Age of Consent

Last week, the League of Women Voters of New York State made statements: 345,000 girls in the U. S. have become brides and mothers at the age of 15 or less; they have married men whose ages varied between 16 and 52. Poor parents, the League charged, get around the compulsory education laws and get their daughters to help earn their board and keep, by consenting to their marriage at 14 or 15. Now the League seeks the enactment of a law that will raise the legal age at which girls may be married with the parental blessing from 14 to 16 years.

But in several of the 48 states, the reform-urgers might have crusaded against even more lenient laws. In five southern states, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi and Virginia, twelve-year-old girls may take the marriage vow with their parents' consent; in New Hampshire 13 years' experience of this world is considered sufficient for wedlock.