Not a ‘Groom,’ but ‘Grooming’: It’s Past Time to End Child Marriage (Like Aaliyah to R. Kelly) in the United States

There’s no romance in being a child bride. And whether the “groom” is R. Kelly, with his marriage to 15-year-old Aaliyah, your great-grandmother, or Justine (name changed for protection)—a minor married to a man twice her age in the state of Maryland—more often than not, these marriages are a form of child abuse … government-sanctioned child abuse, in some states.

Child marriage remains legal in well over half of all U.S. states, with over 300,000 minors married between 2000 and 2018. Every year, hundreds of children of every gender, ethnicity and religious background are married, with no regard for their consent. “Groom” might be the technical term in these marriages, but “grooming” is more accurate.

  • Flying Squid
    36•4 hours ago

    I’m surprised it doesn’t mention the fact that in a lot of states where child marriage is legal, it’s very difficult for those children to get a divorce no matter how badly they want one. They’re generally not allowed to petition for one themselves because, get this, minors are not considered old enough to do so.

    On top of that:

    One dominant reason that advocates are concerned with married minors having access to divorce is because data shows that child marriage leads to higher risk of domestic violence. If a minor enters a marriage and there’s abuse, any hurdle to exiting that marriage has the potential to prolong the abuse, which, Berg says, doesn’t mean as much to the courts as you might think. Unfortunately, she says many states are no-fault divorce states and don’t recognize domestic violence as grounds for divorce.

    https://www.teenvogue.com/story/child-marriage-and-divorce-in-the-united-states

    • TimLovesTech (AuDHD)(he/him)English
      14•3 hours ago

      With Project 2025 they also want to end no-fault divorce for everyone.

      A 2004 paper by economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolvers found an 8 to 16% decrease in female suicides after states enacted no-fault divorce laws. They also noted a roughly 30% decrease in intimate partner violence among both women and men, and a 10% drop in women murdered by their partners.

      Just looking at the stats you can see why they oppose it.

    • Capt. Wolf
      15•3 hours ago

      Going to add that there are only 13 states where underage marriage is actually banned, and that all of those bans are fairly recent.

      Delaware (2018), New Jersey (2018), Pennsylvania (2020), Minnesota (2020), Rhode Island (2021), New York (2021), Massachusetts (2022), Vermont (2023), Connecticut (2023), Michigan (2023), Washington (2024), Virginia (2024) and New Hampshire (2024)