Singer Jerry Lee Lewis married 13‑year‑old Myra Brown in Mississippi when I was ten years old. I remember thinking how odd that was at the time. It felt shocking then, but what is even more shocking is how much of that mindset still lingers in law and custom today.
Child marriage is legal in 44 U.S. states. California and Mississippi do not have a minimum age for minors to be allowed to marry with parental or judicial consent, which means that in practice, very young children can still be married off if an adult and a court say “yes.” In many of these states, the marriage laws quietly override statutory rape laws: the same sexual relationship that would be a crime outside marriage can be made “legal” once a license is signed.
Today, the states with no set minimum age for marriage (if certain conditions like parental or judicial consent are met) are generally identified as: California, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.
Until 2022, Massachusetts had one of the lowest historic minimum marriage ages with parental consent: 14 years old for boys and 12 years old for girls (today it is 18). While some states have begun to raise minimum ages in recent years, loopholes such as pregnancy exceptions or broad “judicial approval” clauses still leave minors at risk of being pressured, coerced, or trafficked into marriages they cannot meaningfully refuse.
This is not just an American problem. Afghan parents sell their 7‑year‑old daughters into arranged marriages, and the Taliban has for years practiced child sex abuse through forced, unwilling “marriages” of girls who are far too young to consent in any meaningful sense. The pattern is familiar: poverty, war, and patriarchal norms combine to make children bargaining chips instead of human beings with rights and futures of their own.
Tennessee may soon have child brides in common with the Taliban and Afghan parents when lawmakers advance or defend proposals that weaken age protections or remove clear minimum ages. Even when public pressure stops the most extreme bills, the message to vulnerable kids is chilling: their safety is negotiable, their bodies and futures can be signed away.
Through the eyes of this young girl, imagine her life wed to the kind of person who would do this to a child. Imagine leaving school early, being cut off from friends, bearing adult responsibilities and sexual expectations before your brain and body are fully developed. Research on child marriage and adverse childhood experiences tells us what follows: elevated risks of domestic violence, mental health struggles, school dropout, early pregnancy, poverty, and lifelong trauma that echoes into the next generation.
America is the only nation in the world to not have ratified the United Nation’s International Rights of the Child Treaty. This means that teen and preteen girls don’t have legal rights in court and cannot divorce on their own until they are 18. Our refusal to ratify that treaty shows up in exactly these blind spots: child marriage, weak legal protections against abuse, and systems that treat children more as extensions of their parents than as rights‑bearing individuals.
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Childhood Trauma and Lifelong ACES Impact
Child marriage is a powerful example of how childhood trauma and lifelong ACEs are baked into law. When a child is married off, the trauma is not just the wedding day—it is years of chronic stress, isolation, and often violence, layered onto a developing brain. The science of ACEs tells us that this kind of early adversity is linked to higher rates of chronic disease, addiction, depression, self‑harm, and involvement with child protection and the criminal legal system later in life. A “marriage license” does not erase those harms; it normalizes them.
We are exceptional people. But if we want that word to mean anything good, our laws and our culture must become exceptional in protecting children, not exceptional in how far we fall short. Ending child marriage, closing the legal loopholes that permit it, and finally recognizing children as full rights‑holders are concrete, measurable steps toward the kind of country we like to believe we already are.
If we are willing to tolerate America’s child brides, then we are choosing law and custom over children’s safety, dignity, and futures. That is not inevitable; it is a political choice, and it can be reversed. If this troubles you, do something today: contact your state legislators (find them here) and tell them you support a clear minimum marriage age of 18 with no exceptions, share this article with friends who think child marriage is only a “somewhere else” problem, and ask every candidate you meet where they stand on ending child marriage in all 50 states. Speak up until our laws catch up with what we already know in our bones: children are not marriage material, and no signature should ever make their abuse legal.
From Womensenews.org:
Child marriage is not a neutral tradition; it is recognized as a human rights abuse. Research shows that it cuts off education, traps girls in economic dependence, raises the risk of domestic violence, and pushes them into early pregnancy and childbirth complications. The science on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) links this kind of trauma to higher rates of chronic illness, depression, substance use, and later involvement with child protection and the criminal legal system.
At the same time, our laws quietly give abusers an escape hatch. Federal law criminalizes sex with a minor between 12 and 16 when there is a four‑year age gap — but then allows a defense if “the persons… were at that time married to each other.” Marriage becomes a legal “get‑out‑of‑jail” card. Instead of treating child marriage as evidence of abuse, the law can treat it as a shield against statutory rape charges.
There is progress. States like Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, New York, and others have set 18 as the minimum marriage age with no exceptions. New York’s law, for example, eliminated the old provision that allowed 17‑year‑olds to marry with parental and judicial consent, finally closing a long‑standing loophole.
Other states have taken partial steps. North Carolina, once known as a destination for adults seeking to marry children, outlawed marriage for pregnant 14‑ and 15‑year‑olds and barred 16‑ and 17‑year‑olds from marrying someone more than four years older. Governor Roy Cooper called it an “important step,” but the state still allows pregnant and parenting children as young as 14 to marry with a court order — sometimes in direct tension with its own statutory rape law.
Between 2000 and 2015, about 200,000 minors are estimated to have married in the U.S. Roughly two‑thirds were 17, nearly one‑third were 16, and 4% were 15. Fewer than 1% were 14 or younger, but even that “tiny” share represents dozens of kids: at least 51 marriages involving 13‑year‑olds and six involving 12‑year‑olds. Every one of those six was a middle‑schooler whom an official could have protected by saying no — and didn’t.
Child marriage appears more often in parts of the South and West, including West Virginia, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina, with relatively high rates also seen in California and Nevada. These patterns cluster where poverty is high, schools are under strain, and child protection systems are weak. Child marriage thrives where children have the least power and the fewest allies.
Yet this reality gets little attention. The media focuses intensely on abortion and other aspects of reproductive rights while laws that quietly allow children to be married — often to much older adults — keep operating in the background. We debate whether a 16‑year‑old is mature enough to end a pregnancy while some of those same teens are told they are old enough to become someone’s spouse.
If we truly care about children, consent, and breaking cycles of abuse, we cannot leave child marriage out of the conversation. The question is not whether a 13‑ or 16‑year‑old is “mature for her age.” The question is whether we will keep a legal system that lets adults turn children into spouses to avoid accountability. Ending child marriage — with no exceptions — is one of the clearest ways to show that children in America are not disposable.
This article contributed by former CASA guardian ad litem volunteer & KARA founder Mike Tikkanen
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