The United States has a child marriage problem – but a simple solution is available.
Nearly 300,000 minors, under age 18, were legally married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018, this study found. A few were as young as 10, though nearly all were age 16 or 17. Most were girls wed to adult men an average of four years older.
Child marriage – or marriage before age 18 – is dangerous. Even at age 16 or 17, regardless of spousal age difference, child marriage:
1. Can easily be forced marriage, since minors have limited legal rights with which to escape an unwanted marriage (typically they are not even allowed to file for divorce);
2. Is a human rights abuse that produces devastating, lifelong repercussions for American girls, destroying their health, education, economic opportunities and quality of life; and
3. Undermines statutory rape laws, often covering up what would otherwise be considered a sex crime. Some 60,000 marriages since 2000 occurred at an age or spousal age difference that should have been considered a sex crime. Read more >
Marriage, Orthodoxy and a Vision of Empowerment – or MOVE – is a first-of-its-kind research and advocacy project. Co-led by survivors and Columbia University researchers, MOVE is exploring and challenging dominant understandings of forced marriage, forced marital sex and forced parenthood in the United States, and dismantling the structures that support and enable these practices, through a case study of the Orthodox Jewish community in New York City. MOVE also is correcting the simplistic way this community and its marital practices have been represented. Read more >
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in 2022 in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, that abortion is not a constitutional right (also known as the “Dobbs decision”), raised many questions. One of those questions is whether and how the new policy is impacting rates of child marriage in the U.S., given that pregnancy often is a driver of forced marriage and child marriage.
The Dobbs Project — co-led by Unchained, Equality Now and McGill University researchers — is answering that question. Read more >
