, stuffy rule that people are forced to adhere to because some old fuddy duddy decided it. It's It was meant to define the age at which the average person would be able to make an informed opinion as to whether they should consent to the wishes of someone else. Using your comment of "It is simple that if a person chooses to be involved in an act then that is not rape." is dangerously close to saying that having sex with a child of any age is ok if said child says yes, even if they aren't really aware of what they are saying yes to.

a reply to: Edumakated

Question is do we have to wait for it to become an epidemic??

Getting pregnant should not lead into marriage.

It is not question if this happens often or not, but why happens at all. It should not - not in developed world leading society.

originally posted by: SuperFrog
a reply to: Edumakated

Question is do we have to wait for it to become an epidemic??

Getting pregnant should not lead into marriage.

It is not question if this happens often or not, but why happens at all. It should not - not in developed world leading society.

That's an intriguing post, so are you less concerned with underage sex than you are with the age at which someone gets married?

originally posted by: uncommitted
That's an intriguing post, so are you less concerned with underage sex than you are with the age at which someone gets married?

John Oliver and Jon Stewart covered issues with (missing) sex-ed.



www.cc.com...

Second one is just priceless... how stupid you have to be to tell students to 'google it'?!