Minors gradually gain access to adult privileges, such as the ability to marry, drive, report to the military, register to vote, play and drink. Age of consent laws in the English colonies were based directly on English common law, which meant that the legislature determined cases by consulting precedents in England. These laws informed the United States of the age of consent for sexual relations, which was originally between 10 and 12 years old in the country`s colonies and around education, and did not apply to boys. The age of common-law marriage was generally 12 for girls and 14 for boys, although some states and colonies set higher limits. According to Nicholas L. Syrett, author of American Child Bride: A History of Minors and Marriage in the United States, agreed that the age of consent has also guided judges in their decisions about the appropriate age for child marriage, but only after the marriage has already taken place. “It was very easy to get married illegally. Judges were only called when someone (usually a parent) protested the marriage,” he told Teen Vogue. Marriage laws have evolved by state, each establishing individual laws, although many states copy each other.
Gender age differences in the age of consent to marriage existed in almost all states. The first recorded age of consent law in England was 800 years ago. The age of consent in question is linked to the rape law and not to the right to marry, as is sometimes misunderstood. In 1275, as part of the Rape Act, the Statute of Westminster 1275 criminalized in England the “rape” of a “virgin in old age”, with or without her consent. Lawyer Sir Edward Coke interpreted the phrase “within age” to mean the age of marriage, which was 12 at the time. [18] A 1576 law was created with harsher penalties for the devastation of a girl, for which the age of consent was set at 10. [19] Under English common law, the age of consent outside the rape law was 10 or 12 and rape was defined as forced sexual intercourse with a woman against her will. To convict a man of rape, both violence and lack of consent had to be proved, except in the case of a girl under the age of consent.
Since the age of consent applies in all circumstances, not just physical assault, the law also prohibits a minor girl (under 12 years of age) from consenting to sexual activity. There was one exception: the acts of a man with his wife (women over 12), to which the rape law did not apply. [20] Lawyer Sir Matthew Hale said both rape laws were valid at the same time. [21] In 1875, the Offence Against the Persons Act raised the age in England to 13; A sexual act with a girl under the age of 13 was a crime. [22] Throughout history, there have been many changes in the average age of marriage. While the history clearly shows the minimum age of marriage, it can be difficult to find the average age of people that wasn`t always listed in their marriage license. However, there has been a general historical trend whereby the age of marriage increases over time. The average age of marriage in 1800, at least in Britain, was 28 for men and 26 for women. Some historians have suggested that people began marrying later in the 18th and 19th centuries because they better understood the dangers of teenage pregnancy and paid more attention to and understood the physical and mental health of children. However, it is also true that in American history, boys generally had far fewer reasons to marry young than girls.
Unlike men, women were largely defined by their marriage; Choosing a suitable partner early in life might be the best chance a girl would have. Because employment opportunities for women were slim and wages were generally dismal, marriage was often a way out of the birthing center when there was no other way out. Boys and men received few of these benefits, precisely because they were expected to work for pay when they reached adulthood (or as a means of proving that they themselves were in adulthood). For men, marriage was an additional responsibility: providing for a woman and, at a time when birth control was reliable, children. The imbalance between child brides and boys` husbands therefore reflects the cultural expectations of girls and boys. Wives were expected to be dependent, husbands dependent. The first status has no age qualification; The latter usually does this because men had to either inherit their father`s fortune or settle into some kind of work. In late antiquity, men and women had to be married into adolescence at the age of 20. [273] The rabbis estimated the age of maturity from the beginning of the thirteenth year in women and the beginning of the fourteenth year in men. [274] There is an exception to this argument, and it relates to the physical obligations of marriage and the physiological harm it can inflict on girls. Even historical critics of youth marriage have rarely made their arguments explicitly against the expected gender of young women and children they would carry before reaching physical maturity.
They have sometimes indirectly alluded to these aspects of youth marriage, and because historians have shown that girls reach menarche later than today, these concerns were and are legitimate. But because they were so rarely at the center of criticism of early marriage, I found almost no evidence that young women of the past wrote about the sexual stress they faced. In most countries in northwestern Europe, marriages at a very young age were rare. One thousand marriage records from 1619 to 1660 in the Archdiocese of Canterbury show that only one bride was 13 years old, four were 15 years old, twelve were 16 years old and seventeen were 17 years old; while the other 966 brides were at least 19 years old. [27] Over time, people`s ideas about marriage began to change. This seems to be partly explained by the fact that the average age of marriage varies from one sex to another. While women often married in adolescence, men married after pursuing studies or career opportunities that were only available to them.
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