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.
No one is saying it's common. They're saying it shouldn't happen at all.
Weird.
(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").
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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://calmatters.org/politics/2026/09/child-marriage-ban-n...
Such a study needs thorough review for confounders, and direction of causation.
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...
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Roll tide...... I guess....
The limit is 16 in Colorado and Illinois, 15 in Hawaii, and no limit in New Mexico.
Might want to update your notes.
It seems like you would come to the same conclusion on the question of "how old you have to be before you can make your own decisions" on both issues.
an under-18 can not unilaterally decide to get sex change surgery in california.
Should people who are still legally defined as children be allowed to make a decision on those?
I don’t think this is factually accurate.
Sex-reassignment surgery (or whatever we are calling it these days) requires parental consent in California if the person seeking it is a minor.
So why shouldn't you be allowed to get married with parental consent in the same state?
I'm OK with a state deciding it either way, but I'm looking for a little consistency.
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.
im not in support of under-18s getting married, but, what?
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.
> 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.
EDIT: Can't reply: 'You're posting too fast'
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...
(I am also a small annual donor to the non profit performing this state by state advocacy work, no other affiliation)
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.
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.
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.
an under-18 can not unilaterally decide to go on puberty blockers either.
> The California Department of Health Care Services, a branch of Newsom’s administration, said Friday that state dollars will be used to reimburse providers of gender-affirming care for youth covered by Medi-Cal, the state version of Medicaid...
Gender-affirming care includes medical treatments that help align a person’s physical characteristics with their gender identity. Care typically begins with therapy and may progress to puberty-blocking medicine and hormone treatments, and in rare cases for adolescents, surgeries.
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/2026/09/29/california-to-fund-...
my comment was about you incorrectly saying minors can "decide that they want to have sex change surgery" (later changed to puberty blockers), which they cannot just decide to do.
If that's your true intent, what specific problem do you have with this surgery? If it's not with this specific surgery, what other types of surgery do you think we should ban for minors "for a little consistency"?
It's hard to reattach body parts once they've been removed.
One is permanently life-altering, while the other amounts to paperwork.
I was responding to someone "looking for a little consistency", so I'm asking some questions in that same spirit.
>I'm OK with a state deciding it either way, but I'm looking for a little consistency.
I'm not Californian, but in most democracies things default to "legal" until there's explicitly a law passed against it, or if a broad concept is already illegal then edge cases default to "illegal" until a specific exemption law is passed. In general, parental consent is required for all medical procedures performed on a minor, so I would hazard a guess that:
a) sex reassignment surgery on a minor falls under the broader category of "medical procedures you have to get parental consent for"
b) somebody was sufficiently bothered by the previous state of affairs with regards to minors getting married and the potential for harm[0] that they passed a law against it, but no such explicit ban has been passed for minors seeking sex reassignment surgery (yet?).
To me that seems wholly consistent with basic common sense, plus laws are notorious for lagging behind the times.
>I'm OK with a state deciding it either way, but I'm looking for a little consistency.
Why is consistency (parental consent vs not) in this matter this so important to you?
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
That being said, the law makes an exception for married couples.
okay, so we're back to marriage != rape.
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.
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.