Yes, this is the third (now fourth, [um fifth]) time I've run this photo. I just like it. Two young couples. Migrant farm workers in Louisiana and their children, 1939.
Readers of the Tribune today will find that the top headline reads:
Bill Aims To Ban Child Marriage
Now surely everyone would be in favor of that, right?
Well, my prediction is that this bill will fail, but probably not necessarily for the reasons that a person might think. Indeed, as there's an odd demographic element of this I'm flat out not going to address, I think that may come into play here.* But I think it's more likely to fail for basic libertarian reasons, which I'm also not going to address.**
But maybe it ought to be considered for deeper social reasons, which my prediction is that it won't be. Indeed, it comes at an interesting time on this topic.
The article starts off noting that its "child marriage" is legal in 47 states.
That's right, 47. and that figure is one that I've seen cited in European newspapers about the U.S. that are intended to shock Europeans about how backwards we colonials are. Never-mind that by the same criteria "child marriage" would be legal in almost every country.
That's because what is meant here by "child marriage" is marriage below the age of majority. When we think of child marriage, we usually think of the shocking things we read about in Afghanistan, for example, were some old geezer marries a 12 year old.*** That isn't what's meant here and that wouldn't be allowed here either.
I don't know what Wyoming's current law on marriage below the age of majority currently is as I don't practice in that area and I don't keep on topics of that type. I know that people who are below the age of majority can get married, but if it works the way it used to, they need their parents permission. It used to be something like people needed their parents permission if they were 16 or 17, and below that they needed the court's permission. Currently I'm quite certain the court would never give permission below that age, but at one time I suppose that it probably occasionally did for odd reasons, but even then I doubt that it ever dropped below 15, not that 15 is exactly a mature age to get married.
The paper states the current law (which it says wasn't amended since 1977, which would make me think it read the law incorrectly or doesn't know how to check to see when something was amended) requires the court's permission to marry if you are 16 or 17. If that's correct, that's an improvement over the old law that I noted above (which I'm sure was the old law if for no other reason it was posted down at the County Clerk's office where people obtain marriage licenses).
The new bill would make it illegal for 16 and 17 year olds to get married, if the Tribune is reporting it correctly.
The irony of all of this is that this "shocked, shocked" type of reaction comes well after an era when it might have been semi common for 16 and 17 year olds to marry, and it never was.
We noted here awhile back that the entire concept that there were a lot of of youthful marriages at one time is flat out wrong.
Shockingly young! Surprisingly old! Too young, too old! Well, nothing much actually changing at all. . . Marriage ages then. . . and now. . and what does it all mean?
As we addressed there, it was never common at any point since Christianity became the dominant religion in European societies. To find an era when it was common, in European societies (which is what we are) you have to go back to pre Christian times. Since then, contrary to the general supposition, marriage ages have remained remarkably consistent and teenage marriages are frankly fairly rare and always have been.
And they've become rarer over the past few decades.
Even when I was a teenager they did occasionally occur, although not very often. I personally can think of a single instance that I knew of, which didn't fit the norm of what a person might expect. That one example was that a girl in my high school graduating class was married while we were juniors, to a welder who was in his early 20s. Indeed, she became pregnant, after they married, that year. The reason it sticks out in my mind is that it seemed so unusual at the time, and indeed it was. None of my immediate male or female friends married anywhere near that young and I wasn't the oldest to marry even though I was 31 when I got married. That's more the norm, but its more the historical norm as well. The youngest of my friends to marry was probably 22 or 23 when he married.
So in essence this is a bill that addresses a condition that basically doesn't exist. So should it pass?
Well, spending legislative time to address non existent problems is a questionable practice at best. But in the current context of the times does it make sense in general? Oddly enough, given the direction things have taken, maybe not.
A major problem our society has faced over the last couple of decades is that the number of fatherless children, by which we mean children born out of wedlock where the father's take off, has become shockingly high. Its a huge problem and is well acknowledged by social scientists to have a very destructive impact upon individuals and entire demographics. Social scientists, therefore, have long been of the view that what should be taking place is that marriage should be encouraged as it is demonstrably to the benefit of children and women, and to men as well but for somewhat different reasons.
One of the reasons that teenage marriage was legal, but not the only one or even the primary one, is that at one time social norms were so aggressively opposed to children being born out of wedlock that when things happened, and I'll leave you to fill in the blanks as to what I mean, the norm was that the couple tended to marry or the child was given up for adoption. It was a long time ago when the couple normally married, and I do mean a long time ago. I have no figures for that but my guess is that it would likely have been as long ago as before World War Two or even prior to the Great Depression. When I was of that age if that ever came up in adult conversations, which it rarely did, adoption was always what was mentioned. Instances of girls having babies and keeping them were very rare. Now they're not.
Now, I'm not saying that this bill shouldn't be passed as we want to make sure that there can be "shotgun weddings". Indeed, I'm saying nothing of the kind. Rather, I wonder if passing a bill like this actually sends a message we don't mean to send and shouldn't. By making marriage an option it implies that the conduct is that which adults only should engage in and that marriage is where it belongs. By making that illegal, we send some other alternative message about marriage being some sort of lifestyle option.
Which is exactly what it has become amongst liberals and even at law. And that's both delusional and a major problem. That's never what marriage was intended to be as a natural and social institution. Whatever other goals it achieves, the protection of children was always the primary one. Given that, a real argument can be made that marriage not only ought to be expanded in society, it perhaps ought to be defined in a way that somewhat compels that for children's protection.
None of which to say that getting married at 16 or 17 years old is a good idea. And nothing is going to cause that to happen more than it currently does, which is hardly ever. And indeed, it hardly ever did in the first place.
So in a bill about semantics, which this pretty much is, and which is only designed to send a message about how progressive we are, maybe thinking about progress and regression in a larger sense might be worthwhile.
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*Okay, I'm going to address it just a tad.
There are a couple of demographics in the US that encourage really young, but not teenage, marriage. Two of them have done that for a really long time, but now a third is. All of them to it on religious grounds although the third does it for a combination religious and social grounds.
This entire topic is cringe worthy in view. Nobody is flat out encouraging teenage marriage but these groups come pretty close to doing so by implication. No matter what their motives are, there's a silent sort of recruitment element to it and they ought to really re-think it in my view. Teenage marriage being legal is one thing Encouraging it is quite another.
**Okay, I guess I'm going to do that a tad as well.
We have to acknowledge that in this state the leave a person alone ethos extends pretty far. The drinking age would still be 19 if the Federal Government hadn't threatened, indeed promised, to yank our highway dollars.
I suspect that this will strike most legislators the wrong way simply because it's telling people what to do, even if those people are at the age where somebody ought to tell them what to do (although it's been shown that teenagers calculation of risk is superior to that of adults, and this does indeed involve risks). In a state in which a lot of late teens are pretty much adults, my prediction is that most legislators will figure this is butting into business they don't want to butt into.
***Which gets into another area that ought to be addressed by the law somewhere, but isn't going to be anywhere soon, as its a real problem.
Whether marriage should be legal at 16 or 17 is one thing, but real child marriage is abhorrent and ought to be banned everywhere. But because it does occur in backwards countries (yes, I'm suing that phrase and mean it), it's not going to be.
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