Young Marriage
An amendment to the federal Marriages Act of 1961, which has just come into effect, has raised the age at which young women can marry from 16 to 18. This makes the law for women the same as for men.
Between the ages of 16 and 18, men or women in "exceptional circumstances" can seek permission to marry from a judge or magistrate.
Exceptional circumstances have been reported to include pregnancy, the couple's ability to prove that they were financially independent and parental agreement.
However, a Coffs Harbour couple, Melissa Jones (16) and Mark Govern (17), have had difficulty convincing the authorities. Melissa is six months pregnant. Melissa's mother told the Sydney Morning Herald that magistrates the family had contacted could not answer when asked to give a definition of exceptional circumstances. The family could not afford a solicitor to argue the case in court.
The amendment was supported by women's groups, the Australian Law Reform Commission and the Office of the Status of Women, all of which argued that the age for women should be moved up rather than that for men moved down.
Some women's groups have supported the amendment on the grounds that it protects young women not yet mature enough to make a decision likely to involve early entry into motherhood and the limiting of opportunities in education and career.
Cut-off points on issues like the age of consent and the right to vote are always arbitrary. Since any set age is going to be arbitrary, the argument might run, wouldn't it be sensible to keep the standard older rather than younger?
But it's worth taking a second look at the implications.
Many young people now start living "as if married" (to use the wording of Department of Social Security officers curious to know who is doing the laundry for whom) almost as a matter of course. Social attitudes to this have undergone a revolution in the last 20 years. Whether or not the properly signed and stamped forms are sitting in a filing cabinet at the registry of births, deaths and marriages has become irrelevant.
Some say that being unmarried makes it easier to walk
away from a relationship; but this is more a psychological factor
than a legal one. Young women will continue to make decisions that their families, schools and offices of the status of women consider not to be in their best interests. If they can legally live with a partner, have sex and have children, as 16-year-olds do in their thousands, then it seems anomalous and unjust that they can't also choose to marry.
Raising the marriage age tends to give back to this institution some of the legal importance it has lost — through no-fault divorce laws, for example, or the fact that de facto relationships are increasingly recognised by the law. (This erosion is crucial to women's liberation, although not unproblematic: the loss of financial support from ex-husbands as a result of a breakdown in the concept of the supporting breadwinner is not a small matter for many separated and divorced women with children.)
Marriage has been moving closer to the concept of a social declaration of commitment to a relationship. It is increasingly seen as one which can be walked away from if it has broken down, rather than endured for a lifetime. If people of 16 want to put such a seal on a sexual and emotional relationship, then why not?
By Tracy Sorensen