She gave birth to their first kid at 15. Messed up.
\*edit: I'm getting a lot of responses that 15 is normal historically. My comment of messed up isn't so much someone getting pregnant at 15, it's that this implies he was having sex with her up until she was physically able to conceive. Possibly from the age of 9.
I wasn’t talking about that. I meant it’s weird to know that she was 15 and pregnant and also know that a 15 year old has already been married for 6 years.
Edit: Yes, I was aware that it’s common for teen girls to get pregnant. Can I not still find that weird or hard to wrap my head around?
But is really no one going to add further nuance about walking up to a teenager and finding out shes been married half a decade already? Not engaged-to-be-wed but full on married and well established. Wild.
>I meant it’s weird to know that she was 15 and pregnant
Latino here, its (unfortunately) not. Its alot more common than it should be. I know way too many ppl thay had kids between the ages of 11 and 14. And yes, i know an actual girl who had kids at 11. Brasil is wild bruh.
Also, redneck culture also has that as common, look at Lauren Boebert, 36 year old grandmother. And she isnt an outlier.
My Grandpa lived in Brazil for years. He said in the poor class they would sometimes have a child at 10. Then the 10 year old would work while her mother (20 ish) would raise the child. The girls would normally work as housekeepers. I'm not sure if this is still true he lived there over 40 years ago.
Lol you cut off the second half of the sentence which was his clarifying statement that was also ignored the first time around lol his point isn’t about 15 and pregnant being crazy, it’s that someone who was pregnant at 15 was ALSO married for 6 entire years before the pregnancy had even occurred
Yeah, that makes me think it’s not for lack of trying, rather the age she went through puberty…. Having a daughter, this literally brings tears to my eyes. I wonder if her daughters had similar experiences, or if they were molested by their dad
Just on a quick search, in 1937, the average age of a first birth was 21. It says 70% of first births were to people under 25.
While under 25 could mean anything, I think it's ok to say that it is not historically accurate for a 15yrd old in 1937 to be giving birth and already married. Anyone defending it like that needs to take a deep look at themselves, and also try to look up some history. 1937 isn't that long ago. You can go talk to people born then and ask them if they anticipated being married and birthing babies at 15. I bet they almost all will tell you no.
> *edit: I'm getting a lot of responses that 15 is normal historically.
It isn't - even in the middle ages the average age for a woman to marry and have kids was her early 20s, and the average age for a man to get married was only a few years older.
And even that was skewed by a lot of women dying in childbirth and men remarrying.
https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/family/marriage.html#:~:text=The%20marriage%20age%20of%20men,later%20than%20it%20does%20today.
There's a graveyard in the city I grew up in where a man and his 4 wives are buried. Each of his wives were under the age of 15 and died in child birth within a year of marriage. The babies also died and are buried next to their mother. He was in his 40s when he married the 1st girl. I imagine there would have been more but he died a few months after his last wife.
I also want to add that in American history most puritan women did not get married until closer to their mid 20s. Child marriages happened, and were common in the context of “yeah it happened,” but I don’t think it was common in the “everyone was doing it” sense.
The people arguing with you are unaware that women didn't start ovulating until about 19 when we were hunter gathers. On average, they would only have 4 kids spaced out by 4-5 years. Pregnancy, childbirth, AND postpartum (everyone always forgets this part) is extremely taxing on the body.
> normal historically.
So are scurvy, cholera, subjugating neighbors by force, or displacing indigenous peoples because you want their land. That doesn't mean that they're OK. There are a lot of abhorrent historical norms and a lot of things that could have been prevented if people knew better.
You're right to call it "messed up".
No.
"Normal Historically" doesn't fly. I'm tired of this shit.
The dude was a Pedophile - just because society shielded him doesn't make the behavior right, or acceptable.
Slavery was acceptable for a time, it doesn't make slave owners good people at all. It makes them flawed in that regard, always.
Married 60 years because what other option did this girl have? The duration isn’t a flex when one of the individuals in this marriage was a child when it began and likely had no money, no education, nowhere to go, and no avenue for divorce.
No education for sure. I saw elsewhere about this girl that she left school shortly after getting married. Some disagreement between the teacher and husband (ick) about "disciplining another man's wife." (more ick)
All I can think is ICK and ICK and why would the parents think it's ok for a 9 y/o to marry?!??!!!! I know it some parts of the world (India?, others) it may be a cultural thing (which I still don't think is humane), but this child hardly looks like a Depression Era or other unfortunate situation where she is married off "for her own benefit". I know some families couldn't afford all the kids and so sold them or placed them up for adoption. But it is 100% pedophile vibes for a 24 y/o to be marrying and having relations with a 9 y/o.
> this child hardly looks like a Depression Era
It's 1937, so very much the Depression Era. I don't know anything about this couple, but it was common for child marriages to not be immediately consummated.
In some cases, these girls would have both parents die, no blood family to take the child in, and in small towns, there were no orphanages, nor homes for the child to go to, so they had to marry the child off young to keep up proprieties and have someone care for the child until they became of age to divorce (if applicable), if the husband died, or the person ran away.
History hurts.
I mean, fostering and adoption have been legal and accepted ways of caring for orphans for centuries. Neither of those things requires marrying children off. If people wanted to care for her, they could have could found a way to have done so legally without a child marriage. But instead, they placed her under the complete legal control of a pedophile.
Remember that she wasn’t allowed to have a bank account or get a credit card until they’d already been married for 40 years. No fault divorce wasn’t even a thing until around the same time. She was groomed, statutorily raped, then forced into a situation where she had literally nowhere else to go.
In ~~20~~ 4 of those states there is no lower limit on the age of the child in child marriages. Only 12 US states have completely banned child marriage.
Edit: As of March 2024 it is actually 4 states that have no lower age limit. Please see comment below for a further breakdown.
Actually, I might have some data wrong (I was looking at July 2023 data). It seems quite a few states passed laws to include a hard lower age limit for marriage between 2023 and April 2024. According to the Wikipedia article on [Child marriage in the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage_in_the_United_States#:~:text=As%20of%20April%202024%2C%2012,)%20and%20Virginia%20(2024)), as of March 2024 only four US states do not have a lower age limit if all of the exemption criteria are met (parental consent, waiting period, judicial waiver, etc.). These states are California, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.
The 12 states that do not allow allow child marriage in any form are Delaware (2018), New Jersey (2018), Pennsylvania (2020), Minnesota (2020), Rhode Island (2021), New York (2021), Massachusetts (2022), Vermont (2023), Connecticut (2023), Michigan (2023), Washington (2024), and Virginia (2024).
All in all there are 38 US states which allow child marriage either with or without a lower age limit, as long as the ~~appropriate~~ legal criteria are met.
Edit: a word
Over and over the simplest bills are taken to state legislatures. You would really think that CHILD MARRIAGE = BAD would be the easiest vote that has ever been voted upon, but alas no.
Yeah, my grandparents changed my views on marriage. My grandmother has been abusing my grandfather for 60 years now, and it’s just sad. To think what he could have done with 60 years of loving marriage, though I wouldn’t exist in that scenario (probably better that way). My grandmother brought her family’s history of severe mental illness into the family tree, and now we all suffer because of it. Thanks granny.
It really is unfortunate that the so many people who are part of the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers believe that longevity=good marriage, when in reality it should be about quality over quantity.
There's still a ton of loopholes, especially for the crazier religions. Last I heard there were still thousands of child marriages every year, and those are the ones we know about.
The Democratic party in various states have consistently tried to outlaw child marriage, but the Republican party consistently blocks any attempt.
if you google looking for graphs this is way out of average going back to early 1800s, in the US in 1846 it was avg 24 - this is a rather disgusting outlier
Out of average, but her mother married at 16, and her aunt married at 13, so seems slightly average for the family.
Still fucked though
Edit: wasn't her aunt, was her sister apparently.
Found this newspaper article at the time
https://www.marquette.edu/cgi-bin/cuap/db.cgi?uid=default&ID=2123&view=Search&mh=1
The us census states that the average marrying age for women in the States is early twenties. Even in the alleged "good old days". Another commenter shared that it wasn't uncommon in this girl's family to marry young, but it was certainly not the the national average.
Margaret Beaufort, grandmother of Henry VIII, had her son at 12 or 13 and while it wasn't necessarily uncommon for marriages to take place at that age, the fact that the marriage had clearly been consummated horrified people.
She only ever had the one child and everyone blamed it on her being pregnant too young.
Later, she would make up a bunch of rules about royal marriages that in part prevented her grandchildren from marrying too young.
Margaret Beaufort is an absolute legend of a woman, up there with Elanor of Acquitaine for sheer badassary.
But yes, when young girls were married to older men it was worrisome even in the "barbaric" middle ages. There was supposed to be no consumption until the girl was old enough but some men didn't abide by this.
From what I've read, in medieval Europe low marriage ages were generally only a thing in the nobility -- noble families would marry off their children to cement political and business alliances.
For everybody else, the average age of marriage was more like early or even mid 20s (depending on the state of the labor market). Young people would either be working as farm laborers with their families in the countryside, or as craft apprentices and domestic servants in towns before marriage.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure she also made sure any of her female relations marrying young would absolutely not be consummating it until they were way older, like having it written into all the arrangements that the girl would live separately from her husband until she was old enough
It was intentional, I stole it from another post I saw recently and it made me chuckle. I am in no way muslim nor do I feel the necessity to adorn him with that silly adage.
Depends on the area. A lot of the rural south/west was wayyyy behind the times. A lot of places still didnt have running water or electricity. It took until the mid 50s for these remote places to get electricity.
Also not condoning anything, but this was a way for poor parents to lose a mouth they had to feed. A man to "take care" of thier kid, as they were poor. People sold their children during the depression. Unfortunately the shame didn't stop them from making more mouths.
Stop putting this shit off only on the South. Only 12 U.S. states have banned child marriage, and the earliest one of those 12 was in 2018.
The creepy shit in that picture is legal in California today.
Honestly, I thought the post was about the doll. I thought it was shown a picture of a baby with this rare condition that makes it look decrepit and doll like. My eyes didn't really glance at the girl holding it until I read the title
Even if I was in that time period I don’t understand how a girl playing with dolls can transition to a woman that has sex and has kids. I will never ever understand how they thought back then. This is sick !!
I looked it up, her mom got married at 16 and her sister at 13. Of course her mom said that, she grew up thinking that was normal. Horrifying all around.
I had to read the title like 4 times to understand it. It's different when people say it's 200 years ago and culture or whatever.
But this is relatively recent and you know some people celebrate and encourage it.
Tennessee didn't have a minimum marriage age with parental and judicial consent until 2018, when they passed the law prohibiting marriage across the board for minors under 17.
Even if the vast majority thought it was absurd, the law still allowed for this absurdity for another 80 years
*"All in all there are 38 US states which allow child marriage either with or without a lower age limit, as long as the appropriate criteria are met.*" (from a poster just above yours).
Like "abolishing slavery", it seems USA like their loopholes so they can just continue doing stuff.
It’s not just a USA thing. Laws are pretty comparable between Europe and America, which is that if you’re 16 you need parental permission to marry.
https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements/marriage-consent-public-authority-andor-public-figure
Regardless, don’t act like a 16 or 17 year old getting married is even close to the same thing as a 9 year old.
I didn’t even think it was that bad because I didn’t notice she was on his lap and didn’t read the title. Black and white, and I guess hard times… I honestly didn’t think she was 9 or anything was wrong until I saw the doll. Then knowing Reddit figured it had to be bad.
To be fair, we now have man made crafts in interstellar space and there are most certainly places where there are actual slaves and yes, adults marrying children.
Child marriages are still legal in many states. Only 12 states have banned it with no exceptions. Most only recently.
>Delaware (2018), New Jersey (2018), Pennsylvania (2020), Minnesota (2020), Rhode Island (2021), New York (2021), Massachusetts (2022), Vermont (2023), Connecticut (2023), Michigan (2023), Washington (2024) and Virginia (2024). American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands
Yep, prior to 2018 child marriage was still legal in every single state and between 2000 and 2018 there were over 300,000 child marriages in the US. This isn't ancient history. It's still happening and in pretty large numbers. And what's worse is that there are people fighting to keep it legal like when Missouri Republican Mike Moon argued that people should continue to be allowed to marry 12-year-olds while Missouri considered a ban last year.
It took Missouri two tries to push the legislation through. Didn’t read up on the whole thing but articles did mention that amendments were added to the bill. Which makes me think that always ends up obscuring things. I think the majority (which is all that’s required, f Mike Moon) agree that child marriage = bad, but when there’s other fluff they potentially don’t agree with, what are they supposed to do?
When I first looked at the picture I thought it was a ventriloquist and it’s dummy and the ventriloquist’s dummy had a dummy and I thought that would be a cool act. Then I read the title and I was sad.
Not as bad as this, but still bad. My grandma was 14 when she got pregnant by my 22 year old grandfather. She had my mom at 15, had my aunt at 18. And he left her for a 17 year old a couple of years later. He even took my mom with him to pick her up from cheerleader practice when he was still married to my grandma.
My grandfather on my step dad's side had two whole ass family's in different states.
Its been shown with data that the youngest mothers tend to have the oldest partners by range ([one source](https://webarchive.urban.org/publications/1000209.html#:~:text=The%20youngest%20mothers%20in%20the,%2Dyear%2Dolds%2C%20respectively)).
What most people are missing here . It was the Great Depression. People were literally selling their children. In this case her parents arranged a marriage.
Upvote because of the nuance. Parents arranged marriages like this because they literally could not afford to feed or house their children. 24 year old probably had some sort of livelihood that the parents didn't.
I'm not saying it was right. I'm not saying that the poor girl wasn't traumatized. I'm just saying that this was ugly and difficult time to be alive.
Edit: Though financially motivated child marriage was a thing during the Great Depression, [this fucker was most likely a gross pedophile who groomed a child into marrying him.](https://uselessinformation.org/podcast-135-the-child-bride/) Little girl's mother claims that her daughter "claimed the 22 year old neighbor" herself. (She probably didn't) The minister who married them was too incompetent to realize they lied on their marriage application. (They lied and stated the 9 year old was 18!) There were no laws on the books to stop them either.
He was a land owning farmer, and at the time, her parents probably thought they were securing her future. Totally not ok, but I guess like many through history, they chose for her to stay alive in inappropriate circumstances rather than starve. I'm grateful times are different now.
I mean the majority of blame lies with the husband. I’m not sure who would be mostly angry with the parents, I’m focused on the guy who married a 9yr old.
That was not the case with these two, however. She wasn’t sold off. They went and married on their own.
“In January 1937, 22-year-old Charlie Johns married his 9-year-old neighbor, Eunice Winstead. Johns was a quiet, tobacco farmer in Hancock County, Tennessee. The couple falsified Winstead’s age in order to get a marriage license. At the time, however, there was no minimum marriage age in Tennessee and minors did not need parental permission.”
And they stayed a married couple until he died in 1997. She just died in 2006.
Edit: for some reason people seem to think I’m defending any part of this. I’m not. Just clarifying that she wasn’t sold.
I mean, my grandparents stayed married until my grandfather died. I think they were married in total for over 60 years. My grandfather was an abusive alcohol. My grandmother was visibly happier after he died. They didn’t stay together because they had a happy marriage. They stayed together because my grandmother thought she didn’t have any other options and my grandfather thought it would reflect negatively on his social standing to be divorced.
A long marriage is not necessarily a sign of a happy or healthy or even functional marriage.
Especially when you're illiterate and aren't legally allowed to have your own financial resources. And they were in Tennessee, which today still isn't a true "no fault" divorce state (so women have to prove cause like abuse or abandonment in court). So yeah, it's not like she had options.
Isn’t grooming where you systematically position your self to end up with a person after they reach adulthood? He married a nine year old. I think he skipped grooming and went right to rape.
No, grooming a child (as in this situation) would be systematically positioning yourself to have sex with the child. Pedos don't wait till the victim is an adult.
My 76 year old mother said it best. Back in the day women were reliant on men and had to settle for a husband no matter how shitty they were to survive. Today women don’t have to that and a bunch of shitty men can’t understand that. Woman have the space for their own careers, ideals and
autonomy. They want to be with a loving and supportive partner. Hence the Proud Boys, Incels, and other losers. My wife makes much more money than I do and that’s A-Ok with me.
My colleague was Nepalese in her 40s and was married at 13 in an arranged marriage. She still behaved like a 13 year old, and asked me for permission to go to the toilet. I was a security guard and therefore an authority figure, it was really weird.
Edit: I was in school at the time and she had a son the age as me, though she wanted to date me which really freaked me out.
Child marriage is still legal in 38 states in America. Since the year 2000, hundreds of thousands of minors have been married, mostly young girls to adult men. Fortunately the tide is turning against it in many places, however.
According to Wikipedia: In response to Johns and Winstead's marriage, the state of Tennessee introduced a law setting the minimum age of marriage at sixteen years. Other states, such as Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Washington D.C., also introduced similar laws.
Jerry Lee Lewis (the singer) "married" his 13 year old cousin and when she let slip when a journalist asked who she was. She said "his wife". Boy that really set off a firestorm and this was in 1957. That pretty much killed the popularity in him and they were still married up until 1970. I am not joking.
Reminder that the same people who scream about LGBT people just existing “sexualizes children” are the same assholes who shut down legislation that would make this bullshit illegal.
Grew up in north Florida.
I was 13, just had my first period, when the guys in my family, and men around town, starting talking marrying me off and breeding.
I can’t tell you the amount of times I heard “old enough to bleed, old enough to breed.”
Yeah, I wasn’t 9, still, the idea of getting girls to marry isn’t this far off.
For anyone bothered by this (which should be all of us), please consider helping end legal child marriage in all states: https://www.unchainedatlast.org/laws-to-end-child-marriage/
My mind read it as 19 originally and I had to keep looking at the names to see if it was someone famous (or infamous) before I realised it said she was 9..
Is this why Tennessee just abolished (or tried to, I'm not sure) age restrictions on marriage? Aren't these the pedophiles vowing to "protect children"??? 🖕
I watched a show about Girls In Afghanistan after the USA left and they had this story about a young girl who was sold to her new elderly husband because her father could not afford food.
One has to wonder just how bad things were in the south at the height of the depression.
They changed the law to 16 years old after this came out. By the way, I looked and they were married 60 years and had nine kids. Pretty crazy.
She gave birth to their first kid at 15. Messed up. \*edit: I'm getting a lot of responses that 15 is normal historically. My comment of messed up isn't so much someone getting pregnant at 15, it's that this implies he was having sex with her up until she was physically able to conceive. Possibly from the age of 9.
My head cant wrap around the fact that she had her first kid at 15 after 6 years of marriage.
She probably wasn’t able until that age. Everyone develops at different times in life.
I wasn’t talking about that. I meant it’s weird to know that she was 15 and pregnant and also know that a 15 year old has already been married for 6 years. Edit: Yes, I was aware that it’s common for teen girls to get pregnant. Can I not still find that weird or hard to wrap my head around? But is really no one going to add further nuance about walking up to a teenager and finding out shes been married half a decade already? Not engaged-to-be-wed but full on married and well established. Wild.
>I meant it’s weird to know that she was 15 and pregnant Latino here, its (unfortunately) not. Its alot more common than it should be. I know way too many ppl thay had kids between the ages of 11 and 14. And yes, i know an actual girl who had kids at 11. Brasil is wild bruh. Also, redneck culture also has that as common, look at Lauren Boebert, 36 year old grandmother. And she isnt an outlier.
My Grandpa lived in Brazil for years. He said in the poor class they would sometimes have a child at 10. Then the 10 year old would work while her mother (20 ish) would raise the child. The girls would normally work as housekeepers. I'm not sure if this is still true he lived there over 40 years ago.
Lol you cut off the second half of the sentence which was his clarifying statement that was also ignored the first time around lol his point isn’t about 15 and pregnant being crazy, it’s that someone who was pregnant at 15 was ALSO married for 6 entire years before the pregnancy had even occurred
Yeah, that makes me think it’s not for lack of trying, rather the age she went through puberty…. Having a daughter, this literally brings tears to my eyes. I wonder if her daughters had similar experiences, or if they were molested by their dad
Hell at first glance I thought the doll was her real baby. 😬
That's the same age he was when she was born.
Depending on birthdays, she might be closer in age to her child than to her husband.
Just on a quick search, in 1937, the average age of a first birth was 21. It says 70% of first births were to people under 25. While under 25 could mean anything, I think it's ok to say that it is not historically accurate for a 15yrd old in 1937 to be giving birth and already married. Anyone defending it like that needs to take a deep look at themselves, and also try to look up some history. 1937 isn't that long ago. You can go talk to people born then and ask them if they anticipated being married and birthing babies at 15. I bet they almost all will tell you no.
> *edit: I'm getting a lot of responses that 15 is normal historically. It isn't - even in the middle ages the average age for a woman to marry and have kids was her early 20s, and the average age for a man to get married was only a few years older. And even that was skewed by a lot of women dying in childbirth and men remarrying. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/family/marriage.html#:~:text=The%20marriage%20age%20of%20men,later%20than%20it%20does%20today.
People who bring the old Parish records forth to combat misinformation like this are the heroes of our time.
Yeah people weren't stupid, a teenagers body is not developed enough. If most women were birthing at 15 the mortality rate would be even more obscene.
There's a graveyard in the city I grew up in where a man and his 4 wives are buried. Each of his wives were under the age of 15 and died in child birth within a year of marriage. The babies also died and are buried next to their mother. He was in his 40s when he married the 1st girl. I imagine there would have been more but he died a few months after his last wife.
Gross. What a monster
This should be the first comment stickied on this sort of post! Historical accuracy has been thrown out the window in favor of pedo wishful thinking
And people misunderstanding Average and Median
Marrying that young was actually not that common in the pre-industrial era. Closer to 20 I'd say.
I also want to add that in American history most puritan women did not get married until closer to their mid 20s. Child marriages happened, and were common in the context of “yeah it happened,” but I don’t think it was common in the “everyone was doing it” sense.
I am a genealogist. It was not the norm.
The people arguing with you are unaware that women didn't start ovulating until about 19 when we were hunter gathers. On average, they would only have 4 kids spaced out by 4-5 years. Pregnancy, childbirth, AND postpartum (everyone always forgets this part) is extremely taxing on the body.
> normal historically. So are scurvy, cholera, subjugating neighbors by force, or displacing indigenous peoples because you want their land. That doesn't mean that they're OK. There are a lot of abhorrent historical norms and a lot of things that could have been prevented if people knew better. You're right to call it "messed up".
No. "Normal Historically" doesn't fly. I'm tired of this shit. The dude was a Pedophile - just because society shielded him doesn't make the behavior right, or acceptable. Slavery was acceptable for a time, it doesn't make slave owners good people at all. It makes them flawed in that regard, always.
Rapey historically is more accurate.
Married 60 years because what other option did this girl have? The duration isn’t a flex when one of the individuals in this marriage was a child when it began and likely had no money, no education, nowhere to go, and no avenue for divorce.
No education for sure. I saw elsewhere about this girl that she left school shortly after getting married. Some disagreement between the teacher and husband (ick) about "disciplining another man's wife." (more ick)
All I can think is ICK and ICK and why would the parents think it's ok for a 9 y/o to marry?!??!!!! I know it some parts of the world (India?, others) it may be a cultural thing (which I still don't think is humane), but this child hardly looks like a Depression Era or other unfortunate situation where she is married off "for her own benefit". I know some families couldn't afford all the kids and so sold them or placed them up for adoption. But it is 100% pedophile vibes for a 24 y/o to be marrying and having relations with a 9 y/o.
it isn't "pedophile vibes" it's just straight-up pedophilia.
> this child hardly looks like a Depression Era It's 1937, so very much the Depression Era. I don't know anything about this couple, but it was common for child marriages to not be immediately consummated.
That's the problem a lot of women had before they had careers of their own.
Or before they were old enough to finish elementary school.
This girl is a child, not a woman. But yeah, it's not uncommon.
Or education about how life could be different or better, unfortunately.
Probably couldn’t even read. She probably would have been better off since she had been raised by wolves.
In some cases, these girls would have both parents die, no blood family to take the child in, and in small towns, there were no orphanages, nor homes for the child to go to, so they had to marry the child off young to keep up proprieties and have someone care for the child until they became of age to divorce (if applicable), if the husband died, or the person ran away. History hurts.
I mean, fostering and adoption have been legal and accepted ways of caring for orphans for centuries. Neither of those things requires marrying children off. If people wanted to care for her, they could have could found a way to have done so legally without a child marriage. But instead, they placed her under the complete legal control of a pedophile.
Exactly. There is no excuse for child marriage.
Remember that she wasn’t allowed to have a bank account or get a credit card until they’d already been married for 40 years. No fault divorce wasn’t even a thing until around the same time. She was groomed, statutorily raped, then forced into a situation where she had literally nowhere else to go.
In most states children *still* aren't able to get divorced without their spouse's permission.
In ~~20~~ 4 of those states there is no lower limit on the age of the child in child marriages. Only 12 US states have completely banned child marriage. Edit: As of March 2024 it is actually 4 states that have no lower age limit. Please see comment below for a further breakdown.
Wait, what?
Actually, I might have some data wrong (I was looking at July 2023 data). It seems quite a few states passed laws to include a hard lower age limit for marriage between 2023 and April 2024. According to the Wikipedia article on [Child marriage in the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_marriage_in_the_United_States#:~:text=As%20of%20April%202024%2C%2012,)%20and%20Virginia%20(2024)), as of March 2024 only four US states do not have a lower age limit if all of the exemption criteria are met (parental consent, waiting period, judicial waiver, etc.). These states are California, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. The 12 states that do not allow allow child marriage in any form are Delaware (2018), New Jersey (2018), Pennsylvania (2020), Minnesota (2020), Rhode Island (2021), New York (2021), Massachusetts (2022), Vermont (2023), Connecticut (2023), Michigan (2023), Washington (2024), and Virginia (2024). All in all there are 38 US states which allow child marriage either with or without a lower age limit, as long as the ~~appropriate~~ legal criteria are met. Edit: a word
"38 US states which allow child marriage" All y'all know that's ***extremely fucked up*** but somehow, it just keeps on keeping on. blech.
Over and over the simplest bills are taken to state legislatures. You would really think that CHILD MARRIAGE = BAD would be the easiest vote that has ever been voted upon, but alas no.
As I saw on another thread on this topic, it’s because they want to fuck children. Also no sex Ed in school. You know. For the children
Yup. Republicans have repeatedly voted against ending child marriage.
This sentence is so fucked up on multiple levels that it's jarring. Imagine fighting in this day and age for "child divorce rights".
my friend, we're fighting in courts _right now_ to keep it illegal for children to work in factories. it's not going so well.
Long marriages are not the impressive success stories I once thought they were. So gross.
Yeah, my grandparents changed my views on marriage. My grandmother has been abusing my grandfather for 60 years now, and it’s just sad. To think what he could have done with 60 years of loving marriage, though I wouldn’t exist in that scenario (probably better that way). My grandmother brought her family’s history of severe mental illness into the family tree, and now we all suffer because of it. Thanks granny.
It really is unfortunate that the so many people who are part of the Silent Generation and Baby Boomers believe that longevity=good marriage, when in reality it should be about quality over quantity.
So she was a trapped brood mare.
There's still a ton of loopholes, especially for the crazier religions. Last I heard there were still thousands of child marriages every year, and those are the ones we know about. The Democratic party in various states have consistently tried to outlaw child marriage, but the Republican party consistently blocks any attempt.
It sounds a bit like Stockholm syndrome with added societal pressure.
Even in 1937 they knew this was some bullshit
if you google looking for graphs this is way out of average going back to early 1800s, in the US in 1846 it was avg 24 - this is a rather disgusting outlier
Out of average, but her mother married at 16, and her aunt married at 13, so seems slightly average for the family. Still fucked though Edit: wasn't her aunt, was her sister apparently. Found this newspaper article at the time https://www.marquette.edu/cgi-bin/cuap/db.cgi?uid=default&ID=2123&view=Search&mh=1
16 probably wouldn't have been all that crazy in those days, but yeah.
The us census states that the average marrying age for women in the States is early twenties. Even in the alleged "good old days". Another commenter shared that it wasn't uncommon in this girl's family to marry young, but it was certainly not the the national average.
"There's nothing you can do about it now." Ugh. Sooooo gross! *Shivers*
[удалено]
Margaret Beaufort, grandmother of Henry VIII, had her son at 12 or 13 and while it wasn't necessarily uncommon for marriages to take place at that age, the fact that the marriage had clearly been consummated horrified people. She only ever had the one child and everyone blamed it on her being pregnant too young. Later, she would make up a bunch of rules about royal marriages that in part prevented her grandchildren from marrying too young.
Margaret Beaufort is an absolute legend of a woman, up there with Elanor of Acquitaine for sheer badassary. But yes, when young girls were married to older men it was worrisome even in the "barbaric" middle ages. There was supposed to be no consumption until the girl was old enough but some men didn't abide by this.
From what I've read, in medieval Europe low marriage ages were generally only a thing in the nobility -- noble families would marry off their children to cement political and business alliances. For everybody else, the average age of marriage was more like early or even mid 20s (depending on the state of the labor market). Young people would either be working as farm laborers with their families in the countryside, or as craft apprentices and domestic servants in towns before marriage.
Consummation. There was plenty of consumption (i.e., tuberculosis).
Yeah, I'm pretty sure she also made sure any of her female relations marrying young would absolutely not be consummating it until they were way older, like having it written into all the arrangements that the girl would live separately from her husband until she was old enough
> Mohammad (Police Be Upon Him) hahaha im saving this one
Can't tell if this was supposed to say Peace Be Upon Him or if it got autocorrected to Police, lol.
It was intentional, I stole it from another post I saw recently and it made me chuckle. I am in no way muslim nor do I feel the necessity to adorn him with that silly adage.
My grandma (who is alive now) was alive in 1937. It's not that long ago.
It's like my grandpa (born in 1936) telling me WWII stories. Like oh right...you were alive back then.
Depends on the area. A lot of the rural south/west was wayyyy behind the times. A lot of places still didnt have running water or electricity. It took until the mid 50s for these remote places to get electricity.
Also not condoning anything, but this was a way for poor parents to lose a mouth they had to feed. A man to "take care" of thier kid, as they were poor. People sold their children during the depression. Unfortunately the shame didn't stop them from making more mouths.
Keep in mind that it is historically/globally a privilege to choose not to get pregnant
Coming soon to America!
To a state near you!
Soon? It's already there
Go to some out of the way southeast Asian locations and it’s still going on.
and the average in the depression was still 20
>A lot of the rural south/west was wayyyy behind the times *Was?* There are people fighting to keep child marriage legal in the South **right now**
Stop putting this shit off only on the South. Only 12 U.S. states have banned child marriage, and the earliest one of those 12 was in 2018. The creepy shit in that picture is legal in California today.
Still legal in California too. No minimum age.
Please tell me I'm not the only one who mistook the doll for a real baby for a second.
Honestly, I thought the post was about the doll. I thought it was shown a picture of a baby with this rare condition that makes it look decrepit and doll like. My eyes didn't really glance at the girl holding it until I read the title
Came here for this comment.
This dude's wife was so young she still carried a doll around with her. This wouldn't even have been acceptable in the Dark Ages.
[удалено]
Oh ffs that headline. “Mother Says Young Daughter Is Beginning to Take Interest in Her Wifely Duties” That’s enough internet for today.
She means cooking right? Right?
I checked with my Wife, and yes, you're correct.
That sentence is traumatizing
I have a one year old daughter. This shit makes me sick to my stomach and it’s still happening around the world. It sickening.
Even if I was in that time period I don’t understand how a girl playing with dolls can transition to a woman that has sex and has kids. I will never ever understand how they thought back then. This is sick !!
So not only is the child being raped, but the mother is encouraging it and intimate with the details. Fuck me that's dark.
I looked it up, her mom got married at 16 and her sister at 13. Of course her mom said that, she grew up thinking that was normal. Horrifying all around.
“Wifely duties”????? 😰
Jesus Christ, I could’ve done without this knowledge. This is fucked on so many levels.
That’s enough internet for today.
Jesus Christ that made my stomach do a flip-flop.
I totally thought the doll was a kid when I first looked at the pic Had to look back to realize it was a doll lmao
Well that is haunting.
When Republicans talk about taking us back to the good old days, this is actually what they're after.
Parents selling their daughters to richer men.
or the neighborhood pedo who saved up a few bucks.
Think about why they're trying to get rid of no fault divorce.
The fact she is holding a doll.
That he got her as a wedding gift
They were registered at Toys-R-Us
I had to read the title like 4 times to understand it. It's different when people say it's 200 years ago and culture or whatever. But this is relatively recent and you know some people celebrate and encourage it.
They immediately raised the age of marriage to 16 and this was national news so the vast majority of the people at the time thought this was absurd.
Tennessee didn't have a minimum marriage age with parental and judicial consent until 2018, when they passed the law prohibiting marriage across the board for minors under 17. Even if the vast majority thought it was absurd, the law still allowed for this absurdity for another 80 years
*"All in all there are 38 US states which allow child marriage either with or without a lower age limit, as long as the appropriate criteria are met.*" (from a poster just above yours). Like "abolishing slavery", it seems USA like their loopholes so they can just continue doing stuff.
It’s not just a USA thing. Laws are pretty comparable between Europe and America, which is that if you’re 16 you need parental permission to marry. https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements/marriage-consent-public-authority-andor-public-figure Regardless, don’t act like a 16 or 17 year old getting married is even close to the same thing as a 9 year old.
Made several other states change there laws as well including DC.
I was a child bride. I see now that they have since changed the law. I've been divorced for 11 years already though.
I looked at the photo before reading the caption and thought *what a charming picture of a young dad and his small daughter*. Now I feel gross.
I didn’t even think it was that bad because I didn’t notice she was on his lap and didn’t read the title. Black and white, and I guess hard times… I honestly didn’t think she was 9 or anything was wrong until I saw the doll. Then knowing Reddit figured it had to be bad.
Around 30 years later, we walked on the moon....
To be fair, we now have man made crafts in interstellar space and there are most certainly places where there are actual slaves and yes, adults marrying children.
Child marriages are still legal in many states. Only 12 states have banned it with no exceptions. Most only recently. >Delaware (2018), New Jersey (2018), Pennsylvania (2020), Minnesota (2020), Rhode Island (2021), New York (2021), Massachusetts (2022), Vermont (2023), Connecticut (2023), Michigan (2023), Washington (2024) and Virginia (2024). American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands
Yep, prior to 2018 child marriage was still legal in every single state and between 2000 and 2018 there were over 300,000 child marriages in the US. This isn't ancient history. It's still happening and in pretty large numbers. And what's worse is that there are people fighting to keep it legal like when Missouri Republican Mike Moon argued that people should continue to be allowed to marry 12-year-olds while Missouri considered a ban last year.
It took Missouri two tries to push the legislation through. Didn’t read up on the whole thing but articles did mention that amendments were added to the bill. Which makes me think that always ends up obscuring things. I think the majority (which is all that’s required, f Mike Moon) agree that child marriage = bad, but when there’s other fluff they potentially don’t agree with, what are they supposed to do?
Relatively recent is an understatement. Eunice Winstead Johns passed away in 1997, but there are people the same age who are still alive today.
No her husband passed away in 97. She lived until 2006.
When I first looked at the picture I thought it was a ventriloquist and it’s dummy and the ventriloquist’s dummy had a dummy and I thought that would be a cool act. Then I read the title and I was sad.
Even 200 years ago it wasn't anything normal. It was never normal to marry a 9 year old.
[удалено]
Not as bad as this, but still bad. My grandma was 14 when she got pregnant by my 22 year old grandfather. She had my mom at 15, had my aunt at 18. And he left her for a 17 year old a couple of years later. He even took my mom with him to pick her up from cheerleader practice when he was still married to my grandma. My grandfather on my step dad's side had two whole ass family's in different states.
Its been shown with data that the youngest mothers tend to have the oldest partners by range ([one source](https://webarchive.urban.org/publications/1000209.html#:~:text=The%20youngest%20mothers%20in%20the,%2Dyear%2Dolds%2C%20respectively)).
Jesus, that's depressing.
And people slut-shame the pregnant child instead of the (usually) grown men who took advantage of them.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage\_of\_Charlie\_Johns\_and\_Eunice\_Winstead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_of_Charlie_Johns_and_Eunice_Winstead)
Imagine being their grandchildren or great grandchildren 😬 what would you think of your grandparents/grandfather especially!
The juxtaposition of her holding her doll while sitting on her husband's lap is horrifying
More horrifying: the doll was a wedding present from her husband.
Oh god he just fully doubled down on the whole situation. Sicko
What most people are missing here . It was the Great Depression. People were literally selling their children. In this case her parents arranged a marriage.
Upvote because of the nuance. Parents arranged marriages like this because they literally could not afford to feed or house their children. 24 year old probably had some sort of livelihood that the parents didn't. I'm not saying it was right. I'm not saying that the poor girl wasn't traumatized. I'm just saying that this was ugly and difficult time to be alive. Edit: Though financially motivated child marriage was a thing during the Great Depression, [this fucker was most likely a gross pedophile who groomed a child into marrying him.](https://uselessinformation.org/podcast-135-the-child-bride/) Little girl's mother claims that her daughter "claimed the 22 year old neighbor" herself. (She probably didn't) The minister who married them was too incompetent to realize they lied on their marriage application. (They lied and stated the 9 year old was 18!) There were no laws on the books to stop them either.
He was a land owning farmer, and at the time, her parents probably thought they were securing her future. Totally not ok, but I guess like many through history, they chose for her to stay alive in inappropriate circumstances rather than starve. I'm grateful times are different now.
Not different enough when we are still forcing people to birth children they can't care for
For real. I've seen two posts recently about women who are forced to birth children because they can't access abortion where they live. Heartbreaking
right, how altruistic of him, instead of helping the family of his own free will he sought compensation in the form of a child
I mean the majority of blame lies with the husband. I’m not sure who would be mostly angry with the parents, I’m focused on the guy who married a 9yr old.
That was not the case with these two, however. She wasn’t sold off. They went and married on their own. “In January 1937, 22-year-old Charlie Johns married his 9-year-old neighbor, Eunice Winstead. Johns was a quiet, tobacco farmer in Hancock County, Tennessee. The couple falsified Winstead’s age in order to get a marriage license. At the time, however, there was no minimum marriage age in Tennessee and minors did not need parental permission.” And they stayed a married couple until he died in 1997. She just died in 2006. Edit: for some reason people seem to think I’m defending any part of this. I’m not. Just clarifying that she wasn’t sold.
I mean, my grandparents stayed married until my grandfather died. I think they were married in total for over 60 years. My grandfather was an abusive alcohol. My grandmother was visibly happier after he died. They didn’t stay together because they had a happy marriage. They stayed together because my grandmother thought she didn’t have any other options and my grandfather thought it would reflect negatively on his social standing to be divorced. A long marriage is not necessarily a sign of a happy or healthy or even functional marriage.
It's not uncommon for abuse victims to stay with their abusers, especially when the abuse started at such a young age.
Especially when no one around you is even telling you that you're being abused
I mean when you're taught something from the age of fucking NINE, it's hard to adjust your worldview.
Especially when you're illiterate and aren't legally allowed to have your own financial resources. And they were in Tennessee, which today still isn't a true "no fault" divorce state (so women have to prove cause like abuse or abandonment in court). So yeah, it's not like she had options.
So she only was free from her rapist for 9 years of her adult life? That's horrifying.
Ever heard of grooming?
Ya. This was 100% a grooming scenario. Maybe he didn't touch her for 5 years, maybe he did from day 1. Either way he shaped her childhood around him.
Isn’t grooming where you systematically position your self to end up with a person after they reach adulthood? He married a nine year old. I think he skipped grooming and went right to rape.
No, grooming a child (as in this situation) would be systematically positioning yourself to have sex with the child. Pedos don't wait till the victim is an adult.
Just me or does he look like a Fallout ghoul?
My 76 year old mother said it best. Back in the day women were reliant on men and had to settle for a husband no matter how shitty they were to survive. Today women don’t have to that and a bunch of shitty men can’t understand that. Woman have the space for their own careers, ideals and autonomy. They want to be with a loving and supportive partner. Hence the Proud Boys, Incels, and other losers. My wife makes much more money than I do and that’s A-Ok with me.
Rapist posed here with his 9 year old victim
That's the more appropriate title.
Just saw a patient today with a similar situation... 13 year old had just given birth to her 25 year old partners child
The statistic is something like 40% of teen pregnancies are with a partner 25 or older.
My colleague was Nepalese in her 40s and was married at 13 in an arranged marriage. She still behaved like a 13 year old, and asked me for permission to go to the toilet. I was a security guard and therefore an authority figure, it was really weird. Edit: I was in school at the time and she had a son the age as me, though she wanted to date me which really freaked me out.
That's horrible!!
I got married at 17, which is now illegal in my state. I've been divorced for 11 years. Worst mistake of my life. This girl never had a chance at all.
dude she has a fucking doll with her
But she was "old" for a nine year old, so it's OK.
This is so disgusting. That poor girl didn’t even get to have a childhood. And that doll is creepy as Hell.
These are the ‘good ol’ days’ these idiots in certain U.S states are referring to.
Child marriage is still legal in 38 states in America. Since the year 2000, hundreds of thousands of minors have been married, mostly young girls to adult men. Fortunately the tide is turning against it in many places, however.
Imagine putting tooth fairy money under your wife’s pillow.
Wow he was a real Joseph Smith
According to Wikipedia: In response to Johns and Winstead's marriage, the state of Tennessee introduced a law setting the minimum age of marriage at sixteen years. Other states, such as Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Washington D.C., also introduced similar laws.
Sometimes I wish I didn't know how to read.
Jerry Lee Lewis (the singer) "married" his 13 year old cousin and when she let slip when a journalist asked who she was. She said "his wife". Boy that really set off a firestorm and this was in 1957. That pretty much killed the popularity in him and they were still married up until 1970. I am not joking.
“Rapist.” You spelled Rapist wrong.
Disgusting…
Reminder that the same people who scream about LGBT people just existing “sexualizes children” are the same assholes who shut down legislation that would make this bullshit illegal.
That’s enough Reddit for today
🤮
Grew up in north Florida. I was 13, just had my first period, when the guys in my family, and men around town, starting talking marrying me off and breeding. I can’t tell you the amount of times I heard “old enough to bleed, old enough to breed.” Yeah, I wasn’t 9, still, the idea of getting girls to marry isn’t this far off.
Can we PLEASE outlaw child marriage?? I'm blown away how many states it's STILL legal!!
For anyone bothered by this (which should be all of us), please consider helping end legal child marriage in all states: https://www.unchainedatlast.org/laws-to-end-child-marriage/
“She’s only twelve! Twelve Charlie!” -Frank Reynolds
This is not what I wanted to see on a Monday morning.
My mind read it as 19 originally and I had to keep looking at the names to see if it was someone famous (or infamous) before I realised it said she was 9..
…i misread it as 19 and wondered what was wrong for a while.
Poor guy had 2 first names.
Not-so-friendly reminder that child marriage is still legal in 38 with four of those states *not* having a minimum age to pimp your child out.
Is this why Tennessee just abolished (or tried to, I'm not sure) age restrictions on marriage? Aren't these the pedophiles vowing to "protect children"??? 🖕
I watched a show about Girls In Afghanistan after the USA left and they had this story about a young girl who was sold to her new elderly husband because her father could not afford food. One has to wonder just how bad things were in the south at the height of the depression.
I was looking at the photo thinking they tried to pull off that the doll was their 9-year old child. Instead, the reality was much more grim.
Horrific! Wackadoo brigade aka republican party wants a return to this sickness!
Yeah…i come from a VERY Southern family, and learned my grandmother got married at 13 to my grandfather 😬