Pot calling kettle

I cant believe people are using the radfords as an example of a happy marriage. She was 14 and he was 18 when she became pregnant.

Is it not a matter of informed consent? We had 'clients' who would disappear off to Pakistan and come back married to very confused looking very young girls.
Teacher friends told me that they have to keep a look out for young pupils suddenly disappearing off to Pakistan or Bangladesh. Forced marriage is wrong.

My cousin got married on his girlfriend's 16th birthday, when she was 8 months pregnant. This was in 1963. They moved to New Zealand, had another child and the last I heard they were still together. Who'd have thought it?

why are you so exercised about this OP.

I was wondering that too welbeck.

I think it's quite important to discuss consent, age of consent etc.

Yes, the issue of consent is bound up with the age for marriage. If people are regarded as children until the age of 18, then the age of consent needs to rise to 18, too.

Fwiw, I married at 18. I was in no way a child, I’d been working for over a year by then and knew what I was doing. My mother certainly wasn’t happy with my decision and gave us six months but Dh and I have now been together for 47 years and counting.

I don't like the hypocrisy of this country allowing child marriage whilst criticising other countries and cultures. All child marriage should be banned wherever it takes place.

I think the Radfords are another example of the right person at the wrong time.

I would have preferred to have been given the choice to stay in education at 15, not pushed to get a job. I would have been content to be a child til age 18, but it was not an option seeing as there was no support for my education.

When I was young it was only in Scotland you could marry at sixteen without parental consent. In England you had to be twenty-one to do so. Hence the Gretna Green marriages.

The age when marriage is legal has nothing to do with the age of consent in most countries in the world, In most European countries you have to be eighteen to get married, but the age of consent is sixteen.