Marriage age

Excellent idea to protect 16-17 year olds from forced marriages.

Well, the legal age for marriage is 18 in a lot of countries.

I too tend to doubt that everyone is more mature at 18 than at 16, and if we are talking "arranged" marriages in the sense of parents choosing a bride or bridegoom for a son or daughter without taking their child's wishes into consideration and then forcing the marriage through, it will not make one blind bit of difference.

After all, if you have been brought up to believe that you must obey your parents in all things, it will be just as hard to stand up to them when you are eighteen as it would have been two years earlier.

From the religious point of view, no marriage is valid if one or both parties have been forced to consent to it. This applies to Christians, Jews and Muslims equally. Unfortunately, not all families and clergy bother to make quite sure that the parties getting married are doing so entirely of their own free will.

I personally find it distasteful that the age of consent to sexual activity is lower than the age at which marriage is legal - after all from a religious point of view fornication is fornication at any age, and if you are old enough to have legal sex, you ought to be old enough to marry.

And now I shall consider ducking down behind the sofa, as I realise a lot of you will be offended by what I have said.

It's a great idea - this is not about sexual intercourse where the age of consent is 16 - we all know that most teenagers are sexually active around 13/14 irrespective of what the law says. This is about putting a stop to the backward and damaging practices social brought into the country by immigrants from cultural backgrounds that they don't want to surrender because guess what ... they favour patriarchy. I'm not against immigration at all but the idea of forced marriage and FGM is abhorrent to me in any context, let alone in the UK where it continues to happen. This is a definite step in the right direction but not much good if we don't see it through as a society and truly punish offenders. My mother had a carer once who I often thought was tipsy so I observed her carefully and one day found her drinking from a bottle of vodka in her handbag. Her story was that at 'home' her father had married her off aged 14 to one of his older friends, she had three children when she was 15, 16, and 17 and then ran away. Her drinking was a response to her trauma and the fact that she never saw her children. Unfortunately, that practice is happening here in certain communities but we're too frightened to challenge them. Multi-cultural communities are great but we have to have base-lines for behaviour and they are sadly lacking.

When I was a girl in Mauritius, the age of consent was 15. But you needed both parents’ consent to marry, one patent after the age of 21. You could marry who you wanted only aged 25!

GoldenAge
‘We all know that most teenagers are sexually active around 13/14’. Do we? I don’t.

Scotland is age 16. Though still regarded as a child for any misdemeanour until 18 and that is proposed to be raised to 24 as apparently until then people are not able to understand consequences of their actions. How does that fit in with age of consent for sex; marriage; voting; joining forces and goodness knows what else. I can see the need for trying to tackle forced marriages in raising age but aren't the parents often involved in those actions. Will the young be brave enough not to conform to parents wishes?

I think teenagers are far more sensible these days about consent and the law surrounding sex.

Whilst they’re at it perhaps they should follow the Americans and put the legal drinking age up to 21. It is a drug after all.

Victorian times??That was still the law in the 60s before the voting age became 18

Wow was it , my grandmother had three children by that age in the late 1920s

Chestnut

Here's a little bit of history. I believe back in Victorian times you needed parental consent to marry under the age of 21.

I'm sure you still did in the 1960s

patrish

Victorian times??That was still the law in the 60s before the voting age became 18

Sorry, patrish I see you said that already

I should RTWT ?

^Scotland is age 16. Though still regarded as a child for any misdemeanour until 18 and that is proposed to be raised to 24 as apparently until then people are not able to understand consequences of their actions.

So should they be voting at 16 in Scotland if they are not able to understand consequences of their actions?

I'm not sure what is meant by that - the age of criminal responsibility in Scotland is 12?

JaneJudge

I think teenagers are far more sensible these days about consent and the law surrounding sex.

do you really think so ?
what about the widescale pressuring of girls into unwanted sexual activity, sexting etc.
schoolgirls i mean, usually by schoolboys.

At last, some common sense. We had to 'hide' and supervise a 16-year-old at college - she was terrified her uncle would snatch her, drug her, then take her abroad to be married! If anything changes the idea that forced marriage is acceptable, I'm all in favour.

I don't know about the marriageable ages but I do know, aged 22 I could not sign emigration papers for NewZealand. My husband or father had to give their consent until I was 25. That was in the 1960s.

patrish

Victorian times??That was still the law in the 60s before the voting age became 18

This has already been discussed and as I said I posted about Victorian times because I had seen it whilst doing family history. I couldn't remember what the situation was re. parental consent in the 1960s.

Like Greyduster I had to formally apply, in writing, aged 29, for permission to marry from my Captain, I was in the RN. It was a bit of a formality, but he gave me a glass of whisky and wished me good luck.

welbeck

for those two posters who say it is a bad thing, can you say more ?
i agree that years ago it was a disgrace to be pregnant/give birth without being married.
but that has not been the case for nearly 40 years.
so what would be the harm of having to wait until age 18 to marry, even if pregnant ?

Yep. I was pregnant at 16 with the 22 year old man who was my very dear first love, and was due to marry him as a result - we both wanted to be together and both welcomed the baby, but wouldn't have married that soon if I had not been pregnant.

Very sadly, I had a fairly early miscarriage. I clearly remember the gynaecologist who spoke to me afterwards saying that she was used to people my age breaking down because they WERE pregnant, not because they suddenly weren't.

That man and I didn't marry as I'd lost the baby, but stayed together for several years. We did split in the end as he wanted a life as a musician and I was so immature in that direction that I was jealous of the time he spent on his music and musician friends. However I remain convinced that if we'd married and had the baby, we'd have made a family life and stayed happily together.

I did have a son when I was a few years older, but the relationship with his father was kind of doomed from the beginning as we had totally incompatible beliefs and goals.

(I was very lucky - I went on to meet my truly wonderful late husband when I was 37, and I adore him still.)

Marriage is a legal contract, in that there are laws when it come to divorce,I have never understood how under 18s can make a legal contract.

School leaving age in England is 18 unless in college or on an apprenticeship. Would this have something to do with it?
The law is not the same in Scotland.

Elizabeth27

Marriage is a legal contract, in that there are laws when it come to divorce,I have never understood how under 18s can make a legal contract.

You can join the army at 16...

Its good news.
But don't traveller's children get married at 16?
Will that now change? Expect it'll have to if it becomes law.

I was painfully shy and immature, in my youth. I didn't even have a date with a boy until I was 18, and he was a friend of my cousin's, met at a wedding.
Even at 21 I had no idea. I finally married at 24, but naively thought that he would 'settle down', once married. I was wrong, but we stayed together for 52 years, until his death 6 years ago.
I regret marrying when I was still immature, even at 24.
Some of my schoolmates were definitely mature enough, though, at 16!

There is quite a difference between an arranged and a forced marriage. It is important to recognise that.