The Harsh Truth of Child Marriage in the US

Image Description: Two interlocking gold wedding rings

If most people were asked in what countries is child marriage legal, few would say the United States (U.S.) Even fewer are aware of just how prevalent child marriage is in the U.S. The United Nations (U.N.) defines child marriage as any marriage where at least one of the parties is under 18 years of age. It’s not a rare occurrence or something that requires elaborate loopholes. Rather, child marriage is legal in 44 states. In fact, it has only been in the last three years that New Jersey, Delaware, Minnesota, New York, and Pennsylvania have set the minimum age for marriage at 18 without exception. Even more staggering is that in 20 states there is no minimum age for marriage with a parental or judicial waiver. 

Every day 40 children are married in the U.S. Between 2000 and 2010 an estimated 248,000 children were married, over 80% of those marriages were between adolescent girls and adult men. Some of these marriages occurred to children as young as 12. From 2000 to 2010 at least 3 states granted marriage licenses to 12-year-olds and at least 14 states granted marriage licenses to 13-year-olds. 

Somewhere between 70% and 80% of child marriages in the U.S. end in the divorce. Child marriage followed by divorce doubles the chance that child mothers will end up in poverty. Girls who marry before 19 are twice as likely to drop out of high school and four times less likely to obtain a college degree. Child marriage also acutely effects health. This includes higher rates of psychiatric disorders and exposure to physical, emotional, and verbal abuse. 

The U.N and U.S. State Department have deemed child marriage a human rights abuse. Yet, the federal government has failed to act where child marriage implicates American citizens. For example, Congress refused to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) which includes a provision denouncing child marriage. The U.S. is one of only 3 countries, along with Sudan and South Somalia, who have failed to ratify the CRC, largely due to the fact that certain states wanted to preserve the right to execute minors. Congress has also failed to ratify The Convention On the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which likewise contains a provision against child marriage. The U.S. is the only industrialized democracy and the only country in the Western Hemisphere that has not ratified CEDAW.  

In other countries child marriage remains prevalent in the face of legal restrictions. However, in the U.S. the problem isn’t ineffective enforcement of the laws, it’s the lack of laws themselves. 

One particularly concerning facet of child marriage in the U.S. is that it provides a legal exception to statutory rape. 18 U.S.C. Section 2243(c)(2) allows a defense to statutory rape when “the persons engaging in the sexual act were at that time married to each other.” Not only does federal law allow child marriage, it also permits adults to engage in sexual activity with children as young as 12. Even more concerning is that federal law incentivizes sexual predators to force children into marriage. Since 2000 approximately 60,000 marriages had a spousal age difference that would be considered a sex crime if the individuals were not married. 

Additionally, immigration law also exposes the prevalence of child marriage in the U.S. U.S. immigration law fails to specify a minimum age to petition for a foreign spouse or fiance or to be the beneficiary of a spousal or finance visa. This allows American girls to be married for their citizenship and girls from other countries to be trafficked to the U.S. under the guise of marriage. Between 2007 and 2017 the U.S. approved 9,000 petitions involving a minor, in 95% of petitions the minor party was a girl. 

The federal government has placed no restrictions on child marriage, resulting in a decentralized system which promotes a legal framework where some states protect against child marriage and others facilitate it. For example, in 2018 Delaware and New Jersey where the first states to ban child marriage without exception. Meanwhile, Missouri is known as a “destination wedding spot” for child brides. Until 2018 Missouri allowed children as young as 15 to be married to anyone of any age. While Missouri has recently raised the minimum age to 16 and determined that people over 21 can’t marry anyone under 18, activists are calling this too little too late. People continue to travel from far away to partake in child marriages in Missouri, there are documented accounts of individuals coming from Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and Florida to obtain a marriage certificate. 

Finally, judicial waivers to child age requirements highlight the federalist nature of the American legal framework and how some states will continue to act as a safe haven for child marriages. It’s problematic for judges to be able to approve marriages involving minors. First, judges lack the specialized knowledge on child marriage, intimate partner violence, and coercive control which are often at play in these situations. Judges also lack the training, resources, and experience necessary to evaluate each proposed marriage on a case by case basis. 

In order to effectively address the issue of child marriage in the U.S. more comprehensive research needs to be undertaken. Except for a small body of work on the influence of religion on early marriage in the U.S. research to date has been largely limited to data collection. The focus now needs to shift to understanding the root causes of child marriage, what groups are most effected by child marriage, and ways to prevent child marriage. In the global context there is an understanding that underlying social processes, gender norms, and a desire to control girls’ sexuality are all fundamental reasons for child marriage. An understanding of the key drivers behind child marriage in the U.S. is a necessary supplement to legislative efforts if we want to actually end child marriage in practice and not just in law. 

Upon more research into the topic it would not be shocking to learn that child marriage is most prevalent among girls from lower socio-economic status’, in more rural areas, and with less ties to the community. We know that college-educated urban populations are getting married significantly later than their rural counterparts. It stands to reason that the factors that contribute to women getting married later in life, urban environments, advanced degrees, and careers would be largely absent in children getting married. 

Finally, it would also not be surprising if further research into the topic showed that child marriage was particularly prevalent within certain religious communities. For example, when New Jersey was working to pass its total ban on child marriage the Orthodox Jewish community lobbied against the legislation. Rabbi Avi Schnall stated, “saying any marriage under 18 is illegal seems a bit extreme...it’s a cultural thing, mostly in the Sephardic community, culturally they tend to get married younger.”

One things for certain, in order to stop child marriage in the U.S. two things need to happen. First, there needs to be a federal ban on all marriages involving an individual under 18. Second, there needs to be more research into the root causes of child marriage so that the socio-cultural forces behind it can be directly addressed.