Governor Tina Kotek signs legislation to end child marriage in Oregon | Hacker News Reader

Governor Tina Kotek signs legislation to end child marriage in Oregon

nwprogressive.org

19 pointsBeetleB11 comments

Legislation tracker: https://www.unchainedatlast.org/child-marriage-in-the-u-s/

"Child marriage can also be a form of human trafficking. Due to loopholes in immigration laws, thousands of American girls are being trafficked legally for their citizenship, forced to marry adult men from overseas so the men can get a U.S. visa. Similarly, American men are legally importing child brides from overseas."

Oh wow, you'd think in the current political climate this would open the carburetor on these bills.

I would likely support raising the legal age for marriage to 21. A lot happens developmentally in those few years and marriage at 18 rarely ends up well. There are exceptions and who would grant exceptions to legal adults? It’s probably infeasible but would guide better outcomes IMHO.

40-50% of first marriages end before death [1] (percentages increase for second and third marriages). Not opposed, just not sure how much it solves for. Getting to 18 is certainly an improvement country wide.

([1] I don’t say “fail” because a marriage ending isn’t necessarily failure, if your perspective is humans are not optimally wired for a lifetime with a single partner)

This is one of those issues that does deserve attention, but around which enormously dishonest rhetoric seems to thrive. The statistics are often presented in lurid and misleading fashion as well. Pew did a bit about this as part of the 'community survey' back in 2015-2016 and my first reaction is, "We have much bigger fish to fry than this" and "I am not surprised by these demographics".

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/11/01/child-mar...

It's good to get legislation to close these loopholes, but I think we're kidding ourselves if we take the "300,000 children" statistic at face value. The other thing to point out is that this 2025, so marriage is hardly a prerequisite to sex, and in fact a lot of these marriage licenses are granted when one someone turns up pregnant.

Personally I think this is a pretty clear-cut case of papering over a much bigger issue: parts of this country have really poor educational and financial outcomes for whole communities of people. As we've seen around the world, when you raise the standard of education and wealth, within a generation or two people change their habits around marriage, reproduction, etc.

But of course that's a lot harder to fix than just passing a bill.

tl;dr Instead of further regulating people's lives as the OP suggested, there are other more effective levers you can push. Changing the legal age of marriage to 21 will stop marriages under than age, but not relationships, pregnancies, and dropping out of education/work.

> support raising the legal age for marriage to 21. A lot happens developmentally in those few years and marriage at 18 rarely ends up well

Middle ground: simplify divorce for marriages entered into while either party was under 21 and the marriage is dissolved in fewer than N years.

We're amid a long-term decline in American marriage rates [1]. If the goal is boosting marriage, I'm not sure raising barriers helps. (Though apparently the benefits of marriage are more mixed than I thought [2]. And even birth rates are decoupling from marriage rates [3].)

Huh, in the course of researching this comment I've gone from slightly against your position (based solely on priors) to solidly for it. There isn't a great argument for allowing legal marriage before 21. If folks want to have civic or religious ceremonies earlier, by all means, go for it--that doesn't mean it need involve the state.

[1] https://www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr/resources/data/family-profiles/lo...

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8888778/

[3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4002169/

Lots of bad and dumb things are done by young adults, it's not the states place to micromanage the personal decisions of adults.

As long as you also raise the age for military service to 21 as well.

If they're allowed to kill, they should be allowed to marry.

Excellent news, marriage is an adult institution.

https://www.unchainedatlast.org/another-victory-oregon-banne...

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