Child Bride
More and more I am hearing about the evils of child brides and that it needs to be done away with. Well the brings up the question what is a child. One of my grandmothers got married when she was 12 years old in the eighteen hundreds. I would call that a child bride. However what is a child bride today. Well many people and organizations say it is anybody under the age of 18. So what they want is for nobody to be allowed to be married if they are under 18. Not a good idea.
So a sixteen year old girl gets pregnant by her seventeen year old boyfriend and the two have been dating for two years. They have a great relationship together, he would like to marry his girlfriend but if the busy bodies get there way they could not be allowed to marry which would make if much more difficult for the girl, the baby, and the boy. Circumstances can make difference in many things. Here is one. Yes a guy who is twenty-one probably should not marry a sixteen year old, just to be marring her, they should wait a bit, but if a twenty-one year old boyfriend of a sixteen year old girl got her pregnant, should he go to prison even though neither the girl or the parents want that, or should he be allowed to marry his girlfriend.
First off I do not consider a 15 year a child, they are in the in between state from child which ends at 12 and declared adult which today is deemed at 18. A person in my book from 13-17 would not nor should not be considered a child. They often are considered teens, yes. A state which never existed until the last 100 years of history. So are we talking only about marriage then I do not think it wrong to allow a person of mature age to determine, with there parents blessing who knows them better then anyone, for themselves if they wish to marry.
Now I think allowing the union to also be approved by a judge might be okay as long as we are not doing it just to avoid legal issues that should never have existed in the first place. That is the system in California, a person 16 or 17 that wants to get married must be approved by a judge not just a parent. What about a person under 16 should they be allowed to be married, I would highly discourage it and I also discourage anyone under 18 from getting married but again circumstance can sometimes create the situation where things might need to be done differently.
Keep in mind the government could change the age of majority to anything they want it to be, 25, 26? So be careful of what you want for even what you want can be changed for the wrong reasons. There is one country that has the age at which a person can consent at 21. Now that does not really seem bad, but what if they wanted to raise it to 24 or 26. How would people feel about that. Not being allowed to get married until your 26. Not really a bad idea but not really a good one either.