Seeing as how, nowadays, people are having more children before marriage, I think its a bad idea to make the age higher for marriage. if anything, it would relieve the government of all the food stamps and money they insist on paying to women who think its financially better to keep having kids out of wedlock cause the governments paying for it.
:: Lawnchair, check::
:: Popcorn, check::
Gawddamn my own wicked eyes.
Every day I am more and more glad to be far done gone of the unholy shit-showe that is 2019’s United States of America.
Even the mollyfocking Taliban must be saying “Hey America, we get that you’re the Great Satan and all, but really, TEN?!? C’mon bro, that shit is serious wack.”
In Scotland a 16-year-old can get married without parental consent, and can enter into a legal contract too (although with the latter there’s an age-related safeguard in the event of a dispute).
The number of 16 and 17-year-olds who do either thing is not large though.
But be honest. How often does that happen? You make it sounds like hundreds of 12 year old girls are getting married everyday. In fact, it is so damn rare is why it makes the news.
Whataboutism is a very ugly look when discussing child rape. As a country we ostensibly take a very dim view of some of the regressive practices tolerated elsewhere in the world and if we’re gonna be the moral arbiters we really need to clean the shit out of the corners of our own house first.
I would like to check the numbers on that statistic. for example break it down by age and I think you would find most at 16 and older. Break it down further by ethnicity and you would find its mostly certain ethnic groups.
Then remember how we value and celebrate diversity!
Correct.
So yes, the huge majority are 16 or older.
The Wiki cite talks a little about ethnicity -
Regards,
Shodan
My nephew was 18 and married a 16-year old (but they were in LOOOOOOOOOOVE!) and that was a complete disaster.
Of course, my first wife and I were in our mid-20s and THAT was a complete disaster, as well.
“C’est la vie, say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell.”
I didnt know it was common among Indians and Chinese.
But then, people say we should embrace all diversity.
Wait to marry until after your child bearing years and then continue to enjoy your contented, extravagant and carefree life.
It isn’t very common, just that when it does happen, it is more likely to be one of those groups.
In my area, we have a lot of Hmong immigrants, and it happens among them too. Less as they become Americanized, but no doubt that is true of any immigrant population.
I know a couple who got married when they were both sixteen. No pregnancy, and they are/were both non-minority - they just decided to get married. They are going strong now forty-some years later. He ran the service that collected dead animals from my father’s veterinary practice, and also had a contract with the county to collect road kill. Like Jeff the Knacker Man in the James Herriot books. Also like Jeff, fairly well-to-do. He says that doing jobs nobody else wants, or thinks of, is a steady income.
My folks were married when they were both nineteen. Their seventieth anniversary is in September. I was 26 when I married, and our thirty seventh was in May. But seventy years ago, things and societal expectations were different.
Regards,
Shodan
Had a high school classmate who had been married three times by the age of 25. One of many reasons why I never got married.
I think that getting married to someone you’ve known for less than two years is almost certainly a bad idea, there’s a lot of incompatibility that doesn’t show itself in a shorter relationship. But I don’t support making it a legal requirement, because that isn’t going to stop people from making bad decisions. It’s a lot like states that require a 1 year separation before a no-fault divorce - people engage in the separation to meet the legal requirement, but mentally ditch the marriage and go on with their lives while waiting for the technicality of the paperwork.
This isn’t correct - in the US federal and state governments have 21 year old cutoffs for other laws, notably firearm purchase/posession/carry, gambling and entering casinos, tobacco use and purchase, marijuana use and purchase, age of consent laws, and some medical procedures. The details vary from state to state, but there are definitely areas other than alcohol that have a 21 cutoff.
I’ve seen plenty of non-marriages end in horrible, bitter breakups so I’m not sure how having people live together and entwine finances, then go through a horrible, bitter breakup with less legal framework for separating it really improves things. If we’re doing anaecdotes, I know a couple that dated all the way from middle school to college, got married after graduation (at 22/23, so above your cutoff), and then had a complete separation six months after the marriage with a divorce following soon after.
I don’t have any strong beliefs about this. I would say many people might be better off waiting until 25 or so. But I know people who married much earlier and have had long and happy marriages. They say that to pick the best restaurant, walk past 37% of them and pick the next one which is better than those. That doesn’t really work with dating, though.
And cases of people that got married at 78, divorced at 80.
This is a completely meaningless statistic.
I agree with you even though I am an extreme exception to that rule. My wife and I got married after only knowing each other for 6 weeks. And no, she wasn’t pregnant and no, there were no cultural dynamics. We just had a whirlwind romance and decided to go to the courthouse and tie the knot. I was 19 she was 20.
That was almost 40 years ago!
If any of our 3 kids had done what we did I would have had the same conniption our parents had. Though we were both already out of their homes and on our own.
This line struck me as especially mind-boggling:
"Some religious conservatives worry that without access to marriage, pregnant girls might turn to abortion. "
Er… whatever happened to “teaching abstinence is all we need to do”???
To be fair, marriage at age 10 is pretty uncommon in the US.
Other countries, it’s not as rare. Annoyingly, that Unicef link doesn’t have figures for western Europe or North / South America.
Wikipedia has an articleon average marriage age, which shows the US at being mid-to-late 20s (and Canada being slightly higher).
What I was going to say.
In my family, we don’t mess around. I met my future husband at the first meeting for teachers in August. We got married the Saturday after our contract was done in June. 23 years ago. One sister called home from college to announce that she had met the man she was going to marry. In September. She was 19 when they married, and recently celebrated 33 years. Another sister was planning the wedding before I had ever heard of the guy. They met on a double date, and left their own dates behind. They’ve been married a little longer than we have.
Age or how long a couple have been together don’t dictate how a marriage will work. I suspect a lot depends on family. My parents have been together 54 years.