It gets worse: In the majority of theses US states where men can marry little girls, the age of legal divorce is a hard 18. As in, if a girl wants to leave her abuser, she legally can’t. Until she’s 18.
yep, that's what trapped me when I was married off at 16 to an abusive man. Couldn't go to a children's shelter because I needed a legal guardian and I couldn't go to a dv shelter because they didn't take unaccompanied minors
@@TheSinthea it’s a lot of bullshit. Genuinely. Even the places that are (allegedly) meant to help children, like DCFS, won’t take an unaccompanied minor in. Even if they’re a teen.
@@sydneyslaughter7163 it makes absolute sense if you are an abuser. And hashtag not all lawmakers or whatever, but normal people don’t tend to seek positions of power. Abusive people do though.
I'm really happy that, in 2015, a law was introduced here in the Netherlands preventing underage marriages. Any marriage where one party is below the age of 18 is not recognized, even if the marriage took place in another country. If the underage person was forced into the marriage then prosecution can take place, even if the act was committed in a country where it is legal.
The US needs to take note of that. Kids getting married to each other is one thing but at the same time I feel like it’s typically because their parents want them to get married. Fuck that Also maybe make the marriage age 21 since 18 year olds are dumb……so are 21 year olds but we let them drink so…
Jup, they just don't care. A friend at church got pregnant after rape (we were like 9). Everyone was more concerned about her not being a virgin anymore and her reputation being ruined than the fact that she was assaulted. In their eyes, the only solution to that "crime" (not being a virgin and "having sex" with someone other than your husband) is to marry that man.
"marriage exceptions" for statutory 🍇 exists almost in every country. That is the world we live in... Truly sad. In some places you can get in jail for shmex with 17 year old if not married, but can marry a 13 year old and not be in jail while 🍇her every day 🤦
Depends on the ages of the two people involved. In some cases, it's been two teenagers having fun first and then marrying each other. I'm personally familiar with two such cases. One couple divorced after a couple years, but the other just celebrated their 29th anniversary..... Often, there must be an age difference of at least 2 or 3 years for the older person to be charged, or the older person must be of a certain age to be charged.
the only time where that's "fine" if both teens consented to having intercourse and they got pregnant and if they geniuenly like each other, that's it as it'll be for the sake of the baby cause this way the child's future will be secured even in case of a divorce as child support and taking the name of the father will be absolute and there won't be a need to run around in court to prove paternity and getting child support after a long battle in court. other than this very specefic situation idk why on earth that shit would be legal.
@@Kiwiiismama If they genuinely like each other, they should like each other enough to marry after they're both 18. The rest of it sounds like the legal system needs to fix itself, not outsource fixing its problems by marrying off children. Also, why should the child have the father's surname? The father isn't the one who risked their life to bring the kid into this world.
My Dad was a juvenile officer in the early 80's. He had to attend a hearing for a 12 yr old girl who's parents wanted to allow her to marry a 30 yr old man . My Dad (being a father of 3 girls) was against the marriage and thought the guy should be facing charges, but it was allowed because the girl was pregnant. He became a parole and probation officer after that
@@xiChann Because in the Xtian religion, the woman is *always* at fault for the mans "sin". Yeah shes twelve but shes a *vile temptress* did you SEE what she was wearing!?
Imagine being the minister officiating the marriage and you see a child and think it's the groom's daughter only to find out that it's his BRIDE?! I'm surprised that ministers aren't flat out refusing to officiate child marriages.
Ministers in democratic countries are not above the law. If the law states the bride and groom are old enough to marry with parental consent, and that personal consent is granted, the minister does not have a further say in the matter.
One of my friends was married to her (now exhusband) when she was 13 and he was almost 30. She was from a very poor rural area in the US. I met her when she was 18, she divorced him in her 20’s. She didn’t even get to finish high school. Her parents just didn’t want to have to take care of her. I moved and lost contact with her. But she was doing well on her own the last time I had seen her.
@little_lion_heart9850 it's wrong. Being a dad to a 16 year old girl. Ya don't realize how odd it seems with that age and age gap. If she was 50 and he was mid 70s. The age gap sound so creepy. But 13 and late 20s sounds creepy as hell.
While I was in the Marines, I worked on and team that dealt with human trafficking (since it's a big income stream for the terrorist groups), and it's so much worse than people know, and it's EVERYWHERE. I'm glad you covered this, Simon. I can tell topics like this hit different now that you're a dad.
@zoesolanki961 a lot of the girls essentially get sold off to the man they end up getting forced to marry, and then they end up in the states. I did SOME work stateside, but most were overseas. One of the absolutely most disgusting things I saw was traffickers posing as Red Cross and taking women and children by the truckload.
@@zoesolanki961most people that are trafficked are not snatched up by a kidnapper on the street, it is far more common that a family member or close friend sells them off.
@@lisreads4872 to add to this the large majority of trafficked children in the US come from the foster system, often times it's their foster parents selling them.
Yeah but people in high school are gonna mess around. Also, do you remember that wave in that state of HS girls who made a pact to get pregnant? Quite a bit more to it. If you're talking statutory rape, that's a completely different thing lol. Then yes, 100% agree.
Been trying to call this out for years and it's shocking how few Americans know that many states allow child marriage - some states even having no lower age limit technically.
And at the risk of being 'that person' there should be ZERO exceptions given for child marriage. Culture, tradition, are poor excuses for causing near universal damage to those in them. In the same way we would not excuse rape or murder on the basis of belief alone, we should not be allowing the exploitation of children. Being frank this is not a complicated issue by any means, but a very straightforward one. Full ban, full stop. No excuses.
If I'm remembering correctly, there is a Federal minimum age, at least I know there is for consent. The State minimum age only takes precedence when it requires them to be older. Thus, there are no states with an exception for someone under 12.
@@RazmoudahYeah the federal mandate is a blanket slate for the states. Which.. we get a clusterfuck of opinions lol. Tbh though I feel like most Westerners knew this was happening. It's portrayed in the media quite often as well. So, "common" no. Amount of sympathizers... yes.
I still remember talking with the girl who sat beside me, in one of my grade 10 classes, about a week before the Christmas break. Whatever it was we were talking about, she mentioned that she would be turning 16, during that 2 weeks off. Conversation continued, she corrected me, she was not coming back after the break, even though we still had another month before the end of the semester. Her father was taking her “home” as she was going to be married to some 40ish year old man. All I said was “I’m so sorry.” I never told anyone what she told me. This is the first time I have ever said anything about that conversation. That was back in ‘90/‘91. I think of her from time to time, and I just hope that wherever she is, she is doing okay, and has somehow beaten all the odds.
I live in Greece. 20 years ago I had a coworker who at age 16 was forced to marry a man her parents chose for her. She was sent to Greece and married off. When I met her she was in her 30ies. She told us she had managed to go to the local hospital and get on birth control and the day she turned 18 she filed for divorce. Later she married a man she loved and chose and the had 2 lovely daughters together. I think she was raised in the USA, not Canada, but if the girls you knew was from Greece it's pretty sure she managed to leave the marriage, because society in Greece doesn't approve of forced marriage.
That really depends on where they live and how poor they are. If the wealthy man can afford to support her better than they can, and if he's paying them enough money that they can give her younger siblings a better life too, I can see why desperate people would do that. People make unthinkable choices when they're watching their kids starve. There are many records in the past of people selling themselves and their children together into slavery in exchange for being fed adequately. That's not legal now, but this is very similar - and often for the same reasons. What we need, aside from banning child marriage of course, is to address the poverty and the inadequate education that leaves this as a valid option instead of the girl getting a good qualification and a good job to support herself, and her younger siblings doing the same in turn.
@tealkerberus748 I agree 💯. I hate the idea that rich men use their wealth to subjugate women and children because the necessity of their existence relies on their nor having any options than to submit to these atrocious actions
@@donovangray4246 aha so first women should stop asking men their bank details and wealth details before going to date And women should accept poor men also Hypocrisy of women are unbearable The reason people make money is to progenate 😢😢😢😢
Yup, it almost happened to me. My narcissistic, misogynist father has no clue to this day that I know what he was up to...I'm in America, the country I almost ended up in was Saudi Arabia
When my younger sister was 15, she started dating a 25yro man. She thought it was so romantic that he waited until her 16th birthday to do the deed (the legal age of consent). Within a few months she was pregnant. If not for my mom hiding her birth certificate and me hiding her in my house in the country, she would have been a child bride to a violent groomer. In Georgia, you can get married at 16 w/o parental consent if you're pregnant. Also this man's mother (whom he lived with) was all for it.
@@agailparsonsHow was she protected? She got pregnant. She wasn't protected at all. Whether she was MARRIED to him or not is irrelevant. He still got to have his way with her - how does the fact that she wasn't even his wife make it any better for her? Why did they allow her to DATE him in the first place if they were against the marriage?
@@cmm5542 Stopping your child from being in an abusive marriage is protection. Ask KG-cw91e if her mom even knew she was dating an older man let, let alone having sex.
I'm Canadian. My Mum grew up just outside Toronto. She was first married at 15 with her dad's consent. Her mother fought it and they went to court, where the judge granted the marriage & told my grandmother to mind her husband.
You don't give your age...I was 15 in 1982. A teen a met during a student council "swap day" with another high school was married with one child, and pregnant with her second. She was forced to "confess" her sin of pre-marital sex before her church, then marry the father of the child who was 16. Her parents kicked her out of the house, so she was forced to live with her husband's family. They blamed her for "ruining" their son's future. At no point was he forced to confess his sin of premarital sex. That was the moment I realized all religions were designed to allow MEN to control the sexuality of women.
I remember a girl in my class got married at 17. Her husband was 30+ years old at the time. This was in Niagara falls ontario, back in 2001. She never had a real childhood and is severely depressed on Facebook all the time. She's got a bunch of kids and living out in Alberta now. It's sad.
@sarina1234ful wow, I wonder what the story was there. In my mum's case, my grandfather genuinely believed mum would have a better life. The groom was 17, he was a milkman, and as teenagers they were both convinced they were in love, and it was one less mouth for Papa to feed, and being a milkman came w a regular wage and a pension back then.
My stepmother was married at 14 in Texas. At the time, married girls were expelled from school. She wasn't pregnant at the time, she just wanted to get away from an abusive father. By 18 she was a divorced mom with an 8th grade education.
Why would you expell a girl for being pregnant? Like she's already in an obviously bad situation, why would you take away her biggest chance at bettering her life and getting an education that helps her get employment etc further down the line?
@@henkkahenrik4183 Because brainless drones make more brainless drones to do more brainless jobs... At least that is the logic a certain country starting with an R lives by in terms of these types of initiatives, y'know the one that claims to be the enemy of the US but continuously does identical things to certain states-
When I was 15, we had to have a permission slip signed by our parents. A girl raised her hand and said she lived with her husband, not her parents, so could he sign it? Utah, folks! Guess the minimum age is now 16, huh?
Well that’s just the tip of the Utah iceberg. I was supposed to get married at 15. The day I turned 15. My friends kept me hid for months after I decided not to. He was 24.
And if I remember correctly, in many states you can get married as a minor with parental consent, but you cannot get divorced without formal emancipation, court approvial, or an appointed guardian as it is considered a contract and minors can't legally enter contracts... so that's "fun".
I live in the US and both my grandmothers were child brides. My maternal grandma was excited to get married at 16 to my 19 year old grandpa, while my other grandma was 15 when she married my 41 year old grandpa and it was against her will, she was forced to by her parents. When I was a kid in the early 1990s I remember going to my cousin's wedding, she was just 16 because her parents gave permission to let her marry that young. I attended another cousin's wedding in the early 1990s who was 17 and pregnant and her new husband was in his late 20s or early 30s. I think child marriage is just so effed up.
Depending on how old they are and what state they're from, it's quite possible that both of your maternal grandparents were considered minors. Back then anyone under 21 had to have a parental consent.
It's not just seeing children as ready to marry, it's seeing them (especially girls) as property that can be distributed as desired by their parents. The USA has repeatedly refused to ratify the UNs children's bill of rights because it is viewed as an imposition on parental rights. If parental rights is at odds with a child's human rights the parents can go stuff it IMHO.
Speaking as a parent, parents don't have rights. Children have rights. Parents have responsibilities to assure our children's rights, and we are granted privileges to enable us to do so on the expectation that we have a greater awareness of our kids' specific needs and a greater investment in their wellbeing than the rest of society. A parent who fails this test will lose those privileges.
I’m a mother and I agree. My child’s basic rights as a person supersede my rights as a parent. It disturbs me how many people honestly put their wants over their kids needs
@@ssergium.4520cause it would fall on deaf ears. Meanwhile you guys ignore the casual SA many adult women commit towards underaged boys. But this isn't a competition. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Totally agree. My mother's culture has a history of marrying young girls off to much older men. I will never defend this aspect of her culture. It's disgusting.
Abso-effing-lutely!!! All the cultures and laws that allows these egregious child marriages boils down to 2 things. Willful ignorance. And religious abuse. Unfortunately, as long as ppl twist their religious texts to suit their needs and ugly wants and countries continue to coddle their sickness, little girls will continue to be forced into these abusive nightmares.😢
@@Aquacrystal78 lot of cultures are intertwined heavily with the religions in their lands, sometimes it even seems like their need to uphold their cultures borders on religious zeal maybe even borrows from it
because her parents don't want to lose face ("your daughter is a slut!") or they don't want the kid born out of wedlock & clearly do not consider abortion a viable option. so they force her to marry her rapist. if nobody kicks up a fuss, nobody reports a crime & nobody protects the girl. cps can't do shit either.
Partly because there are judges out there that are strongly pro-life (so no abortions), and if you have a pregnant girl and a man who "loves his unborn baby and the mother of his child"... well, surely marriage is the better option, right? Right?
Don't act like you don't know the real reason: Religion. Sex and even worse, children before marriage is the worst sin and it can only be forgiven through marriage.
This one really hits a nerve for me. Pennsylvania hasn't been as progressive as you would imagine - that's where I lived when I was pressured into marriage at 17. No real deep rooted religious or social reasons, but I was pregnant to a 20 year old. To make matters worse, I had just moved there not too long ago with only my dad and one of my brothers - who moved back out of the state after I was married. I had no friends, I was entirely isolated from my family, and had to leave school. I was then a mother and a wife.... and though I wouldn't trade my babies for the world... I was far too young for all of that. It didn't help my (now ex) husband was horribly manipulative.... took me one year to realize how unhappy I was, and 7 more to actually be able to leave that situation. Needless to say....I think underage marriage should be illegal with no exceptions...
@letitiajeavons6333 oh yeah. They're *SLOWLY* becoming more progressive. Don't even get me started on the other screwed up laws revolving around marriage in PA that they've slowly been updating...
My best friend in Jr High had her first child 2 days before her 14th birthday. We had literally just stopped playing with Barbie dolls and she's telling me she's pregnant 💔 I got really mad at her at first. But that changed and I stayed her friend. She got married because that's what you did. Her husband was 2 weeks away from his 18th birthday. As you'd expect, it didn't work out. By the time she was 17, she was a battered, divorced, single mother living with parents who were terribly hard on her. Just because you can get pregnant or get someone pregnant, doesn't mean you should. What he's saying about the isolation is true. She dropped out of school because she was "grown" enough to have a baby and take care of her own home. Some of her friends parents made them stop hanging out with her because they thought they'd get pregnant too 🤦🏼 it was a nightmare
This kinda stuff is rampant in the UK. But because the followers of such practices are usually brown, a blind eye is turned through fear of accusations.
@MonCappy issue you have is when they turn around and make your beliefs illegal. It's a hard one. I don't agree with the practice. Just pointing out that ignoring their beliefs sets them up to jail you for yours.
@@mvb88 If the law of the country is that you cannot marry under the age of 18, then it does not matter what religion or culture your following, you have to abide by the law of the land.
@@mvb88If my religion said slavery is fine, and I practised that part of my religion, then I would belong in jail. Religion does not make criminal actions right or justified
when i was in 7th grade, one of my muslim classmates went "on vacation" for a month. came back with a ring on her finger and said she was married now. i couldn't have been more agog. "but you're 13!? you can't be married!"
I remember a similar situation with my niece's classmate. She was finishing grade 8 and going into high school. She was asking her classmate about seeing her in September, but her classmate said you won't. Her parents have found her a husband, and she was being sent to Pakistan (permanently) 😢
@@blackcoffy83I’ve recently read a book from a UK foster carer (under a pen name to protect identities of all parties). The child in question, a 14 year old, had to be given a new identity under the equivalent of the witness protection program as she was running away from being literally sold as a wife. New identity and moved around away in the country for her safety. It was a Pakistan ‘husband’ I believe.
And even worse, it was probably to her first cousin. In the UK, 55% of Pakistani are married to their first cousing. It's why they're responsible for 3% of births each year yet over 30% of children with genetic defects....
@@MusikGirl23that's what happens when you let in all those people from the middle east and Africa. Child marriage is probably on the rise in the UK but ut can't be proven. Same with female circumscicon
I take issue with the script in this repeatedly saying the law "allows children to marry." It would be phrased better as "the law allows parents to force marriage on their children." Even if the children were making these decisions, they can't legally make any other decisions, so they shouldn't be making this one.
In Australia a 14 year old has full medical body autonomy. In terms of marriage though, under 16 is automatically "forced" & subject to prosecution & victim eligable for emotional support, over 16 requires a judge's permission & from what I'm reading that doesn't happen. Only way it's really happening is parents shipping them off to other countries for the marriage & apparently Australian federal police will follow if the child reports it & rescue them & bring them back home & remain in touch, cause when it happens once, it normally happens again, so the local "vulnerable person's officer" will remain in contact & monitoring for as long as needed (at least until they're 18). Also, child marriage & "modern slavery" aren't seperated, as marriage of a child is automatically considered slavery & subject to trafficking & other related slavery laws
This dialogue feels one-sided. There's a lot of focus on the brides, but little attention seems to go to the predators who force or coerce them into the marriage. Addressing child marriage (while ABSOLUTELY worth doing) feels like treating a symptom, not the cause.
Going to agree. This is like girls getting all the warnings and flack about teenage pregnancy but little discussion aimed at the boys getting them pregnant, just because they themselves can't get pregnant (and can walk away with no responsibility). It took two to tango, as they say, and it's usually them pressuring girls for sex. If anyone needs to have a spotlight pointed at them, it's the men.
It's because they still have hope of this message getting through; they probably think there isn't much point in putting out a video themed around "don't marry young girls" as anyone who would watch that video is already never going to do so, and the people who need to hear that message won't watch it.
In 1970 (so goes the family story) an auntie of mine ran away to be a hippie at age 14. She got 'married' at a festival to a 16 YO boy, and went from festival to festival all over the west coast with the boy's extended family (group? don't know how they were related) She became pregnant before she turned 15, and became sick. The boy somehow took her back to Michigan to her parents, and they were legally married soon after her 15th birthday. My grandma bragged she raised all three of them - Auntie, the young husband, and the baby. They had two more kids, none of them got an education, and they're still the most messed up part of that side of the family over 50 years, and two generations later.
My mother married my father at age 17 in the UK. He was 18. She will argue until she's blue in the face that her parents made the right decision. But I grew up WITH my parents. They were NOT ready and did not have the support to do a good job. They have strained relationships with their kids and almost no relationship with any grandchildren. They're still together. They will at best admit they're not happy but believe it's an acceptable level of misery. It's not and that unhappiness penetrates into the rest of their relationships. Judges and parents who consent(ed) to these marriages should be held accountable.
I married my first husband at 17 with parental consent in new York in 2002. I and my parents regretted it ever since. I wasn't pressured into it but I wish my parents had tried to talk me out of it too. The marriage only lasted 5 months.
My family tried to talk one of us out of it. She was a young teen and he was early 20s. They even sent her to live with family abroad to protect her but he followed and she kept seeing him. They are now great grandparents and still together. Eventually he became the favourite in-law. Lovely couple.
when i was in middle school a 14 year old mormon girl was married to the guy that got her pregnant, who was 28 and a member of her church. this was in 2014. it was and is completely legal. she needed her parents permission to get married and couldn’t get a divorce without their consent, which they wouldn’t give. this is in Texas in a fairly progressive and large city. this isn’t something that happened ages ago, this happened in 2013.
I see quite a few comments referencing "Mormons." I hope you realize that not every member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is like that.
Those members completely failed their daughter. We actually have recommendations that youth don't even start group dating till 14, and one-on-one dating till 16. And we actually make exceptions for abortion when it's incest, rape, or severe medical issues. (I bring that up because a 28yr old getting a 14yr old pregnant is absolutely rape) It is absolutely not a part of our doctrine that underage girls should marry their abusers and it sickens me that there are so many members that accept or even encourage that sort of thing. Those parents are backwards minded, ignorant and horrible people. I hope that girl is doing alright these days :(
@@jesstolley7193 FLDS doesn't abide those rules, though. The child marriages associated with Warren Jeffs and his compound full of child predators made a huge impact in certain areas of the state when they moved here in the early 2000's. Your version of Mormonism is not the same as everyone else's and that doesn't stop them from also being Mormon.
What's interesting is that my parents were married in 1953 in Iowa. My father was 19, my mother 18. My dad had to get permission from my grandfather to get married, but my mother didn't have to have parental permission, from what my mother told me. I got married at 39, and my husband was 36; the clerk didn't ask for proof of our ages, but then again we both looked our ages.
In my country Colombia anyone older than 14 years old can voluntary get married, if the child is younger than 14 years old, it is only allowed with express consent of both the parents and the child (according to the pretty old Code of Civil law), however non notary or Judge, would take the risk to process such a thing... normally, but in the country side is still common practice in some isolated areas to basically give away their 14+ old girls to the best bidder, sometimes even with good intentions and even thinking about the future of the child funnily enough. I am a lawyer and sometimes I travel to the contryside to attend my cases and in one occasion in a more or less isolated village a man offered me his underage daughter, a girl of about 15 years old, obviously I refused but his motivation was that probably as I was a lawyer, with stable income, who looked youth, refined (I guess compared to the locals), healthy and with a life in a relatively safe city, I could give her much better life compared to whatever awaited his daugther in that "godforsaken place", to be honest it was a complete shock for me, I even considered to denouce it but in a village ravaged by violence and the armed conflict like that one, it would be probably of no use. It still gives me nightmares to this day to think of how bad the situation of these people was that they would do something like this just to try to find a better life for their children, but what impressed me the most was the naturalness of how he offered it to me like if it was the normal and sensible thing to do, I guess for him was better to "give" her to me, than allow the gangs and/or insurgent groups to take her, luckily in other occasions that I have visited the place it seems like the man and his daugther are fine and she is atending a near public school, however I try to don't get involved with them as much as possible, nonetheless in a little village of few streets is hard to don't know how the locals are doing.
I live in Florida. When my 17 year old father got my 15 year old mother pregnant with me, my grandparents basically forced them to get married in 1976. My mother's mother married my grandfather, who was 9 years older than her, when she was 16 years old due to financial pressures as one of 13 children in her home. That was in West Virginia in the 1940s. Neither my mother nor her mother lived happy lives as a result.
I definitely think of the United States when the topic of child marriage is discussed. It's always creeped me out because the child can't legally divorce the spouse because they're _minors_ .
The age of consent to sex is 16 in every state that I'm aware of. This means that EVERY girl who is pregnant below that age is a de facto victim of rape, and if she is pressured into getting married because she is pregnant, she is being forced to marry her pedophile rapist (and let's face it -most of these marriages in the US involve underage girls and adult men, not two teenagers in "love"). It's a "get-out-of jail-free" card for adult male statutory rapists, and a life sentence to misery, poverty, and abuse for young girls. No legal marriage under age 18. If you need your parents' permission to get married, you're not old enough. If you're not old enough to sign a contract, vote, drive, buy alcohol or tobacco, or join the military, you're not old enough to get married. If you're a teenager and you think you're just madly in love with another teen, you can wait. True love lasts. Finish school and get jobs - then get married. If you're a young teen and some adult man is coming onto you - he doesn't love you, he's a pedophile and a rapist. Get as far away from him as you can and report him to law enforcement. Trust me, as a former teenage mother myself, you don't want to be one. Ever.
For the age thing, a lot of it at that age isn't rape there. You have a lot of cases of idiot teenagers and preteens who decide they need a baby to get/keep their boyfriend there. While the family was an utter disaster area, one of my grandmothers friends had 2 of her grandkids end up in absolute stupidity there. One was a dumbass who, at 17 got pushed into a marriage with a 13 year old who gloated about lying and decieving him about her age, but she had decided that she wanted him in one of the more fucked up situations. That guy was already screwed in the head there before that with 2 stints in juvie and was a general drug addled menace. Then there was the youngest granddaughter who got herself knocked up and pushed for a marriage because she hated the rest of her family as a pre-teen... That entire family, including the grandmother were nuts, but my they lived next to my grandmother for decades and was one of the few people my grandmother regularly got to talk to.
@@AzraelThanatos If there's genuine deception involved then I understand where you're coming from. When I was a teen I had a gay friend who used to dump his older boyfriends by letting them find out how old he was. Of course he could not get pregnant. But just because you know some skeevy kids doesn't mean that the majority of them are skeevy, and if these guys actually do know how old the girl is, I don't have any sympathy for them. Also, I knew too many girls who married young to not wonder what these girls who feel they need to trap a man are running FROM. Sometimes early marriages are a way girls escape from abuse at home, not realising that in many cases, someone who wants to marry a teenager is gonna be just as bad.
Parents should not be allowed to give permission for their CHILD to get married. My 16 year old is intelligent enough to vote but I can’t sign off on that. There are a lot of things children shouldn’t be allowed to do. Getting married is def one of them.
@yasminea7149 "voluntary" is easily distorted in the law books. Society needs to place more importance on intelligence(brain development) and age. Many religions place "voluntary" responsibility on the father or elder male family members to make decisions for the young girls and women in their religious communities. So, no. I don't believe a person of mental incapability or inappropriate age should be so easily labeled as a "consenting volunteer" to any relationship
A couple of years ago in Denmark, we had a couple aged 17 and 18 come as refugees. Their marriage was considered invalid because of her age, and they were separated and he was denied access to see her (and their child). I can understand how their marriage can't be seen as legally binding at this point, and of course it should be found out, if they both want to be together. But it's legal for them to be romantically and sexually involved (the age of consent is 15), so why couldn't they be housed together, if they wanted to? I don't know how it ended, but I hope they are living safely together, if that's what they both wanted.
Yeah it's very different when they're close enough in age to be allowed to date each other. Most of these child marriage stories the husband is so much older than the "wife" he belongs behind bars, not in a wedding ceremony. When they're so close in age, they should be treated at least as boyfriend and girlfriend co-parenting their child, assuming neither of them indicates they're being abused.
So they had a child ... how old was she when she gave birth, how old when she got pregnant? How old when they married her off to the guy? How old when he started fucking her? Just because she was impregnated and had a child, doesn't mean it isn't abuse, just because she feels attached to the man they married her off to as a child doesn't mean she wasn't a victim of child marriage. No exceptions. Stay in backward lands if this is such a huge cultural value.
Tbh I feel like this is a special case. At 17 and 18, they were probably only a couple months apart in age, so even if the marriage is dissolved, I don't see why the man should've been kept from his family (assuming the wife and kid wanted to be with him) With such a small age gap I wouldn't consider him a pëdo, even if he technically meets the legal definition
@@Wi-Fi-ElI wouldn't consider him a pedophile when they are only a few months apart in age. That's just silly. And even the US has a Romeo and Juliet clause. It's technically illegal, but they were together before he turned 18, and they are basically still in the same age group. This one I would roll my eyes at if someone wanted to judge them. I don't believe in child marriage, but if they are teens in the same age group and get pregnant and want to marry and have parental support while they finish school, I don't see a problem as long as they aren't being forced and it's their idea. Also, their families should make sure they get some type of marriage and family counseling first to make sure they really are ok together. They need to have a solid life plan.
@@Wi-Fi-El he... doesn't actually meet the legal definition in most cases. every jurisdiction i have heard of so far has either a minimum age gap for you to be considered a pedo, or some other measure o not get situations where you're jailed over like, ridiculously small age gaps.
2017 they invented a new law in Germany, no underage marriage at all. And (I like this one) all underage marriages from the last years were proved: for children under the age of 16 the marriage became automaticcally ineffective; a judge normally dissolve the marriage for children over 16 but under 18; and if the teens became of legal age during the last years, they have to confirm their will again, otherwise the marriage will be dissolved. In my opion: nice step in the right direction because they apply this law on all in Germany living children, not just the ones who were born there. Protecting children sometimes means also protecting against traditions and religions.
@cmm5542 marriage is not synonymous with relationship. If my marriage was dissolved by the state, my husband and I would not change one thing, and go get a new marriage certificate. You are being willfully obtuse.
Good. Enforcing the law isn't discriminating against any particular religion or ethnic group - it's saying that the law applies to everyone, no matter their background. You don't get an exemption from consent laws for having a religion that says marrying kids is okay somehow. The law applies to EVERYBODY.
You incorrectly claimed the law was changed in the UK. It was not. Just because it was changed England that does not mean it was changed in Scotland. In Scotland the legal age for marriage remains sixteen. (No need for parental consent.) Sixteen year olds are also permitted to vote in local council and Scottish parliamentary elections.
My family wanted me to marry a 25 year old man when I was 14. It wasn't legal but the church did it anyways. I've left the church when I was 18 and ran away - technically I'm still married in the name of the church. I'm getting an actual, legal marriage next May and luckily neither my man nor I are religious because we couldn'teven have a religious ceremony since in the eyes of the church, I married when I was 14. I have no idea if the man has gotten a "divorce" in the mean time but honestly, I don't even care anymore.
Disgusting. So a child rapist could marry his victim, LEGALLY. And this whole "if you have sex before marriage you're disgracing the family" thing needs to go.
that is what happens in a LOT of cases. Your 11 yr old is pregnant by a family friend? Do you press charges and send him to jail, or marry the 2 of them off because she's not "pure" anymore and god forbid she has a child out of wedlock? Of course we will make absolutely no progress on this issue any time soon, because in states where this is an issue the people in power have no problem with that.
@@bacul165 Didn't you know? The girl looked good so she was a sinful temptress flirting at him with her glances. BULL. SHIT. I just don't understand why they believe the adult instead of their own child. Just... VILE.
Glad to hear this discussed. I’m an American who had several married high school classmates. The husbands were always 20+. Sometimes the girls weren’t even pregnant. And this was in the late 80s, it was eyebrow raising even then. The two girls in eighth grade who had babies were too little themselves to legally get married but both fathers were adults. Neither involved at all, which was prob for the best but tells you how badly some girls out in rural areas are treated. I went to a fancy college & stories like this that I thought were mildly “out there” absolutely stunned my rich urbanite classmates.
I didn't see it as a justification, more an explanation. We all agree it's wrong, Simon was explaining why it still happens today, at no point did he say it was okay.
You need to hear the argument to fight the argument. You can make laws against things all you want, but as long as there are still cultural reasons to do it, people will still do it. You need to shift the culture to cure the problem
Contrary to popular belief, the Amish don't allow child marriage. Also, as much as we vilify the American puritans, they did not typically marry until their early twenties.
As a descendant of Puritains, I can say they weren’t very nice, forcing people who didn’t agree with their religious views or other protestant sects. Age of marriage in the 20’s was more about getting farms up and running.
@@lordMartiya I think it more has to do with the idea child marriages were common in the past. However, historians are starting to push against the view noting it was mostly the upper classes who did the under 18 marriages to secure alliances. Even then there was an understanding the couple should not starting having until at least 15 or 16. Sure not great but when you have cases of one or both parties getting married at 12 or 13, it seems even back then there was an understanding teen pregnancies were risky. Some historical examples can be seen in the Tudors. When Henry VII married Catherine, he was marrying his older brother's widow to maintain a marriage alliance with Spain. However, Henry was 10 and Catherine 15 so they had to wait several years for their marriage (with some hand wringing as Henry could refuse when he after he turn 14). Then there was Henry's father Henry VII who was born to a 13 year old girl who was married at 12 to a 26 year old. Henry VII's birth scandalized due to his mom's young age.
I'm a high school social studies teacher and while I officially don't have the time in my curriculum I always do a unit on child marriage. The kids are often the same age, or older, then the girls and boys (they're often forgotten) in the stories. It's a complicated and heart breaking issue that needs addressing. I'm definitely gonna add this video to my lecture
I met my husband at 19 and we didnt marry right away but i still felt like he somehow robbed me of my youth and opportunities because i just didnt know how to focus on myself. We didnt have kids for 6 years but i just felt so reliant on him, that i felt robbed of my identity. So child marriage aside, I think education on psychological identity in school would help a lot.
Thank you for addressing this. I grew up in the LDS church and most marriages were "softly" arranged between parents while we were kids. I was kicked out of the church for questioning the rich ppl who owned it/the town of Idaho Falls, ID. Take a gander at that angel on top of the temple in the middle of town. Then look up what the beliefs are. ALLEGEDLLY.... they're scary.
Child marriage is still going on with the FLDS. Just because Warren Jeff's is in jail for life doesn't mean it stopped. Girls as young as 12 are married to grow men. There's grave yards full of home made tombstones for babies born to underage mothers. A pregnant 12 year old is going to raise a mess of red flags and questions
Nope. Child marriage is abhorrant, even in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There are some members who condone it, but that is NOWHERE in the beliefs of the church.
Hell no. Those people are evil, full stop. We do NOT believe in underage marriage. We don't even recommend one-on-one dating till 16. I'm so sorry for what you and so many have and might still be going through, this crap is NOT okay!!
@@angryox3102 That's not true. Puberty blockers were invented for kids whose bodies go into puberty early--like the age of 7 or so. My friend's daughter was put on them because she was in second grade and starting to look like a very short 16 year old, but had no emotional capability to process the changes of puberty and they wanted to keep her from menstruating and becoming fertile before she was 10. All puberty blockers do is change the hormonal balance while you are taking them until you stop. The girl in question was taken off them when she was 14 and everything is completely normal now. Sexual reassignment/confirmation surgery is permanent, but it's already illegal to do that on people under 18.
Back when I was in High School, friend went to Mississippi the night of Junior Prom to get married, to her boyfriend who was also 16. They were pregnant. Not coerced, but ... discovering that in Mississippi girls as young as 12 and boys as young as 14 could marry legally with parental consent. I was shocked. She did finish high school and they were of an age, not a huge disparity. Still, that laws put into place in the 1700s when life spans were shorter and adult responsibilities on young men and women were way different, were still in effect in 1968 surprised the heck out of me. And most of her friends. The saddest thing is that educated men who should know better still believe that this is right and proper, that women are not worthy of deciding their own lives.
Except in your example, the 16 year old "woman", who was old enough to choose a boyfriend, decide to enter into a secual relationship and get pregnant, did decide for herself. Either you allow agency or not. Which is it? Are young women allowed to make their own decisions or not? Or they can only have sex and get pregnant but not get married? Why this inconsistency?
While i applaud you for picking the subject,you barely scratched the surface of the problem and it is a subject that youtube wouldnt allow to present the darker side of it.
Thank you for posting this, yes this is a real problem. As a devout Christian I do not condone legalized slavery of this sort. No-one should ever be able to marry under 18 for any reason. Oh and if one wants to marry someone twenty years or more older, the youngest has to be at least 25 years of age. Oh and parents should not ever be allowed to play matchmaker for their kids, ever, full stop.
13:54 it is very interesting you bring this up. In my college statistics class, we did a study on the countries with the highest rates of child marriage over the last decade. The mass majority of all the countries we studied had a Christian majority.
I attended high school in Oklahoma in a very small town. One of my classmates got married our freshman year. By the time we graduated, out of a class of fifteen, four members were married, all of them girls, all to men who were over twenty-one.
YEEEK. I'm in Manitoba, Canada. That chart up at 2:00 is a teensy bit more alarming than I thought! I'm aware there are some hyper-conservative cultures here where that has at least historically been a thing and MAN am I glad the trend's been sharply downward, but oh dear. Thank you, Simon.
I got married at 20. I was not even close to mentally developed enough to do so. Hell I’m in my 40s and still want no part of making that mistake again. Protect your children from themselves.
My mother in law born 1929 was an only child. She married at age 14 to a man 20. She wanted to get married and was not pregnant. Her parents lied about her age and said she was 18. A year later she had a son and got divorced. She went back to high school and her mother raised the boy until she got married at age 20. Her new husband adopted the boy.
Imagine the difficulty once covenant marriage becomes law. It's gonna happen and then these girls will have no way out anymore, even in cases of extreme mistreatment 😢
Here's another complexity in the issue - I live in NH, where the law was just changed to 18, no exceptions, this past June. (Something I highly applaud.) NH is a small state, where it's relatively easy for a single person to impact legislation. I know a man who - a few years ago - encouraged his teenage daughters to fulfill their requirements for a school project by fighting against raising the marriage age, which they then did. He did this not because he had any desire to marry off his teenage daughters, but because he believed that the government should be extremely limited in it's ability to make people's choices for them. (Yes, think Ron Swanson.) I doubt he thought about situations where children were being forced into something against their will. For him, it was more of an intellectual exercise.
In Poland there's still a law from 1960s that allow a 16 year old girl to be married to a man of whatever age, as long as the local court approve it. The most common reason is pregnancy, which absolutely baffles me, because that MAYBE was a valid reason in 1960s, but now??? I know a case of disabled 16 year old girl and 60-something year old "family friend" who made her pregnant and was allowed to marry her, it really made me sick.
Thank you for covering this subject. One of the loopholes is countries wanting to make money. Immigration in both countries played a big hand in this. Australia and America wanted to use each other's destinations as military ports of call. Australia made millions of dollars by military spending money while on rest and recreation in Australia. America needed a place for their military to stop in Australia. So of course let the fraternization begin, let American men marry Australian girls. My child marriage, being given away at 15 and finally married at 16, was horrific I was sent from Australia to America to be married. I knew nobody here but him. I endured 23 years of absolute abuse before I could escape. It ruined every aspect of my life to the point of becoming physically broken with autoimmune disease, which has been proven to be related to too much stress and abuse, I had so much destroyed and taken away, that at the age of almost 60, I have never been able to get things back to good. I will forever suffer for what he did, and what the government allowed.
I am sorry for your experience. I have witnessed the injustices related to marriage and immigration perpetrated by both of these governments. It’s inhuman what situations they create for women.
Wild that it's considered more important for children to have a father and be born to married parents than it is to protect a CHILD from their abuser. And people still claim we don't need feminism...
Majority of kids are raised by single mothers. So having a father must not be seen as important by society. Feminism is failing them and us. That being said, We need to tackle this situation head on.
To be fair in many cases like the Roma people both the bride and the groom are about the same age, usually very young or too young, it's a way for their families to have less mouths to feed.. Yap things like Poverty and less social mobility - less opportunities play their role Who would have imagined huh? Not to mention that when people try to shut such legal loopholes, it's ALWAYS the " woke" mob that resist with excuses like " it's their culture" and " don't try to enforce your beliefs on them" ect Even the freaking anonymous have done this in the past with excuses like " it's different" when they " fall in love"
@MrTdub16 i think your numbers are off but for the sake of argument, feminism would ask why it falls to women when men are half of the genetic responsibility for creating children.
There is absolutely nothing complex or murky about RAPING a CHILD . Having laws that legally "Allow" the RAPE of CHILDREN is absolutely sickening . smdh
I am a white 35 years old woman from Germany with no immigration history. Until 15 years ago, I thought it was normal in my culture to be laid by an older man at 14 and to officially marry him at 18. Just because you don't move in together until you are 18 doesn't mean that it is not seen as a marriaga where the girl is on probation. Many people don't understand how I came up with these ideas. But in my family, all women in the older generations were married at 18 and often met their husbands at 12. Maybe my family is 20 years behind culturally, but I am certainly not the only woman my age who would have said yes to a child marriage and thought she wouldn't be allowed to break up with a man if she got laid.
Let me ask, are the women in your family educated beyond basic high school? Ever seek higher education? How many worked decent jobs or had a career? How many did anything with their lives but sit in their hometown catering to the husband? It's not normal to marry some older creep you meet at 12. That sounds like some backwoods, low ambition, low education area where people hold each back if they get ideas about improving themselves and not doing the same miserable shit as their ancestors.
I live in eastern Europe and grew up in very poor area with large romani community nearby... it´s not even the marriage but it was very common within that community girls getting pregnant very young...like 14 - 15 y.o., I remember that I was about 17 - 18 y.o., getting ready for university and moving out to different city and there were these girls my age already having like three kids and not even finishing school because of that. It´s a cycle powered by poverty and lack of education. Lot of them are just stuck in there, because it´s extremly difficult to change something, whenfor your whole life you see that this is just the way everyone close to you lives
My grandmother was 16 when she and my grandfather drove from Michigan to Kentucky to get married back in the 60s. My grandmother was pregnant and was afraid what would happen of her mother found out. Because she was pregnant the judge alowed her to get married without parental consent. They are celebrating 60 years next year. I cant imagine doing what they did and they are the lucky ones. My grandmother missed out on a lot because of this. They were both just kids but its crazy to think 2 kids can make such a complicated decision.
Legal age in Nova Scotia, Canada is 19, but you can get married as young as 16 with parental permission. Good grief, I hope the law changes, even though my province wasn't mentioned. Thank you for addressing this issue, Simon. It's unreal how many minors are being forced into marriage even here in Canada.
And it's not discriminating against someone's religion if you apply the same law to everyone. It's only discrimination if you let some people ignore the law you apply to everyone else. Make it illegal for anyone to marry someone under 18, and apply the law with equal firmness to everyone who breaks it. No discrimination required.
@ and that would keep children safe. A man coming to the west with a 13 year old ‘wife’ does not need to be treated with sensitivity. The child needs the law to protect her as much as it would a natural born 13 year old citizen who was ‘married’ off to another adult natural born citizen. Dude would be in jail.
@@Jcremo If he has gone through the ceremony of marriage in order to become her legal guardian but hasn't engaged in sexual behaviour with the child, then he hasn't committed a crime. It wouldn't be my first assumption, but it is a valid possibility that needs to be considered. Some of the Indigenous Australian tribes had a similar custom - a young man would "marry" a baby girl and that made him responsible for helping to provide food for her and her family, but the marriage wasn't completed until she was adult. Obviously the girl didn't get any say in who she was married to, but it was an economic arrangement that made sure she was well fed through her childhood at least.
@@tealkerberus748 > it's only discrimination if you let some people ignore the law that's... a simplified way to say it. which is fine cause applied to this subject it's 100% true but also... well, laws themself can be made in a way that discriminates even if they apply to everyone. say, something so ridiculous I can be sure it won't be an actual political issue so i won't step on any toes, I were to make it illegal to menstruate (somehow). well... that law would apply to men and women alike, but it would also still be extremely discriminatory towards women, would it not?
Good piece! Reminds me of a discussion here in the Netherlands (late 90’s) about female circumcision. Should it be allowed because of cultural norms (and should doctors perform it, so that there are far fewer complications). The answer was no: child mutulation is not allowed. End of.
For the record, Planned Parenthood's objection to the California bill had to do with some wording in the bill that might affect the bodily and medical autonomy of minors, not because PP thinks that child marriage is good or anything. I had to look it up, because that doesn't make sense considering PP's objectives.
i find it so insane that there are people who deeply dislike the idea of two consenting adults of the same sex getting married but they're fine with an adult marrying a child. I have witnessed these kinds of people firsthand. they say it's against god to marry someone of the same sex but then they go off and marry someone who doesn't have a fully formed brain and can't even knowingly consent.
And your evidence that he is? How do you know your SEVENTEEN YEAR OLD isn't the one who initiated intercourse? You do know women can SA as well? It shows a scary disrespect for the law and 'innocent until PROVEN guilty,' that people always assume the man forced the woman without any evidence or knowing the individuals' circumstances.
@@cmm5542 Yes, the SA of men is a huge and unacknowledged issue, and women are just as capable of evil as men. However, these cases are typically a man grooming or just straight-up assaulting, a much younger woman - or even girl - and then the parents forcing her to marry him because god forbid she have a child out of wedlock at 13 instead of being married to her 35 year old rapist. If she is under 17 and he is over 18 (with the exception of Romeo and Juliet laws) he has an obligation to say no. If she doesn't give him that option (drugs, threats, etc) then of course she should be the guilty party, same as if she is 17 and he is much younger. But "she seduced me" is a common defense, very rarely true, and almost never excusable.
As far as parental consent is concerned. When the minor does not want to get married, I’d call that a loophole. When the minor does want the marriage, I’d call that an exemption.
My wife and I married when we were both 16 in Scotland. On the 9th of November, we will have been married for 50years. We have 2 brilliant children and 3 beautiful grandchildren. Our marriage was a conscious decision between the both of us, who had been together since we were 11. Neither of us have ever regretted our decision.
It's just absolutely insane that some of the most terrible child abuse suddenly becomes "acceptable" the minute you slap a label of "religious" and "marriage" on it.
When I was in high school in the mid 90s, the youngest marriage in recent memory in my parish (Louisiana doesn't have counties) was 7. I think about that little girl from time to time.
Lots of places in the usa and Europe have an age of consent under 18. Implying that a 17 yr old living on their own is a "child" only dilutes the outrage justly deserved at pdf files
The age of consent is usually restricted by an age difference though. I can get 17 and 18 years old living together if their families are fucked up (still too young for marriage though), but marrying a 17 years old to someone more then 7 years older is really bad.
I really appreciate Simon talking about these things, since I know he's stated in the past that it's extremely hard for him to read scripts like this. But like he said, it's important to speak about
My family still practiced shot gun marriages in the 2000s so I had one cosuin get married after she had just turned 17 to her 17 year old boyfriend. Another married at 17 to her 18 year old boyfriend. They've been together for almost 15 years.
@@spokenme08 at least they're with folks their own age though. I hope that the couple who've been together 15 years are still together because they want to be.
I got married at 17yo to my 18yo partner. I got pregnant at 16yo and we had to get a court order and had only 3 months to inact it. Still together after 20 years, 18 years married soon with 3 kids. Western Australia. And no, this shouldn't be a normal thing or widely accepted and so many things should be taken into consideration. Like, who cares if you're not bound by law, can always wait until you're older
Agreed, there's no harm in waiting, my wife and I met at the same age, but waited until our 20's to get married. Just had our 10 year marriage anniversary, you and I got lucky it seems! (Also hi fellow Aussie)
It gets worse:
In the majority of theses US states where men can marry little girls, the age of legal divorce is a hard 18. As in, if a girl wants to leave her abuser, she legally can’t. Until she’s 18.
yep, that's what trapped me when I was married off at 16 to an abusive man. Couldn't go to a children's shelter because I needed a legal guardian and I couldn't go to a dv shelter because they didn't take unaccompanied minors
@@TheSinthea it’s a lot of bullshit. Genuinely. Even the places that are (allegedly) meant to help children, like DCFS, won’t take an unaccompanied minor in. Even if they’re a teen.
Wouldn’t* take. I think they relaxed those laws a smidge. They certainly don’t help long term anyhow.
See, that shit makes no sense.
@@sydneyslaughter7163 it makes absolute sense if you are an abuser.
And hashtag not all lawmakers or whatever, but normal people don’t tend to seek positions of power. Abusive people do though.
I'm really happy that, in 2015, a law was introduced here in the Netherlands preventing underage marriages. Any marriage where one party is below the age of 18 is not recognized, even if the marriage took place in another country. If the underage person was forced into the marriage then prosecution can take place, even if the act was committed in a country where it is legal.
We should adopt this!
The way it's supposed to be!
Now thats what I'm talking about, screw what anyone else thinks, just ban it.
The US needs to take note of that. Kids getting married to each other is one thing but at the same time I feel like it’s typically because their parents want them to get married.
Fuck that
Also maybe make the marriage age 21 since 18 year olds are dumb……so are 21 year olds but we let them drink so…
@@musicalcomputernerd6474 to be fair, we let them drink at 18, so we don't have that excuse xD.
I mean if child marriage is allowed cuz the child is pregnant. Wasn't it statutory rape in the first place?
Jup, they just don't care. A friend at church got pregnant after rape (we were like 9). Everyone was more concerned about her not being a virgin anymore and her reputation being ruined than the fact that she was assaulted. In their eyes, the only solution to that "crime" (not being a virgin and "having sex" with someone other than your husband) is to marry that man.
"marriage exceptions" for statutory 🍇 exists almost in every country. That is the world we live in... Truly sad. In some places you can get in jail for shmex with 17 year old if not married, but can marry a 13 year old and not be in jail while 🍇her every day 🤦
Depends on the ages of the two people involved. In some cases, it's been two teenagers having fun first and then marrying each other. I'm personally familiar with two such cases. One couple divorced after a couple years, but the other just celebrated their 29th anniversary..... Often, there must be an age difference of at least 2 or 3 years for the older person to be charged, or the older person must be of a certain age to be charged.
the only time where that's "fine" if both teens consented to having intercourse and they got pregnant and if they geniuenly like each other, that's it as it'll be for the sake of the baby cause this way the child's future will be secured even in case of a divorce as child support and taking the name of the father will be absolute and there won't be a need to run around in court to prove paternity and getting child support after a long battle in court. other than this very specefic situation idk why on earth that shit would be legal.
@@Kiwiiismama If they genuinely like each other, they should like each other enough to marry after they're both 18. The rest of it sounds like the legal system needs to fix itself, not outsource fixing its problems by marrying off children.
Also, why should the child have the father's surname? The father isn't the one who risked their life to bring the kid into this world.
My Dad was a juvenile officer in the early 80's. He had to attend a hearing for a 12 yr old girl who's parents wanted to allow her to marry a 30 yr old man . My Dad (being a father of 3 girls) was against the marriage and thought the guy should be facing charges, but it was allowed because the girl was pregnant. He became a parole and probation officer after that
How does the pregnancy clause even make sense? She was 12 and got pregnant by a groomer, now they can go to court for marriage and not a case?
@@xiChannIt has more to do with the parents consent.
In my opinion; all of the adults in this case should have been on charges.
@@xiChann Because in the Xtian religion, the woman is *always* at fault for the mans "sin". Yeah shes twelve but shes a *vile temptress* did you SEE what she was wearing!?
@@xiChannparents held the view of a couple with and out of wedlock pregnancy needed to get married ASAP while ignoring the huge red light of the ages.
Wtf, she was pregnant??? How was that not a crime???
Imagine being the minister officiating the marriage and you see a child and think it's the groom's daughter only to find out that it's his BRIDE?! I'm surprised that ministers aren't flat out refusing to officiate child marriages.
The "ministers" who perform these child marriages are from the same community and mindset.
@@DevilOnlyKnitsLace Bingo.
Republikkkans
Can someone thumbs up or reply so I know Fascist UA-cam hasn't Shadowbanned me
Ministers in democratic countries are not above the law. If the law states the bride and groom are old enough to marry with parental consent, and that personal consent is granted, the minister does not have a further say in the matter.
@@cmm5542 So, like, a minister isn't allowed to say "Get somebody else to officiate this wedding between a grown adult and a child"?
One of my friends was married to her (now exhusband) when she was 13 and he was almost 30. She was from a very poor rural area in the US. I met her when she was 18, she divorced him in her 20’s. She didn’t even get to finish high school. Her parents just didn’t want to have to take care of her. I moved and lost contact with her. But she was doing well on her own the last time I had seen her.
She died
Really???@@jeffdroog
@@jeffdroogProof?
Hope she continues to be well!
@little_lion_heart9850 it's wrong. Being a dad to a 16 year old girl. Ya don't realize how odd it seems with that age and age gap. If she was 50 and he was mid 70s. The age gap sound so creepy. But 13 and late 20s sounds creepy as hell.
While I was in the Marines, I worked on and team that dealt with human trafficking (since it's a big income stream for the terrorist groups), and it's so much worse than people know, and it's EVERYWHERE.
I'm glad you covered this, Simon. I can tell topics like this hit different now that you're a dad.
Did you work mostly cover domestic cases or did you work overseas? Were these traffickers mostly finding young girls to marry men?
@zoesolanki961 a lot of the girls essentially get sold off to the man they end up getting forced to marry, and then they end up in the states.
I did SOME work stateside, but most were overseas. One of the absolutely most disgusting things I saw was traffickers posing as Red Cross and taking women and children by the truckload.
@@zoesolanki961most people that are trafficked are not snatched up by a kidnapper on the street, it is far more common that a family member or close friend sells them off.
It’s a very big income earner in the US.
@@lisreads4872 to add to this the large majority of trafficked children in the US come from the foster system, often times it's their foster parents selling them.
If you’re getting a child pregnant, than you belong in jail not a marriage.
..pregnanat you say... i think its for atlot less than that
Yeah but people in high school are gonna mess around. Also, do you remember that wave in that state of HS girls who made a pact to get pregnant? Quite a bit more to it. If you're talking statutory rape, that's a completely different thing lol. Then yes, 100% agree.
But if he's also a child…
Yup.
It should be Statutory (r)ape if the person is under half your age plus seven.
The Muslims got it right .
@@B-I-G-N-A-S-T-Y You realize that still includes an 18 yr old sleeping with a 16 yr old, which is statutory. :s
Been trying to call this out for years and it's shocking how few Americans know that many states allow child marriage - some states even having no lower age limit technically.
And at the risk of being 'that person' there should be ZERO exceptions given for child marriage.
Culture, tradition, are poor excuses for causing near universal damage to those in them. In the same way we would not excuse rape or murder on the basis of belief alone, we should not be allowing the exploitation of children.
Being frank this is not a complicated issue by any means, but a very straightforward one.
Full ban, full stop. No excuses.
At least it is not common practice like other regions in the world
@@thu4061 I hate that we want to preserve culture/tradition and yet we include portions of that which destroy the betterment of our youth.
If I'm remembering correctly, there is a Federal minimum age, at least I know there is for consent. The State minimum age only takes precedence when it requires them to be older. Thus, there are no states with an exception for someone under 12.
@@RazmoudahYeah the federal mandate is a blanket slate for the states. Which.. we get a clusterfuck of opinions lol. Tbh though I feel like most Westerners knew this was happening. It's portrayed in the media quite often as well. So, "common" no. Amount of sympathizers... yes.
I still remember talking with the girl who sat beside me, in one of my grade 10 classes, about a week before the Christmas break. Whatever it was we were talking about, she mentioned that she would be turning 16, during that 2 weeks off.
Conversation continued, she corrected me, she was not coming back after the break, even though we still had another month before the end of the semester.
Her father was taking her “home” as she was going to be married to some 40ish year old man. All I said was “I’m so sorry.” I never told anyone what she told me. This is the first time I have ever said anything about that conversation. That was back in ‘90/‘91.
I think of her from time to time, and I just hope that wherever she is, she is doing okay, and has somehow beaten all the odds.
Is this in the US or in your home country?
@ It was here in Canada. The outskirts of the GTA, in Ontario.
@@mocat1 and by "home", did she mean right there in Canada or back in their country? Feel free not to answer if you're not comfortable with it ok
@ Back to their country. Not sure where, I have long forgotten where she said she was from.
I live in Greece. 20 years ago I had a coworker who at age 16 was forced to marry a man her parents chose for her. She was sent to Greece and married off. When I met her she was in her 30ies. She told us she had managed to go to the local hospital and get on birth control and the day she turned 18 she filed for divorce. Later she married a man she loved and chose and the had 2 lovely daughters together.
I think she was raised in the USA, not Canada, but if the girls you knew was from Greece it's pretty sure she managed to leave the marriage, because society in Greece doesn't approve of forced marriage.
Parents who "sell" their girls to wealthy men are just as bad.
That really depends on where they live and how poor they are. If the wealthy man can afford to support her better than they can, and if he's paying them enough money that they can give her younger siblings a better life too, I can see why desperate people would do that.
People make unthinkable choices when they're watching their kids starve. There are many records in the past of people selling themselves and their children together into slavery in exchange for being fed adequately. That's not legal now, but this is very similar - and often for the same reasons.
What we need, aside from banning child marriage of course, is to address the poverty and the inadequate education that leaves this as a valid option instead of the girl getting a good qualification and a good job to support herself, and her younger siblings doing the same in turn.
@tealkerberus748 I agree 💯. I hate the idea that rich men use their wealth to subjugate women and children because the necessity of their existence relies on their nor having any options than to submit to these atrocious actions
@@donovangray4246 aha so first women should stop asking men their bank details and wealth details before going to date
And women should accept poor men also
Hypocrisy of women are unbearable
The reason people make money is to progenate 😢😢😢😢
Yup, it almost happened to me. My narcissistic, misogynist father has no clue to this day that I know what he was up to...I'm in America, the country I almost ended up in was Saudi Arabia
When my younger sister was 15, she started dating a 25yro man. She thought it was so romantic that he waited until her 16th birthday to do the deed (the legal age of consent). Within a few months she was pregnant. If not for my mom hiding her birth certificate and me hiding her in my house in the country, she would have been a child bride to a violent groomer. In Georgia, you can get married at 16 w/o parental consent if you're pregnant. Also this man's mother (whom he lived with) was all for it.
Thank you for protecting her! It sounds like that family needs to be under the jail.
Georgia laws are INSANE
Of course his mother was all for it, she was about to get a slave .
@@agailparsonsHow was she protected? She got pregnant. She wasn't protected at all.
Whether she was MARRIED to him or not is irrelevant. He still got to have his way with her - how does the fact that she wasn't even his wife make it any better for her? Why did they allow her to DATE him in the first place if they were against the marriage?
@@cmm5542 Stopping your child from being in an abusive marriage is protection. Ask KG-cw91e if her mom even knew she was dating an older man let, let alone having sex.
I'm Canadian. My Mum grew up just outside Toronto. She was first married at 15 with her dad's consent. Her mother fought it and they went to court, where the judge granted the marriage & told my grandmother to mind her husband.
You don't give your age...I was 15 in 1982. A teen a met during a student council "swap day" with another high school was married with one child, and pregnant with her second. She was forced to "confess" her sin of pre-marital sex before her church, then marry the father of the child who was 16. Her parents kicked her out of the house, so she was forced to live with her husband's family. They blamed her for "ruining" their son's future. At no point was he forced to confess his sin of premarital sex.
That was the moment I realized all religions were designed to allow MEN to control the sexuality of women.
I remember a girl in my class got married at 17. Her husband was 30+ years old at the time. This was in Niagara falls ontario, back in 2001. She never had a real childhood and is severely depressed on Facebook all the time. She's got a bunch of kids and living out in Alberta now. It's sad.
@sarina1234ful wow, I wonder what the story was there. In my mum's case, my grandfather genuinely believed mum would have a better life. The groom was 17, he was a milkman, and as teenagers they were both convinced they were in love, and it was one less mouth for Papa to feed, and being a milkman came w a regular wage and a pension back then.
enraging.
My stepmother was married at 14 in Texas. At the time, married girls were expelled from school. She wasn't pregnant at the time, she just wanted to get away from an abusive father. By 18 she was a divorced mom with an 8th grade education.
Why would you expell a girl for being pregnant? Like she's already in an obviously bad situation, why would you take away her biggest chance at bettering her life and getting an education that helps her get employment etc further down the line?
@@henkkahenrik4183
Because brainless drones make more brainless drones to do more brainless jobs...
At least that is the logic a certain country starting with an R lives by in terms of these types of initiatives, y'know the one that claims to be the enemy of the US but continuously does identical things to certain states-
@@henkkahenrik4183she means she didn't get married because she was pregnant, not that she would have been expelled if she had been pregnant i think
When I was 15, we had to have a permission slip signed by our parents. A girl raised her hand and said she lived with her husband, not her parents, so could he sign it? Utah, folks! Guess the minimum age is now 16, huh?
If you have to have someone sign a school permission slip for you, then you're too young for marriage
@@CrazyCatMom11 you would think wouldn't you?
@@troybaxterJust common sense today. But these things where a common practice in all of Europe. But times change and people too.
Well that’s just the tip of the Utah iceberg. I was supposed to get married at 15. The day I turned 15. My friends kept me hid for months after I decided not to. He was 24.
@@katsmeow6946 I like your friends!
Just because you've hit puberty and menstrate doesn't mean your body is developed enough for a pregnancy nor that you are ready for marriage.
Your body can be not well developed even after 20. So, idk why the number 18 is so special. Why not 21, why not 15, what's the standard? Consent?
Or intercourse
@@Omer1996E.C I think it was decided based on the end of school
@@chiedzawith2ds and who decides what's the end of school. This is really a very flawed system.
I was nine when my period started
And if I remember correctly, in many states you can get married as a minor with parental consent, but you cannot get divorced without formal emancipation, court approvial, or an appointed guardian as it is considered a contract and minors can't legally enter contracts... so that's "fun".
20 states allow minors to marry.
It's a crime.
@@markmitchell457If it's legal, it's not a 'crime' 🙄
Just because YOU don't approve doesn't make something a crime. You're not above the law.
@@cmm5542 You think it's okay that a child (or anyone) gets or stays married against their will?
@@cmm5542 The law isn't always right
That doesn't change the literal definition of a crime.@@shaderchase2118
I live in the US and both my grandmothers were child brides. My maternal grandma was excited to get married at 16 to my 19 year old grandpa, while my other grandma was 15 when she married my 41 year old grandpa and it was against her will, she was forced to by her parents. When I was a kid in the early 1990s I remember going to my cousin's wedding, she was just 16 because her parents gave permission to let her marry that young. I attended another cousin's wedding in the early 1990s who was 17 and pregnant and her new husband was in his late 20s or early 30s. I think child marriage is just so effed up.
Depending on how old they are and what state they're from, it's quite possible that both of your maternal grandparents were considered minors. Back then anyone under 21 had to have a parental consent.
My grandmother too married at 15. My great grandmother at 10.
Thank god someone is speaking about it instead of pretending it only happens in SE Asia and Africa.
It's not just seeing children as ready to marry, it's seeing them (especially girls) as property that can be distributed as desired by their parents. The USA has repeatedly refused to ratify the UNs children's bill of rights because it is viewed as an imposition on parental rights. If parental rights is at odds with a child's human rights the parents can go stuff it IMHO.
Speaking as a parent, parents don't have rights. Children have rights. Parents have responsibilities to assure our children's rights, and we are granted privileges to enable us to do so on the expectation that we have a greater awareness of our kids' specific needs and a greater investment in their wellbeing than the rest of society.
A parent who fails this test will lose those privileges.
I’m a mother and I agree. My child’s basic rights as a person supersede my rights as a parent. It disturbs me how many people honestly put their wants over their kids needs
And it’s overwhelmingly older men wanting to marry young underage girls.
I am amazed no one has commented “not all men” yet
@@ssergium.4520cause it would fall on deaf ears. Meanwhile you guys ignore the casual SA many adult women commit towards underaged boys. But this isn't a competition. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Old perverts, that is.
Men are freaks
@@ssergium.4520Because there are sensible folks who don't generalize and put all individuals of a sex in the same category?
Cultural or religious traditions should never be respected at the expense of a child. Some traditions are evil and need to be stamped out.
Agreed
Totally agree. My mother's culture has a history of marrying young girls off to much older men. I will never defend this aspect of her culture. It's disgusting.
Abso-effing-lutely!!! All the cultures and laws that allows these egregious child marriages boils down to 2 things. Willful ignorance. And religious abuse. Unfortunately, as long as ppl twist their religious texts to suit their needs and ugly wants and countries continue to coddle their sickness, little girls will continue to be forced into these abusive nightmares.😢
It's more cultural then religious.
@@Aquacrystal78 lot of cultures are intertwined heavily with the religions in their lands, sometimes it even seems like their need to uphold their cultures borders on religious zeal maybe even borrows from it
How the hell do you get a child pregnant and then get MARRIED and not I don't know, JAIL! Wtf
because her parents don't want to lose face ("your daughter is a slut!") or they don't want the kid born out of wedlock & clearly do not consider abortion a viable option. so they force her to marry her rapist. if nobody kicks up a fuss, nobody reports a crime & nobody protects the girl. cps can't do shit either.
Partly because there are judges out there that are strongly pro-life (so no abortions), and if you have a pregnant girl and a man who "loves his unborn baby and the mother of his child"... well, surely marriage is the better option, right? Right?
Don't act like you don't know the real reason: Religion. Sex and even worse, children before marriage is the worst sin and it can only be forgiven through marriage.
Because in a lot of places the age of consent is 16 but the legal age of marriage is 18
And sometimes they're both children
This one really hits a nerve for me. Pennsylvania hasn't been as progressive as you would imagine - that's where I lived when I was pressured into marriage at 17. No real deep rooted religious or social reasons, but I was pregnant to a 20 year old. To make matters worse, I had just moved there not too long ago with only my dad and one of my brothers - who moved back out of the state after I was married. I had no friends, I was entirely isolated from my family, and had to leave school. I was then a mother and a wife.... and though I wouldn't trade my babies for the world... I was far too young for all of that. It didn't help my (now ex) husband was horribly manipulative.... took me one year to realize how unhappy I was, and 7 more to actually be able to leave that situation. Needless to say....I think underage marriage should be illegal with no exceptions...
I think Pennsylvania has now raised the age for marriage to 18, but it was only done a couple years ago. (I think 2020.)
@letitiajeavons6333 oh yeah. They're *SLOWLY* becoming more progressive. Don't even get me started on the other screwed up laws revolving around marriage in PA that they've slowly been updating...
@@letitiajeavons6333correct.
I'd go further and ban all marriages until 21, but 18 is at least in line with age of consent.
My story is similar to yours and I couldn’t agree more
@mindyh8949 I'm so sorry to hear that. But hey - we made it out. ♡
My best friend in Jr High had her first child 2 days before her 14th birthday. We had literally just stopped playing with Barbie dolls and she's telling me she's pregnant 💔 I got really mad at her at first. But that changed and I stayed her friend. She got married because that's what you did. Her husband was 2 weeks away from his 18th birthday. As you'd expect, it didn't work out. By the time she was 17, she was a battered, divorced, single mother living with parents who were terribly hard on her.
Just because you can get pregnant or get someone pregnant, doesn't mean you should. What he's saying about the isolation is true. She dropped out of school because she was "grown" enough to have a baby and take care of her own home. Some of her friends parents made them stop hanging out with her because they thought they'd get pregnant too 🤦🏼 it was a nightmare
The solution is not to respect religious traditions. Minors should never be forced into marriages. Period.
It's insane to me that 'respecting religious traditions' is even considered when child safety is at stake.
This kinda stuff is rampant in the UK. But because the followers of such practices are usually brown, a blind eye is turned through fear of accusations.
@MonCappy issue you have is when they turn around and make your beliefs illegal. It's a hard one. I don't agree with the practice. Just pointing out that ignoring their beliefs sets them up to jail you for yours.
@@mvb88 If the law of the country is that you cannot marry under the age of 18, then it does not matter what religion or culture your following, you have to abide by the law of the land.
@@mvb88If my religion said slavery is fine, and I practised that part of my religion, then I would belong in jail. Religion does not make criminal actions right or justified
reading the stories in the comments is actually horrifying
Ya we feel guilty for having good childhood
when i was in 7th grade, one of my muslim classmates went "on vacation" for a month. came back with a ring on her finger and said she was married now. i couldn't have been more agog. "but you're 13!? you can't be married!"
I remember a similar situation with my niece's classmate. She was finishing grade 8 and going into high school. She was asking her classmate about seeing her in September, but her classmate said you won't. Her parents have found her a husband, and she was being sent to Pakistan (permanently) 😢
@@blackcoffy83I’ve recently read a book from a UK foster carer (under a pen name to protect identities of all parties). The child in question, a 14 year old, had to be given a new identity under the equivalent of the witness protection program as she was running away from being literally sold as a wife. New identity and moved around away in the country for her safety. It was a Pakistan ‘husband’ I believe.
And even worse, it was probably to her first cousin. In the UK, 55% of Pakistani are married to their first cousing. It's why they're responsible for 3% of births each year yet over 30% of children with genetic defects....
Her husband was probably related to her too. A cousin most likely
@@MusikGirl23that's what happens when you let in all those people from the middle east and Africa. Child marriage is probably on the rise in the UK but ut can't be proven. Same with female circumscicon
I take issue with the script in this repeatedly saying the law "allows children to marry." It would be phrased better as "the law allows parents to force marriage on their children." Even if the children were making these decisions, they can't legally make any other decisions, so they shouldn't be making this one.
In Australia a 14 year old has full medical body autonomy. In terms of marriage though, under 16 is automatically "forced" & subject to prosecution & victim eligable for emotional support, over 16 requires a judge's permission & from what I'm reading that doesn't happen. Only way it's really happening is parents shipping them off to other countries for the marriage & apparently Australian federal police will follow if the child reports it & rescue them & bring them back home & remain in touch, cause when it happens once, it normally happens again, so the local "vulnerable person's officer" will remain in contact & monitoring for as long as needed (at least until they're 18). Also, child marriage & "modern slavery" aren't seperated, as marriage of a child is automatically considered slavery & subject to trafficking & other related slavery laws
This dialogue feels one-sided. There's a lot of focus on the brides, but little attention seems to go to the predators who force or coerce them into the marriage. Addressing child marriage (while ABSOLUTELY worth doing) feels like treating a symptom, not the cause.
Not gonna lie I thought you were going in a different direction there for a second.
@@Tahoza Yeeeaaah, reading my comment over again, I get that. Sorry! ^__^*
Going to agree. This is like girls getting all the warnings and flack about teenage pregnancy but little discussion aimed at the boys getting them pregnant, just because they themselves can't get pregnant (and can walk away with no responsibility). It took two to tango, as they say, and it's usually them pressuring girls for sex. If anyone needs to have a spotlight pointed at them, it's the men.
It's because they still have hope of this message getting through; they probably think there isn't much point in putting out a video themed around "don't marry young girls" as anyone who would watch that video is already never going to do so, and the people who need to hear that message won't watch it.
I feel like that's the obvious side, any reasonable person already understands that those marrying kids are predators.
In 1970 (so goes the family story) an auntie of mine ran away to be a hippie at age 14. She got 'married' at a festival to a 16 YO boy, and went from festival to festival all over the west coast with the boy's extended family (group? don't know how they were related) She became pregnant before she turned 15, and became sick. The boy somehow took her back to Michigan to her parents, and they were legally married soon after her 15th birthday. My grandma bragged she raised all three of them - Auntie, the young husband, and the baby. They had two more kids, none of them got an education, and they're still the most messed up part of that side of the family over 50 years, and two generations later.
It looks like that's not an issue of early marriage but early sex and pregnancy.
My mother married my father at age 17 in the UK. He was 18. She will argue until she's blue in the face that her parents made the right decision. But I grew up WITH my parents. They were NOT ready and did not have the support to do a good job. They have strained relationships with their kids and almost no relationship with any grandchildren. They're still together. They will at best admit they're not happy but believe it's an acceptable level of misery. It's not and that unhappiness penetrates into the rest of their relationships.
Judges and parents who consent(ed) to these marriages should be held accountable.
Here in Utah in the United States, you can get married at 13 or 14 with your parents permission. It’s ridiculous.
My friends parents were married at 13. They made it work. But idt that’s the norm.
In some states there is NO minimum age at all. No surprise of the party affiliation of most of them.
No one ever accused Utah of not being terrible.
Not to mention all the underage illegal marriages in the FLDS community
I married my first husband at 17 with parental consent in new York in 2002. I and my parents regretted it ever since. I wasn't pressured into it but I wish my parents had tried to talk me out of it too. The marriage only lasted 5 months.
My family tried to talk one of us out of it. She was a young teen and he was early 20s. They even sent her to live with family abroad to protect her but he followed and she kept seeing him. They are now great grandparents and still together. Eventually he became the favourite in-law. Lovely couple.
when i was in middle school a 14 year old mormon girl was married to the guy that got her pregnant, who was 28 and a member of her church. this was in 2014. it was and is completely legal. she needed her parents permission to get married and couldn’t get a divorce without their consent, which they wouldn’t give. this is in Texas in a fairly progressive and large city. this isn’t something that happened ages ago, this happened in 2013.
I see quite a few comments referencing "Mormons." I hope you realize that not every member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is like that.
@ yeah, they aren’t like that. but they do condone it by putting their head down at things like this.
Do you know if she was from the mainstream Mormon church? Or one of the fundamentalist groups? (I'm just curious. Although I suspect the latter)
Those members completely failed their daughter. We actually have recommendations that youth don't even start group dating till 14, and one-on-one dating till 16. And we actually make exceptions for abortion when it's incest, rape, or severe medical issues. (I bring that up because a 28yr old getting a 14yr old pregnant is absolutely rape) It is absolutely not a part of our doctrine that underage girls should marry their abusers and it sickens me that there are so many members that accept or even encourage that sort of thing. Those parents are backwards minded, ignorant and horrible people. I hope that girl is doing alright these days :(
@@jesstolley7193 FLDS doesn't abide those rules, though. The child marriages associated with Warren Jeffs and his compound full of child predators made a huge impact in certain areas of the state when they moved here in the early 2000's. Your version of Mormonism is not the same as everyone else's and that doesn't stop them from also being Mormon.
What's interesting is that my parents were married in 1953 in Iowa. My father was 19, my mother 18. My dad had to get permission from my grandfather to get married, but my mother didn't have to have parental permission, from what my mother told me. I got married at 39, and my husband was 36; the clerk didn't ask for proof of our ages, but then again we both looked our ages.
In my country Colombia anyone older than 14 years old can voluntary get married, if the child is younger than 14 years old, it is only allowed with express consent of both the parents and the child (according to the pretty old Code of Civil law), however non notary or Judge, would take the risk to process such a thing... normally, but in the country side is still common practice in some isolated areas to basically give away their 14+ old girls to the best bidder, sometimes even with good intentions and even thinking about the future of the child funnily enough.
I am a lawyer and sometimes I travel to the contryside to attend my cases and in one occasion in a more or less isolated village a man offered me his underage daughter, a girl of about 15 years old, obviously I refused but his motivation was that probably as I was a lawyer, with stable income, who looked youth, refined (I guess compared to the locals), healthy and with a life in a relatively safe city, I could give her much better life compared to whatever awaited his daugther in that "godforsaken place", to be honest it was a complete shock for me, I even considered to denouce it but in a village ravaged by violence and the armed conflict like that one, it would be probably of no use.
It still gives me nightmares to this day to think of how bad the situation of these people was that they would do something like this just to try to find a better life for their children, but what impressed me the most was the naturalness of how he offered it to me like if it was the normal and sensible thing to do, I guess for him was better to "give" her to me, than allow the gangs and/or insurgent groups to take her, luckily in other occasions that I have visited the place it seems like the man and his daugther are fine and she is atending a near public school, however I try to don't get involved with them as much as possible, nonetheless in a little village of few streets is hard to don't know how the locals are doing.
Below fourteen... wow!
@@shakiMiki Those are laws from the XIX century, that have fallen into disuse but aren't expressly deroged yet, hence in theory are applicable. :P
The fact that a child can legally get married, but not legally divorced until they’re 18 is fucked up.
Isn't it boy math ?
I live in Florida. When my 17 year old father got my 15 year old mother pregnant with me, my grandparents basically forced them to get married in 1976. My mother's mother married my grandfather, who was 9 years older than her, when she was 16 years old due to financial pressures as one of 13 children in her home. That was in West Virginia in the 1940s. Neither my mother nor her mother lived happy lives as a result.
I definitely think of the United States when the topic of child marriage is discussed. It's always creeped me out because the child can't legally divorce the spouse because they're _minors_ .
The age of consent to sex is 16 in every state that I'm aware of. This means that EVERY girl who is pregnant below that age is a de facto victim of rape, and if she is pressured into getting married because she is pregnant, she is being forced to marry her pedophile rapist (and let's face it -most of these marriages in the US involve underage girls and adult men, not two teenagers in "love"). It's a "get-out-of jail-free" card for adult male statutory rapists, and a life sentence to misery, poverty, and abuse for young girls.
No legal marriage under age 18. If you need your parents' permission to get married, you're not old enough. If you're not old enough to sign a contract, vote, drive, buy alcohol or tobacco, or join the military, you're not old enough to get married. If you're a teenager and you think you're just madly in love with another teen, you can wait. True love lasts. Finish school and get jobs - then get married. If you're a young teen and some adult man is coming onto you - he doesn't love you, he's a pedophile and a rapist. Get as far away from him as you can and report him to law enforcement. Trust me, as a former teenage mother myself, you don't want to be one. Ever.
Age of consent is 18 although there are Romeo and juliet statues if you went to highschool together.
@@nolanfroese9164 Depends on the state.
For the age thing, a lot of it at that age isn't rape there. You have a lot of cases of idiot teenagers and preteens who decide they need a baby to get/keep their boyfriend there.
While the family was an utter disaster area, one of my grandmothers friends had 2 of her grandkids end up in absolute stupidity there.
One was a dumbass who, at 17 got pushed into a marriage with a 13 year old who gloated about lying and decieving him about her age, but she had decided that she wanted him in one of the more fucked up situations. That guy was already screwed in the head there before that with 2 stints in juvie and was a general drug addled menace.
Then there was the youngest granddaughter who got herself knocked up and pushed for a marriage because she hated the rest of her family as a pre-teen...
That entire family, including the grandmother were nuts, but my they lived next to my grandmother for decades and was one of the few people my grandmother regularly got to talk to.
@@AzraelThanatos If there's genuine deception involved then I understand where you're coming from. When I was a teen I had a gay friend who used to dump his older boyfriends by letting them find out how old he was. Of course he could not get pregnant. But just because you know some skeevy kids doesn't mean that the majority of them are skeevy, and if these guys actually do know how old the girl is, I don't have any sympathy for them.
Also, I knew too many girls who married young to not wonder what these girls who feel they need to trap a man are running FROM. Sometimes early marriages are a way girls escape from abuse at home, not realising that in many cases, someone who wants to marry a teenager is gonna be just as bad.
@@AzraelThanatos there's a Romeo and juliet law but that doesn't always work
Parents should not be allowed to give permission for their CHILD to get married. My 16 year old is intelligent enough to vote but I can’t sign off on that. There are a lot of things children shouldn’t be allowed to do. Getting married is def one of them.
THIS!!!
How about voluntary sexual relationships and pregnancies? Should they be allowed that?
@yasminea7149 "voluntary" is easily distorted in the law books. Society needs to place more importance on intelligence(brain development) and age. Many religions place "voluntary" responsibility on the father or elder male family members to make decisions for the young girls and women in their religious communities. So, no. I don't believe a person of mental incapability or inappropriate age should be so easily labeled as a "consenting volunteer" to any relationship
A couple of years ago in Denmark, we had a couple aged 17 and 18 come as refugees. Their marriage was considered invalid because of her age, and they were separated and he was denied access to see her (and their child).
I can understand how their marriage can't be seen as legally binding at this point, and of course it should be found out, if they both want to be together. But it's legal for them to be romantically and sexually involved (the age of consent is 15), so why couldn't they be housed together, if they wanted to?
I don't know how it ended, but I hope they are living safely together, if that's what they both wanted.
Yeah it's very different when they're close enough in age to be allowed to date each other. Most of these child marriage stories the husband is so much older than the "wife" he belongs behind bars, not in a wedding ceremony. When they're so close in age, they should be treated at least as boyfriend and girlfriend co-parenting their child, assuming neither of them indicates they're being abused.
So they had a child ... how old was she when she gave birth, how old when she got pregnant? How old when they married her off to the guy? How old when he started fucking her? Just because she was impregnated and had a child, doesn't mean it isn't abuse, just because she feels attached to the man they married her off to as a child doesn't mean she wasn't a victim of child marriage. No exceptions. Stay in backward lands if this is such a huge cultural value.
Tbh I feel like this is a special case. At 17 and 18, they were probably only a couple months apart in age, so even if the marriage is dissolved, I don't see why the man should've been kept from his family (assuming the wife and kid wanted to be with him) With such a small age gap I wouldn't consider him a pëdo, even if he technically meets the legal definition
@@Wi-Fi-ElI wouldn't consider him a pedophile when they are only a few months apart in age. That's just silly. And even the US has a Romeo and Juliet clause. It's technically illegal, but they were together before he turned 18, and they are basically still in the same age group.
This one I would roll my eyes at if someone wanted to judge them.
I don't believe in child marriage, but if they are teens in the same age group and get pregnant and want to marry and have parental support while they finish school, I don't see a problem as long as they aren't being forced and it's their idea. Also, their families should make sure they get some type of marriage and family counseling first to make sure they really are ok together. They need to have a solid life plan.
@@Wi-Fi-El he... doesn't actually meet the legal definition in most cases. every jurisdiction i have heard of so far has either a minimum age gap for you to be considered a pedo, or some other measure o not get situations where you're jailed over like, ridiculously small age gaps.
2017 they invented a new law in Germany, no underage marriage at all. And (I like this one) all underage marriages from the last years were proved: for children under the age of 16 the marriage became automaticcally ineffective; a judge normally dissolve the marriage for children over 16 but under 18; and if the teens became of legal age during the last years, they have to confirm their will again, otherwise the marriage will be dissolved. In my opion: nice step in the right direction because they apply this law on all in Germany living children, not just the ones who were born there. Protecting children sometimes means also protecting against traditions and religions.
So they just destroyed the relationships of young people in love without even asking whether they were happy together?
@cmm5542 No, they didn't. If it is really love and healthy and happy relationship, they can marry again - WHEN THEY'RE OLD ENOUGH to do so.
@@cmm5542 They can marry again. You seem a bit naive about the issues with underage marriages.
@cmm5542 marriage is not synonymous with relationship. If my marriage was dissolved by the state, my husband and I would not change one thing, and go get a new marriage certificate. You are being willfully obtuse.
Good. Enforcing the law isn't discriminating against any particular religion or ethnic group - it's saying that the law applies to everyone, no matter their background. You don't get an exemption from consent laws for having a religion that says marrying kids is okay somehow. The law applies to EVERYBODY.
As a child marriage survivor I thank you for bringing attention to this
You incorrectly claimed the law was changed in the UK. It was not. Just because it was changed England that does not mean it was changed in Scotland. In Scotland the legal age for marriage remains sixteen. (No need for parental consent.) Sixteen year olds are also permitted to vote in local council and Scottish parliamentary elections.
My family wanted me to marry a 25 year old man when I was 14. It wasn't legal but the church did it anyways. I've left the church when I was 18 and ran away - technically I'm still married in the name of the church. I'm getting an actual, legal marriage next May and luckily neither my man nor I are religious because we couldn'teven have a religious ceremony since in the eyes of the church, I married when I was 14. I have no idea if the man has gotten a "divorce" in the mean time but honestly, I don't even care anymore.
Disgusting. So a child rapist could marry his victim, LEGALLY. And this whole "if you have sex before marriage you're disgracing the family" thing needs to go.
that is what happens in a LOT of cases. Your 11 yr old is pregnant by a family friend? Do you press charges and send him to jail, or marry the 2 of them off because she's not "pure" anymore and god forbid she has a child out of wedlock? Of course we will make absolutely no progress on this issue any time soon, because in states where this is an issue the people in power have no problem with that.
@@ariadne0w1 Clearly they and I have very different ideas of purity.
@@AnimeShinigami13 yes poor phrasing, sorry, general "your". I do not in any way think you believe or condone that way of thinking.
It boggles my mind why the narrative isn't "if you have intercurse with anyone without consent, you dishonor your family"
@@bacul165 Didn't you know? The girl looked good so she was a sinful temptress flirting at him with her glances. BULL. SHIT. I just don't understand why they believe the adult instead of their own child. Just... VILE.
Glad to hear this discussed. I’m an American who had several married high school classmates. The husbands were always 20+. Sometimes the girls weren’t even pregnant. And this was in the late 80s, it was eyebrow raising even then. The two girls in eighth grade who had babies were too little themselves to legally get married but both fathers were adults. Neither involved at all, which was prob for the best but tells you how badly some girls out in rural areas are treated. I went to a fancy college & stories like this that I thought were mildly “out there” absolutely stunned my rich urbanite classmates.
There's nothing racist or insensitive about saving a rape victim.
Simon doing a major service to the community shedding light on this issue.
Its not xenophobic or anti-religion to prohibit adults marrying minors. Its not really that difficult to justify banning child marriage.
I have a family member who had a 15 yr. old “bride” chosen for him by his IFBC minister when he was in his late 40s.
😢
There’s no such thing as a cultural justification when it comes to child marriage. I refuse to hear that argument.
Certain things really don't need an opposing viewpoint
I didn't see it as a justification, more an explanation. We all agree it's wrong, Simon was explaining why it still happens today, at no point did he say it was okay.
You need to hear the argument to fight the argument. You can make laws against things all you want, but as long as there are still cultural reasons to do it, people will still do it. You need to shift the culture to cure the problem
Contrary to popular belief, the Amish don't allow child marriage. Also, as much as we vilify the American puritans, they did not typically marry until their early twenties.
Italian guy here. And I'm surprised American puritans have that kind of reputation, they aleays struck me as better than that
As a descendant of Puritains, I can say they weren’t very nice, forcing people who didn’t agree with their religious views or other protestant sects. Age of marriage in the 20’s was more about getting farms up and running.
@@lordMartiya I think it more has to do with the idea child marriages were common in the past. However, historians are starting to push against the view noting it was mostly the upper classes who did the under 18 marriages to secure alliances. Even then there was an understanding the couple should not starting having until at least 15 or 16. Sure not great but when you have cases of one or both parties getting married at 12 or 13, it seems even back then there was an understanding teen pregnancies were risky.
Some historical examples can be seen in the Tudors. When Henry VII married Catherine, he was marrying his older brother's widow to maintain a marriage alliance with Spain. However, Henry was 10 and Catherine 15 so they had to wait several years for their marriage (with some hand wringing as Henry could refuse when he after he turn 14). Then there was Henry's father Henry VII who was born to a 13 year old girl who was married at 12 to a 26 year old. Henry VII's birth scandalized due to his mom's young age.
@@SEAZNDragon So, they attributed to everyone a practice that was only of the nobility, and even then with caveats.
@@lordMartiya Pretty much. When you think about we all have a cliff notes version of history. And that's before you add in bias and limited info.
I'm a high school social studies teacher and while I officially don't have the time in my curriculum I always do a unit on child marriage. The kids are often the same age, or older, then the girls and boys (they're often forgotten) in the stories. It's a complicated and heart breaking issue that needs addressing. I'm definitely gonna add this video to my lecture
I met my husband at 19 and we didnt marry right away but i still felt like he somehow robbed me of my youth and opportunities because i just didnt know how to focus on myself. We didnt have kids for 6 years but i just felt so reliant on him, that i felt robbed of my identity. So child marriage aside, I think education on psychological identity in school would help a lot.
Thank you for addressing this. I grew up in the LDS church and most marriages were "softly" arranged between parents while we were kids. I was kicked out of the church for questioning the rich ppl who owned it/the town of Idaho Falls, ID. Take a gander at that angel on top of the temple in the middle of town. Then look up what the beliefs are. ALLEGEDLLY.... they're scary.
Child marriage is still going on with the FLDS. Just because Warren Jeff's is in jail for life doesn't mean it stopped. Girls as young as 12 are married to grow men. There's grave yards full of home made tombstones for babies born to underage mothers. A pregnant 12 year old is going to raise a mess of red flags and questions
Nope. Child marriage is abhorrant, even in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There are some members who condone it, but that is NOWHERE in the beliefs of the church.
Hell no. Those people are evil, full stop. We do NOT believe in underage marriage. We don't even recommend one-on-one dating till 16. I'm so sorry for what you and so many have and might still be going through, this crap is NOT okay!!
How is it possible to marry an underage girl if the act of getting her pregnant is illegal? Should these people not get charged and go to jail??
One would think. However, I think up until recently? A number of states had the age of consent as low as like 13 I think?
I'm pretty sure that's the only exception (if the child is married). Gross either way
Conservatives: You're not old enough to know your gender but you are old enough to get married and have babies.
Any sane person: What now?
I am NOT advocating for child marriage. But puberty blockers are pretty permanent, marriage is not.
@angryox3102 the damage from child marriage and pregnancy isn't permanent?
@@thenerdgirl1 it’s possible to heal from mental trauma, it’s impossible to heal from puberty blockers.
@angryox3102 I think you're reducing this in inaccurate and disingenuous ways.
@@angryox3102 That's not true. Puberty blockers were invented for kids whose bodies go into puberty early--like the age of 7 or so. My friend's daughter was put on them because she was in second grade and starting to look like a very short 16 year old, but had no emotional capability to process the changes of puberty and they wanted to keep her from menstruating and becoming fertile before she was 10. All puberty blockers do is change the hormonal balance while you are taking them until you stop. The girl in question was taken off them when she was 14 and everything is completely normal now.
Sexual reassignment/confirmation surgery is permanent, but it's already illegal to do that on people under 18.
I’m Muslim and I absolutely don’t agree with child marriages so thank you so so much for pointing out that is a cultural thing not a religious thing
Back when I was in High School, friend went to Mississippi the night of Junior Prom to get married, to her boyfriend who was also 16. They were pregnant. Not coerced, but ... discovering that in Mississippi girls as young as 12 and boys as young as 14 could marry legally with parental consent. I was shocked. She did finish high school and they were of an age, not a huge disparity. Still, that laws put into place in the 1700s when life spans were shorter and adult responsibilities on young men and women were way different, were still in effect in 1968 surprised the heck out of me. And most of her friends.
The saddest thing is that educated men who should know better still believe that this is right and proper, that women are not worthy of deciding their own lives.
It sounds to me like your friend DID decide her own life.
It sounds to me like your friend DID decide her own life.
Except in your example, the 16 year old "woman", who was old enough to choose a boyfriend, decide to enter into a secual relationship and get pregnant, did decide for herself. Either you allow agency or not. Which is it? Are young women allowed to make their own decisions or not? Or they can only have sex and get pregnant but not get married? Why this inconsistency?
While i applaud you for picking the subject,you barely scratched the surface of the problem and it is a subject that youtube wouldnt allow to present the darker side of it.
Thank you for posting this, yes this is a real problem. As a devout Christian I do not condone legalized slavery of this sort. No-one should ever be able to marry under 18 for any reason. Oh and if one wants to marry someone twenty years or more older, the youngest has to be at least 25 years of age. Oh and parents should not ever be allowed to play matchmaker for their kids, ever, full stop.
13:54 it is very interesting you bring this up. In my college statistics class, we did a study on the countries with the highest rates of child marriage over the last decade. The mass majority of all the countries we studied had a Christian majority.
I attended high school in Oklahoma in a very small town. One of my classmates got married our freshman year. By the time we graduated, out of a class of fifteen, four members were married, all of them girls, all to men who were over twenty-one.
YEEEK. I'm in Manitoba, Canada. That chart up at 2:00 is a teensy bit more alarming than I thought! I'm aware there are some hyper-conservative cultures here where that has at least historically been a thing and MAN am I glad the trend's been sharply downward, but oh dear. Thank you, Simon.
Even 1 is too many but yikes.
Make it 21, nobody in the modern world should marry before that....
I got married at 20. I was not even close to mentally developed enough to do so. Hell I’m in my 40s and still want no part of making that mistake again.
Protect your children from themselves.
My mother in law born 1929 was an only child. She married at age 14 to a man 20. She wanted to get married and was not pregnant. Her parents lied about her age and said she was 18. A year later she had a son and got divorced. She went back to high school and her mother raised the boy until she got married at age 20. Her new husband adopted the boy.
This reminds me of Sherri Johnson's story. It's so disturbing. Politicians worth a damn need to work towards outlawing this altogether.
Imagine the difficulty once covenant marriage becomes law. It's gonna happen and then these girls will have no way out anymore, even in cases of extreme mistreatment 😢
We are slowly but surely receding into the dark ages
Here's another complexity in the issue - I live in NH, where the law was just changed to 18, no exceptions, this past June. (Something I highly applaud.) NH is a small state, where it's relatively easy for a single person to impact legislation. I know a man who - a few years ago - encouraged his teenage daughters to fulfill their requirements for a school project by fighting against raising the marriage age, which they then did. He did this not because he had any desire to marry off his teenage daughters, but because he believed that the government should be extremely limited in it's ability to make people's choices for them. (Yes, think Ron Swanson.) I doubt he thought about situations where children were being forced into something against their will. For him, it was more of an intellectual exercise.
Ive seen certain governors arguing it should be as low as 12 years old here in the US...
In Poland there's still a law from 1960s that allow a 16 year old girl to be married to a man of whatever age, as long as the local court approve it. The most common reason is pregnancy, which absolutely baffles me, because that MAYBE was a valid reason in 1960s, but now??? I know a case of disabled 16 year old girl and 60-something year old "family friend" who made her pregnant and was allowed to marry her, it really made me sick.
Child marriages are just a way to avoid rape charges, tbh
Thank you for covering this subject. One of the loopholes is countries wanting to make money. Immigration in both countries played a big hand in this. Australia and America wanted to use each other's destinations as military ports of call. Australia made millions of dollars by military spending money while on rest and recreation in Australia. America needed a place for their military to stop in Australia. So of course let the fraternization begin, let American men marry Australian girls. My child marriage, being given away at 15 and finally married at 16, was horrific I was sent from Australia to America to be married. I knew nobody here but him. I endured 23 years of absolute abuse before I could escape. It ruined every aspect of my life to the point of becoming physically broken with autoimmune disease, which has been proven to be related to too much stress and abuse, I had so much destroyed and taken away, that at the age of almost 60, I have never been able to get things back to good. I will forever suffer for what he did, and what the government allowed.
I am sorry for your experience. I have witnessed the injustices related to marriage and immigration perpetrated by both of these governments. It’s inhuman what situations they create for women.
Wild that it's considered more important for children to have a father and be born to married parents than it is to protect a CHILD from their abuser. And people still claim we don't need feminism...
Majority of kids are raised by single mothers. So having a father must not be seen as important by society.
Feminism is failing them and us. That being said, We need to tackle this situation head on.
To be fair in many cases like the Roma people both the bride and the groom are about the same age, usually very young or too young, it's a way for their families to have less mouths to feed..
Yap things like Poverty and less social mobility - less opportunities play their role
Who would have imagined huh?
Not to mention that when people try to shut such legal loopholes, it's ALWAYS the " woke" mob that resist with excuses like " it's their culture" and " don't try to enforce your beliefs on them" ect
Even the freaking anonymous have done this in the past with excuses like " it's different" when they " fall in love"
@Pavlos_Charalambous i was referring more to the cases in Canada and the US, but yeah, the whole thing is messed up, no matter where it occurs
@@ShepherdsCreek majority of kids are raised by single mothers. Feminism has failed us and them. What we need is stable homes.
@MrTdub16 i think your numbers are off but for the sake of argument, feminism would ask why it falls to women when men are half of the genetic responsibility for creating children.
There is absolutely nothing complex or murky about RAPING a CHILD . Having laws that legally "Allow" the RAPE of CHILDREN is absolutely sickening .
smdh
I am a white 35 years old woman from Germany with no immigration history. Until 15 years ago, I thought it was normal in my culture to be laid by an older man at 14 and to officially marry him at 18. Just because you don't move in together until you are 18 doesn't mean that it is not seen as a marriaga where the girl is on probation.
Many people don't understand how I came up with these ideas. But in my family, all women in the older generations were married at 18 and often met their husbands at 12. Maybe my family is 20 years behind culturally, but I am certainly not the only woman my age who would have said yes to a child marriage and thought she wouldn't be allowed to break up with a man if she got laid.
Are you Jewish, Protestant, or Gypsie by any chance?
By "laid", I'm guessing you mean "raped". A 14yo can't consent to sex with an older man. I'm so sorry you went through this.
Let me ask, are the women in your family educated beyond basic high school? Ever seek higher education? How many worked decent jobs or had a career? How many did anything with their lives but sit in their hometown catering to the husband? It's not normal to marry some older creep you meet at 12. That sounds like some backwoods, low ambition, low education area where people hold each back if they get ideas about improving themselves and not doing the same miserable shit as their ancestors.
I live in eastern Europe and grew up in very poor area with large romani community nearby... it´s not even the marriage but it was very common within that community girls getting pregnant very young...like 14 - 15 y.o., I remember that I was about 17 - 18 y.o., getting ready for university and moving out to different city and there were these girls my age already having like three kids and not even finishing school because of that. It´s a cycle powered by poverty and lack of education. Lot of them are just stuck in there, because it´s extremly difficult to change something, whenfor your whole life you see that this is just the way everyone close to you lives
My grandmother was 16 when she and my grandfather drove from Michigan to Kentucky to get married back in the 60s. My grandmother was pregnant and was afraid what would happen of her mother found out. Because she was pregnant the judge alowed her to get married without parental consent. They are celebrating 60 years next year. I cant imagine doing what they did and they are the lucky ones. My grandmother missed out on a lot because of this. They were both just kids but its crazy to think 2 kids can make such a complicated decision.
Legal age in Nova Scotia, Canada is 19, but you can get married as young as 16 with parental permission. Good grief, I hope the law changes, even though my province wasn't mentioned. Thank you for addressing this issue, Simon. It's unreal how many minors are being forced into marriage even here in Canada.
You shouldn’t balance respect for cultural differences with the needs to protect minors. The latter trumps the former in every circumstance.
And it's not discriminating against someone's religion if you apply the same law to everyone. It's only discrimination if you let some people ignore the law you apply to everyone else.
Make it illegal for anyone to marry someone under 18, and apply the law with equal firmness to everyone who breaks it. No discrimination required.
@ and that would keep children safe. A man coming to the west with a 13 year old ‘wife’ does not need to be treated with sensitivity. The child needs the law to protect her as much as it would a natural born 13 year old citizen who was ‘married’ off to another adult natural born citizen. Dude would be in jail.
@@Jcremo If he has gone through the ceremony of marriage in order to become her legal guardian but hasn't engaged in sexual behaviour with the child, then he hasn't committed a crime. It wouldn't be my first assumption, but it is a valid possibility that needs to be considered.
Some of the Indigenous Australian tribes had a similar custom - a young man would "marry" a baby girl and that made him responsible for helping to provide food for her and her family, but the marriage wasn't completed until she was adult. Obviously the girl didn't get any say in who she was married to, but it was an economic arrangement that made sure she was well fed through her childhood at least.
@@tealkerberus748 > it's only discrimination if you let some people ignore the law
that's... a simplified way to say it. which is fine cause applied to this subject it's 100% true but also...
well, laws themself can be made in a way that discriminates even if they apply to everyone.
say, something so ridiculous I can be sure it won't be an actual political issue so i won't step on any toes, I were to make it illegal to menstruate (somehow). well... that law would apply to men and women alike, but it would also still be extremely discriminatory towards women, would it not?
This is organized religion vs. common sense.
Good piece!
Reminds me of a discussion here in the Netherlands (late 90’s) about female circumcision. Should it be allowed because of cultural norms (and should doctors perform it, so that there are far fewer complications).
The answer was no: child mutulation is not allowed. End of.
For the record, Planned Parenthood's objection to the California bill had to do with some wording in the bill that might affect the bodily and medical autonomy of minors, not because PP thinks that child marriage is good or anything. I had to look it up, because that doesn't make sense considering PP's objectives.
💯
i find it so insane that there are people who deeply dislike the idea of two consenting adults of the same sex getting married but they're fine with an adult marrying a child. I have witnessed these kinds of people firsthand. they say it's against god to marry someone of the same sex but then they go off and marry someone who doesn't have a fully formed brain and can't even knowingly consent.
marrying under the legal age should be illegal, period.
Yep, and screw cultural differences. You want to keep your child bride? Don't step foot in my country.
I cannot understand the logic of pressuring or forcing your child, your little girl, into marrying her rapist.
And your evidence that he is? How do you know your SEVENTEEN YEAR OLD isn't the one who initiated intercourse? You do know women can SA as well?
It shows a scary disrespect for the law and 'innocent until PROVEN guilty,' that people always assume the man forced the woman without any evidence or knowing the individuals' circumstances.
@@cmm5542The seventeen year old won't die by waiting a year.
@@cmm5542 Yes, the SA of men is a huge and unacknowledged issue, and women are just as capable of evil as men. However, these cases are typically a man grooming or just straight-up assaulting, a much younger woman - or even girl - and then the parents forcing her to marry him because god forbid she have a child out of wedlock at 13 instead of being married to her 35 year old rapist. If she is under 17 and he is over 18 (with the exception of Romeo and Juliet laws) he has an obligation to say no. If she doesn't give him that option (drugs, threats, etc) then of course she should be the guilty party, same as if she is 17 and he is much younger. But "she seduced me" is a common defense, very rarely true, and almost never excusable.
@@cmm5542a fair argument. A child should not be forced into a marriage with his or her rapist.
As far as parental consent is concerned. When the minor does not want to get married, I’d call that a loophole. When the minor does want the marriage, I’d call that an exemption.
Great video. Love the complexity!
My wife and I married when we were both 16 in Scotland. On the 9th of November, we will have been married for 50years. We have 2 brilliant children and 3 beautiful grandchildren. Our marriage was a conscious decision between the both of us, who had been together since we were 11. Neither of us have ever regretted our decision.
It's just absolutely insane that some of the most terrible child abuse suddenly becomes "acceptable" the minute you slap a label of "religious" and "marriage" on it.
I hope, for the sake of all of us, that soon people will accept that sex and marriage are for adults, not children
I agree. Too much promiscuity causes a lot of this. Young people not taught moral values.
When I was in high school in the mid 90s, the youngest marriage in recent memory in my parish (Louisiana doesn't have counties) was 7. I think about that little girl from time to time.
My god, 7? All I cared about at that age was riding my bike and how cool dinosaurs are.. that's horrifying..
@JordyValentine From what we were told in my civics class, the judge felt that her husband could provide a safer environment than her parents.
Lots of places in the usa and Europe have an age of consent under 18. Implying that a 17 yr old living on their own is a "child" only dilutes the outrage justly deserved at pdf files
The age of consent is usually restricted by an age difference though. I can get 17 and 18 years old living together if their families are fucked up (still too young for marriage though), but marrying a 17 years old to someone more then 7 years older is really bad.
I really appreciate Simon talking about these things, since I know he's stated in the past that it's extremely hard for him to read scripts like this. But like he said, it's important to speak about
My family still practiced shot gun marriages in the 2000s so I had one cosuin get married after she had just turned 17 to her 17 year old boyfriend.
Another married at 17 to her 18 year old boyfriend. They've been together for almost 15 years.
@@spokenme08 at least they're with folks their own age though. I hope that the couple who've been together 15 years are still together because they want to be.
I got married at 17yo to my 18yo partner. I got pregnant at 16yo and we had to get a court order and had only 3 months to inact it. Still together after 20 years, 18 years married soon with 3 kids. Western Australia. And no, this shouldn't be a normal thing or widely accepted and so many things should be taken into consideration. Like, who cares if you're not bound by law, can always wait until you're older
Agreed, there's no harm in waiting, my wife and I met at the same age, but waited until our 20's to get married. Just had our 10 year marriage anniversary, you and I got lucky it seems! (Also hi fellow Aussie)