Talk:Child marriage in the United States

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 27 August 2019 and 15 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Mkhurley19. Peer reviewers: Emilymohlin, Tmsloan, Xli1218.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:57, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Revisions and Expansions to the Article
The page on "Child Marriage in the US" can benefit from a more comprehensive approach. The existing stubs are quite brief and not developed enough. To provide a broader understanding, I propose adding stubs like “Advocacy and Awareness” and “Cultural Perspectives.” Plus, there's a need to expand on the stubs “Psychological Health” and “Education.” I also plan to change this stub to be called “Educational Impact.” Since this issue is so significant, it is important to have an in-depth explanation and understanding of the topic.

Additional information with references can be found here at this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Goose0919/Child_marriage_in_the_United_States — Preceding unsigned comment added by Goose0919 (talk • contribs) 04:14, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

I have began to add more information to my sandbox as far as the content goes on what I am planning on adding to the article, I was wondering if there was any feedback that any fellow Wikipedians had on any source recommendations, or content recommendations. Most of the scholarly references that I have been acquiring have been from Google Scholar. Do any fellow Wikipedians have any advice on where I can acquire more scholarly references, or more references on Child Marriage in the United States as a whole? Thank you! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Goose0919 (talk • contribs) 16:35, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Underage girls married to overage man
The article could explore more and highlight the fact that the great majority of child marriages involves girls under 18 years and man older than 18. It does mention the information, but in a way that is not this clear. Also the tone used in the writing seems to indicate that these girls were choosing to marry so early. I believe the inclusion of information regarding the Causes, specific to the US, and the mentioning that some of these marriages are forced by parents or other relatives is missing in the article. It would be also useful to present statistics that explain the position of the US versus other countries in this theme as well as what are the Government actions to prevent child marriage. TatianeMarques (talk) 01:15, 30 May 2017 (UTC)TatianeMarques

"In the 50 states"
This section contains the condition "If one of the parties is pregnant". Not to be picky, especially as the author is a new contributor, but shouldn't it read (e.g.) "In the event of pregnancy" or similar. As it stands now, it suggests the man or the woman can be pregnant46.7.195.132 (talk) 21:44, 30 April 2019 (UTC)Italic text

Expanding Article
I am interested in expanding/ adding to the information found in this article because I believe that it is a very important topic. I am thinking of adding information on parental rights as well as expanding the "causes and consequences" section of this page. More information, including references, can be found on my user page. Mkhurley19 (talk) 12:42, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

I'll use this as a section to add some references that might provide some balance or at least, alternate points of view. Virtually everything in the existing article is from the perspective of Unchained At Last, which operates on the premise that being married before the age of 18 is necessarily abusive and harmful. Left unaddressed is whether all sex before age 18 is similarly abusive and harmful. Here we go:

Fabrickator (talk) 09:55, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Child marriage is "extremely prevalent" in U.S.: "The cycle perpetuates across generations" (CBS News)
 * As with Unchained At Last, this article lacks any perspective and views all marriage involving a person under age 18 as being inherently abusive. This cannot be the work of someone who aims to do serious journalism.
 * The reference to statistics dating back to 2000 suggests that this is all from the perspective of Unchained At Last.
 * Child Marriage, Common In The Past, Persists Today (Colorado Public Radio)
 * This stands in stark contrast to the preceding source, it is an understatement to call it a more balanced article.
 * American child bride: a history of minors and marriage in the United States (Nicholas Syrett)
 * This is the book described in the preceding source.

Proposed Edits
I will be editing this article as a part of Rice University's Poverty Justice and Human Capabilities course. As I was reviewing the article, I noticed grammatical and structural errors. I plan to address these in my edits as well as restructure the article for cohesion and an easier reading experience. More information on the structure of the page can be found in my [|sandbox].

Another area of revision will be focused on expanding the information on the causes and consequences of child marriages. I plan to research and detail reasons why children are being married and the psychological/emotional effects of these relationships. Some of this information will touch on sex trafficking. The information I plan to reference is also found in my sandbox.

Finally, I will expand and explain the information on preventive measures that have been taken legisilatively and through nonprofit organization to provide a scope and context for solutions.

If there are any questions, suggestions, or comments, feel free to leave them on this article talk page or my personal talk page. Mkhurley19 (talk) 01:52, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Work in progress
I am currently working on reorganizing and restructuring this article. Today I worked on the lead and edited it to encompass the topics I plan to cover in this article. I also renamed some sections for clarity and added a new "background" section as well as information for the new "history" subsection. For more details on my proposed work or what I plan to do next, feel free to take a look at my sandbox. Mkhurley19 (talk) 04:41, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

Suggestions for improvement
You did a great job in adding a lot of important contents to the article! I really like the impact and consequences part you added, I think it’s one of the most essential concerns that people have over child marriage. The subtitles and structure are more succinct and logical compared the previous edits. I would suggest edit some of the format issues like empty backspace and edit some sentences that are over-generalized and biased by rephrasing them and adding references. Xli1218 (talk) 03:13, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Peer Review
Mikayla, your article discusses a highly significant topic that I feel often goes unnoticed, so I'm really glad you were able to add such a substantial amount of information to this article! I was really impressed by how much new information you personally added and how you covered a large extent of areas that relate to this topic. I would suggest making some small changes to the visual layout of this article, such as by organizing your statistics into tables and adding images. You do a great job providing quantitative information about this topic, but I think the most important thing you could do to improve this article would be to include more qualitative information too—expanding the "Comparison with other countries" and "Causes" subsections would be an excellent place to start. Thank you so much for your hard work on this article; you did a great job, and you helped me to learn more about a topic that I didn't know much about prior to reading your edits! Emilymohlin (talk) 03:26, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Peer Review
I think you did a wonderful job expanding this article and rooting your changes in strong, current statistics. I learned a lot from your article and thoroughly enjoyed reading it. You played an instrumental role in reconstructing this article, and I think your hard work truly paid off. With that being said, I'd like to make a few minor suggestions. I think your work would benefit from you introducing the sources you're referencing from-- providing this context will not only make you more credible but also provide background for the reader to easily follow. Additionally, I would recommend referencing more sources in the smaller stub sections that you've edited; I think these sections could benefit from being linked to more than 1-2 scholars. But overall, wonderful job! --Tmsloan (talk) 15:44, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Suggested Corrections
Section "Marriage age" states "According to Unchained At Last, the youngest girls to marry in 2000-2010 were three Tennessee 10-year-old girls who married men aged 24, 25, and 31, respectively, in 2001. With the youngest boy to marry being an 11-year-old, who married a 27-year-old woman in Tennessee in 2006.". I cannot see the entire source because citation 13 is behind a paywall, however https://www.unchainedatlast.org/child-marriage-in-tennessee/ states that 13 is the youngest marriage between 2000 and 2019. I would make the edit, but being a stranger to Wikipedia and not familiar with proper editing, I would recommend that someone else review and correct the article. Thank you. 174.34.213.185 (talk) 01:22, 6 April 2022 (UTC)

NPOV and dubious number of underage marriages

 * 1) The claim that "some 300,000 minors were legally married in the United States" between 2000 and 2018 is misleading, in that this implies an average number of about 16,000 such marriages per year, yet for the last few years of this period, there were fewer than 5,000 such marriages per year.  A reasonable point of view on this would be that the efforts to reduce child marriage have been highly effective, even if there is some "room for improvement".
 * 2) Per the cited source, the number of such marriages dropped every year from 2001 to 2018, except for 2011, when it increased by about 150%.  Furthermore, it dropped in 2012 to more than make up for the increase in 2011.  If that's actually accurate, then there must be something to account for it. (search for the phrase "almost every year" to see the year-by-year data)

So we have a non-neutral point of view plus an implausible claim that requires some sort of explanation.

Furthermore, the same Unchained At Last website is referenced 10 times in this article, so the accuracy of these other claims needs to be confirmed by a source that can be shown to be reliable. Fabrickator (talk) 04:15, 20 March 2023 (UTC)


 * This is in response to the update of 24 June 2021, noting that Rhode Island started prohibiting underage marriages as of 2021. Based on the statistics provided on the source website, the average number of underage marriages during the most recent 5 years for which information is provided is less than 5% of the number of underage marriages during the first year for which information is provided.  Essentially, with only 10% of the states having a law that prohibits underage marriage, 95% effectiveness has been attained.
 * But this article makes no mention of this fact, which ought to raise some question about the reliability of this source.  The article should be changed to reflect this great success rather than parroting the idea that there is some urgent need for the remaining 45 states to update their laws to absolutely prohibit underage marriage.   Fabrickator (talk) 23:18, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
 * "Noting that Rhode Island started prohibiting underage marriages as of 2021." That is surprising. What was the motivation behind this abrupt change? Dimadick (talk) 12:59, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Unchained At Last is the advocate, based on the premise that any marriage where either party is under 18 is a "child marriage", though there doesn't seem to be a similar effort to prohibit all sexual activity involving persons under 18. In my mind, there is a bit of irony in this approach, in that illicit sex (i.e. sex between unmarried persons who have reached the age of consent) is okay, but making the sex legitimate (i.e. by getting married) is prohibited (since the age for marriage is supposedly 18). Fabrickator (talk) 20:15, 6 June 2023 (UTC) (minor update): Fabrickator (talk) 20:44, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Tone
Many sections of the piece, particularly towards the end, severely lack a neutral tone. This article is not about Forced Marriage, there is a separate page for that. Yet here the writer appears to equate any marriage under 18 with sex abuse. Not only is the law for sexual consent below 18, but it would seem that in reality many below even that age choose to ignore it. The writer appears to believe that is ok until the partners are married, when it becomes child abuse. There is also much made of the fact that minor age girls are married to men aged 18 or older, again implying that this automatically is abusive, whereas in cultures throughout the world, it is commonplace for females to choose older partners. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.144.20.202 (talk) 23:27, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm uncomfortable of the idea that 18 is normalized as the lowest age for marriage. We should at least take a neutral point of view about this, the article does seem to be equating any marriage involving somebody under age 18 as a "forced marriage".  A forced marriage involves some kind of pressure.  The pressure one's parents can exert at age 16 or 17 doesn't suddenly go away when the age of 18 is suddenly attained.  Why not make it 21? Fabrickator (talk) 21:13, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Poverty, Justice, and Human Capabilities
— Assignment last updated by Cat2120330347 (talk) 03:18, 2 October 2023 (UTC)

Peer Review of Article
I like the depth of sources used for this article, as well as the cultural breadth achieved when discussing this issue! You do a great job of drawing connections between many different cultures and attitudes towards child marriage and women. You also do a good job of showcasing the conversation around child marriage and the different perspectives taken to view it. I would ensure that neutrality is present in all of the changes made, and consider reordering some topics according to relative priority, and flow of information as the reader goes through the article. I think that adding a picture would also be helpful in terms of developing your article holistically. Overall, I think that the article could benefit the most from making sure that it is always written with neutrality, but it was very thorough and well-written throughout! Stud3nt1947 (talk) 22:41, 25 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Stud3nt1947 While you have provided some constructive criticism, the overall tone of your critique is one that's unduly laudatory. Your should attempt to focus your comments on more objective criteria.  Providing citations from reliable sources for each claim made is generally the most critical consideration.  You also want to maintain a neutral point of view in your review.  It's funny how much a single exclamation point undermines that (not to say that just removing the exclamation point would suddenly make this seem neutral).  I don't want to bash you excessively, as I am hopeful that a light bashing will suffice. Fabrickator (talk) 16:28, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Peer Review
Hi Goose0919 ! Overall, the article is very well written. It discusses a very important topic in the U.S., and I appreciated the thought that went into trying to be as comprehensive as possible over such a large region. When editing the article, the biggest things to keep in mind are including the sources for all the information you added and reorganizing the article in a way that is easy to follow and not repetitive. Great job! Dml108 (talk) 05:52, 26 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Dml108 See comments in previous section. We need constructive criticism, not gladhanding.  Additionally, if you are going to indicate what an edit to an article ought to incorporate, then you should provide the basis for why you are making this comment, e.g. if you state that articles should include sources, then presumably you feel there is a deficiency in sources.  I am not saying you need to bash, and I'm not saying you can't provide positive comments, but you don't want to undermine the NPOV. Maybe you are accustomed to receiving positive feedback on your class assignments, but here you are speaking publicly, and the sense of objectivity is more important than making somebody feel good about their efforts. Fabrickator (talk) 16:28, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

Reliability of "Unchained at last" study
I previously called out the implausible content of the April 2021 study findings as posted on the "Unchained at last" website, but there haven't been any subsequent comments which addressed it.

Here's a subset of the annual statistics on the number of children married from 2000 to 2018 as found at Unchained at Last Report
 * 2008: 11,421
 * 2009: 10,325
 * 2010: 9,102
 * 2011: 22,361
 * 2012: 6,962
 * 2013: 5,933
 * 2014: 4,943

Do you see that big jump in 2011, followed by a drop in 2012 which looks very reasonable in comparison to the 2010 number? How do we explain this? Were there events held across the U.S. encouraging underage marriages in 2011?

Now aside from this, look at the first 3 years for which numbers are provided:


 * 2000: 76,396
 * 2001: 35,809
 * 2002: 20,542

How did the number get reduced by over 50% one year and by nearly 50% in the following year? Was there a change to Federal law that accounted for this, or some kind of coordinated enforcement across the country?

One more thing: The report emphasizes that 297,000 children married over this 19-year period, for an average of about 15,000 per year. If we eliminate the first 3 years plus the 2011 outlier, it brings the total down to about 142,000 over 15 years, with an average of about 9,500 per year. The average is thus inflated by roughly 50%.

The distortion in the report is actually considerably worse than this. If you consider just the years from 2012 to 2018, the average is about 4,500 per year, rather than the 15,000 per year indicated by the stated total of 297,000 since 2000. That sounds like great success. Although the report doesn't present any data more recent that 2018, extrapolating suggests that the number would be down to about 1200 per year.

This is not to dismiss the seriousness of the problem, but to have reduced this number from 76,000 per year down to around 2,000 per year sounds like a great success! However, this raises the issue as to whether the "Unchained" study can reasonably be considered a reliable source. Fabrickator (talk) 06:23, 28 November 2023 (UTC)