Child Marriage in the United States

According to the United Nations, child marriage often is a result of gender bias and discrimination by families that choose boys over girls to pursue education. Advocates argue that early marriage creates a permanent end to a girl’s childhood more often than a boy’s childhood because of early forced sexual encounters, early pregnancy, and premature exit from school to attend to household chores for the new husband. Child marriages have consistently been linked with early, more frequent, and more unwanted pregnancies compared with adult marriages in developing countries. Women married as children often experience significantly greater life stressors and higher rates of suicidal thoughts and attempts than do women married as adults. Despite what is known globally about child marriage, the United States continues to legally allow the practice. This chapter explores the limited information on American child brides and discusses policy and practice implications of this phenomenon.