Above you can see the age of consent laws, which vary widely from country to country--dark blue is very young, green is 16, yellow is getting golder, and red is 21.
As I mentioned in class, legal age of marriage laws are different and often younger than age of consent laws. In the United States, age of marriage without parental consent is usually 18, but is often lower with parental consent. I was surprised to see that in good old Massachusetts, with parental consent, males can marry at the age of 14 and females at the age of 12. (I'm not 100% sure that all of this data is entirely accurate, by the way--it seems to me that they give slightly different numbers for some of the states.) It is very interesting that the age of marriage varies by sex. I would be surprised if that would hold up to a court challenge in the United States.
Wow. The 9-14 ages really show how different our values are universally. And I can barely see the "must be married" blimps on the graph! Obviously based on my American values, I think marriage anytime before 18 (or personally before mid-twenties) is naive and wasting life/childhood/opportunities. But it's interesting how other cultures justify young marriages based on pre-marital arrangements and purpose of a woman to spend her life giving her husband children. All I can say is I am so thankful that I live in a society in which I would not be subjected to this. I'm sorry for young girls that are sentenced to early marriage in a culturally acceptable way. I wonder if they feel trapped or find it perfectly acceptable as well.
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