96% of children getting married were 16 or 17, and 85% of the adults marrying those children were 18-23. Not quite the horror show that campaigners push.
I agree that no one under 18 should be getting married, I just question their tactics.
What I see is that we shelter kids from reality because they're just kids, then these kids grow up to be irresponsible adults, then in turn we create more rules about sheltering "young adults" from consequences. It's a feedback loop.
The thing you should be feeling now after reading that is shame.
Adulthood used to begin at 13 or so across the world. That didn't mean a 13 year old was going to run the tribe or anything, but then, a junior developer doesn't run the software company either at 25. But adulthood meant having responsibilities, obligations, and being expected to make your own decision. Our school system is designed very specifically to prevent this from happening.
Given that, it does sort of make sense that IF you're being subjected to that sort of psychological abuse, perhaps we can't expect you to be able to make responsible decisions. Those who can generally are the exception, not the rule.
Perhaps rather than drawing all these lines though, we should be seriously considering getting rid of a school system that was modeled off of the Prussian model, which the Nazis were known to enforce, and which is still the ONLY option even in modern day Germany, regardless of how much the parents want to or are capable of home schooling children.
No one is saying it's common. They're saying it shouldn't happen at all.
Weird.
(Personally I think a marriage between someone 50 and someone 18 still seems bad. But the way our legal system works, once someone is 18 anything goes.)
It's less clear that a marriage between a 17-year-old and a 16-year-old or between a 19-year-old and a 17-year-old is inherently problematic. If, for example, the woman of such a couple gets pregnant, being married could give helpful legal protection/advantage, since most of our laws are written around the default expectation of married parents.
According to a news article from a few years ago, groups opposing a previous ban on child marriages in California included the ACLU (who claimed that it "unnecessarily and unduly intrudes on the fundamental right of marriage without sufficient cause") and Planned Parenthood (who said the law should "not impede on the reproductive rights of minors and their ability to decide what is best for them, their health and their lives").
Marriage OK if (p1>18 && p2 > 18) || (p1>16 && p2 <20) || (p1>17 && p2 <22) ..
Marriage is a civil institution that provides social advantages, and waiting till 18 isn't really a burden for a 16 and 19yo that want to get married, and get those benefits.