Marriageable age

The 123 parties to the 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery have agreed to adopt a prescribed "suitable" minimum age for marriage.

The legislation also imposed penalties for both men and women who remained unmarried, or who married but for whatever reason failed to have children.

[5] Women who were Vestal Virgins were selected between the ages of 10 and 13 to serve as priestesses in the temple of goddess Vesta in the Roman Forum for 30 years, after which they could marry.

[9] Individuals remained under the authority of the pater familias until his death, and the latter had the power to approve or reject marriages for his sons and daughters, but by the late antique period, Roman law permitted women over 25 to marry without parental consent.

In 380 C.E., the Emperor Theodosius issued the Edict of Thessalonica, which made Nicene Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

As early as the 9th century in northwestern France, families that worked on manors were small, consisting of parents and children and occasionally a grandparent.

The Roman Catholic Church and State had become allies in erasing the solidarity and thus the political power of the clans; the Roman Catholic Church sought to replace traditional religion, whose vehicle was the kin group, and substitute the authority of the elders of the kin group with that of a religious elder.

[19] Parish studies have confirmed that in the late medieval period, females did sometimes marry without their parents' approval in England.

In 1275, in England, as part of the rape law, the Statute of Westminster 1275, made it a misdemeanor to have sex with a "maiden within age", whether with or without her consent.

Additionally, the Church of England dictated that both the bride and groom must be at least 21 years of age to marry without the consent of their families.

[14] On the average, marriages occurred several years earlier in colonial America than in Europe, and much higher proportions of the population eventually got married.

In 17th century Poland, in the Warsaw parish of St John, the average age of women entering marriage was 20.1, and that of men was 23.7.

[33] In medieval Eastern Europe, the Slavic traditions of patrilocality of early and universal marriage (usually of a bride aged 13–15 years, with menarche occurring on average at age 14) lingered;[34] the manorial system had yet to penetrate into Eastern Europe and generally had less effect on clan systems there.

The United Nations Population Fund stated:[42] In 2010, 158 countries reported that 18 years was the minimum legal age for marriage for women without parental consent or approval by a pertinent authority.

Countries which have reformed their marriage laws in recent years include Sweden (2014), Denmark (2017), Germany (2017), Luxembourg (2014), Spain (2015), Netherlands (2015), Finland (2019) and Ireland (2019).

Many developing countries have also enacted similar laws in recent years: Honduras (2017), Ecuador (2015), Costa Rica (2017), Panama (2015), Trinidad & Tobago (2017), Malawi (2017).

[14] In Western countries, marriages of teenagers have become rare in recent years, with their frequency declining during the past few decades.

In Canada for example, the age of majority is 19 in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, Yukon and Nunavut.

On 30 November 2022, The High court of Jharkhand reported that a Muslim Woman can marry a person of her choice after attaining 15 years.

[167] under the age of 19, the revision stipulated that the court can grant such permission only if there are urgent reasons as well as supporting evidences to back them.

The law revision also stresses that the court must consider the spirit of preventing child marriage, as well as moral, religious, cultural, psychological, and health considerations before granting the permission.

[168] However, the next article allows persons between the ages of 16–18 to be married if they have been “commissioned the right of full legal capacity” in accordance to the Civil Code.

[278] On the practice of Levirate marriage, the Talmud advised against a large age gap between a man and his brother's widow.

Hanafi school of classical Islamic jurisprudence interpret the "age of marriage", in the Quran (24:59;65:4), as the beginning of puberty; that is 10–11 years old.

[283] Shafiʽi, Hanbali, Ja'fari and Maliki schools of classical Islamic jurisprudence interpret the "age of marriage", in the Quran (24:59), as completion of puberty; that is 14/15–17 years.

Büchler and Schlater state that "marriageable age according to classical Islamic law coincides with the occurrence of puberty.

[294] In his Shafiʽi jurisprudential compilation, The Stocks of the Sojourner, Ahmad Ibn Naqib Al-Misri (died 1368 A.D.) writes: Guardians are, moreover, two types, a binder and a non-binder.

[296] Many senior clerics in Saudi Arabia have opposed setting a minimum age for marriage, arguing that a girl reaches adulthood at puberty.

The Chairman of the Human Rights Committee at the Shoura Council, Dr. Hadi Al-Yami, said that introduced controls were based on in-depth studies presented to the body.

[298] In the Baháʼí Faith's religious book Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the age of marriage is set at 15 years for both boys and girls.