There’s no romance in being a child bride. And whether the “groom” is R. Kelly, with his marriage to 15-year-old Aaliyah, your great-grandmother, or Justine (name changed for protection)—a minor married to a man twice her age in the state of Maryland—more often than not, these marriages are a form of child abuse … government-sanctioned child abuse, in some states.
Child marriage remains legal in well over half of all U.S. states, with over 300,000 minors married between 2000 and 2018. Every year, hundreds of children of every gender, ethnicity and religious background are married, with no regard for their consent. “Groom” might be the technical term in these marriages, but “grooming” is more accurate.
This is abuse, full stop. If a child (16 is a child) marries an adult, even if the age gap is only a few years, that means a child is expected to have sex with an adult who should know better. That child cannot understand what they’re getting into.
I’m saying this from experience. I was married at 16 to a 22 year old. I thought I knew what I was doing, but I did not. I was intelligent – precociously so – and from a middle class family. It should not have been allowed, and it fucked up my life in ways I could not possibly have predicted.
There’s no such thing as a benign child marriage.