Article Re: Clergy/Penitent Privilege

[MiserereNobis]

6 minutes ago, webbles said:

There appears to have been something in 2021 where the archbishop of Reims said something along the lines that the confessional will always be secret and that it is above the law of France.  That triggered the Interior Minister to summon the archbishop and then the archbishop put out a statement apologizing for his earlier remark and something about how the confessional does need to work with the laws of France (which do require everyone to report child abuse).  I don't think the archbishop is saying that the priest should break the confessional but it does look like France would go after a priest who learns of child abuse in a confessional and doesn't report it to the police.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-rebukes-bishop-who-said-sex-abuse-revealed-confession-would-stay-secret-2021-10-07/

https://www.france24.com/en/france/20211013-child-abuse-scandal-france-s-top-bishop-acknowledges-primacy-of-law-over-confession-secrecy

To clarify, when I said "law" I meant Church law.

While it is true that the Catholic Church should work with the laws of the countries, it is not permissible for a priest in any circumstance to violate the confessional. As I've pointed out before, it entails automatic excommunication that can only be lifted by the Pope.

Priests should be willing to go to jail (or worse) to protect the confessional seal.

[Tacenda]

5 minutes ago, MiserereNobis said:

To clarify, when I said "law" I meant Church law.

While it is true that the Catholic Church should work with the laws of the countries, it is not permissible for a priest in any circumstance to violate the confessional. As I've pointed out before, it entails automatic excommunication that can only be lifted by the Pope.

Priests should be willing to go to jail (or worse) to protect the confessional seal.

I'd risk excommunication any day if it mean't saving a person in immediate danger.

[Benjamin McGuire]

19 hours ago, bluebell said:

I would put forth that your knee-jerk reaction to the idea that marrying young is not fundamentally bad could be due to your superficial knowledge on the subject of women's rights and their connections to marriage throughout history.

19 hours ago, bluebell said:

I wasn't saying that the fact that both men and women have been getting married young throughout history proves it's not always bad.  I was attempting to illustrate that different times and cultures have supported the practice throughout history with positive results both for the people involved and the communities that support them.

This doesn't change the argument at all. It is based on the idea that what happened must have been the best option. It is impossible to argue (either for or against) the premise of positive results from a practice when you don't have any alternatives to compare it to. Or, in other words, how would it have looked differently, historically, had it consistently produced negative results? I could make the same claim in the other direction - and you would find it very difficult to challenge it: "different times and cultures have supported the practice throughout history with negative results both for the people involved and the communities that support them." And I could base my arguments on our present day understanding of the past - that such practices contributed to cultural values that we believe are wrong today (viewing women as property, etc.).

19 hours ago, bluebell said:

This is true especially in those times and cultures when 14 years old was not considered a child.  I recognize that you don't want to deal with those times and cultures because they negate your statement of fact. But that is specifically why I am bringing them up. 

This is a complete irrelevancy. The reason why is because just because a culture believes something doesn't make it true. The fact remains (and can be empirically demonstrated) that a 14 year old is not an adult. A 14 year old has never been an adult (at least in any sort of context in which history has a claim).

To go back to my earlier example, this defense is a lot like saying that because slavery was acceptable and recognized as a potentially necessary part of previous cultures that we cannot claim that slavery is always bad. Yes, I see that you have tried to modify the position so that you can argue that slaves are harmed by their condition - and so it isn't the same thing. And yet, it was Aristotle who wrote that both slaves and masters benefited from their circumstances. And Aristotle's arguments were used to argue for American slavery by George Fitzhugh:

Quote

Aristotle understood this subject thoroughly…He commences his treatise on Politics and Economics with the family, and discourses first of the slaves as a part of the family. He assumes…that the family, including husband, wife, children, and slaves, is the first and most natural development of that social nature. As States are composed of families, and as a sound and healthy whole cannot be formed of rotten parts…As all human beings live the greatest part of their lives in families, it is all-important that they should look to the wise arrangement of this old and universal institution.

Fitzhugh argues that on the basis of the past, that slaves weren't just a thing of the past - they were a necessary part of a working family in the present. I think that it is quite appropriate to argue that rather than being beneficial to society in the past that child marriage was in fact harmful - even if we have no way to measure that harm - because that harm comes not to society directly but to the girls involved.

18 hours ago, bluebell said:

The fact that we let minors enter into legal agreements with adults that the minor then has no legal ability to get out of--who often times cannot even legally hire a lawyer or take advantage of services for abused spouses because they are a minor--and who's legal guardian becomes his or her spouse, is completely insane.

But this is par for the course for women in general in most of human history - and especially true of child brides. And yet you want to say that this situation was positive - both for the women and for the societies that allowed for this?

18 hours ago, bluebell said:

Speaking to the topic generally though, most scholars believe that Mary the mother of Jesus was around 13 or 14 when she married and gave birth.

Perhaps you could provide some current references from these scholars?

I have no doubts that Mary was under the age of twenty. Thirteen or Fourteen is really unlikely - given the data that we have (which arguably is not much). The text itself provides very little information on this question.

19 hours ago, bluebell said:

I would put forth that your knee-jerk reaction to the idea that marrying young is not fundamentally bad could be due to your superficial knowledge on the subject of women's rights and their connections to marriage throughout history.

Whatever CASteve's background is, mine is not a superficial knowledge ...

At any rate, here is the problem (which, with your background in history you should be able to recognize). There is a difference between determining that something is bad (like, for example, slavery) and our treatment of the practice historically. The historical practices themselves have no impact on the ethical or moral question. And certainly they don't have any real role in our discussing the present day policy of mandated reporting (which is what we were discussing before it got derailed). With our current knowledge and understanding, we know that girls who are young teenagers are not adults. And we believe that there should be a high level of scrutiny applied to any proposed marriage between a man and a girl of that age. We also know that statistically these marriages are generally problematic - girls in under-aged marriages are statistically much more likely to experience significant abuse. They are more likely to be unhappy in their marriages. They are more likely to get a divorce. They are very unlikely to reach the education levels of their peers. And, with these issues contributing, girls who enter under-aged marriages are far more likely to spend most of their lives in poverty.

On the ethical side of things, if we think that there should be some gender egalitarianism, that women should not be treated as property of men, that women should have autonomy and the ability to decide their own futures - if we think women should have a right to choose when to have children, and the extent to which they should be educated - if we value all of these things - regardless of the context in which we are looking - then we can make the claim that under-aged marriage for girls is a bad thing. It isn't dependent on context. It doesn't matter whether or not that marriage might in some ways improve their lives. And this is why I claim (and stand by that statement) that there is something fundamentally wrong with child marriage. Perhaps, instead of continuing to try and defend the idea through history, you deal with the ethics and moral issues that I raise that we recognize in the present.

And then we can get back to the issue of mandatory reporting ...

[bluebell]

50 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

This doesn't change the argument at all. It is based on the idea that what happened must have been the best option. It is impossible to argue (either for or against) the premise of positive results from a practice when you don't have any alternatives to compare it to. Or, in other words, how would it have looked differently, historically, had it consistently produced negative results? I could make the same claim in the other direction - and you would find it very difficult to challenge it: "different times and cultures have supported the practice throughout history with negative results both for the people involved and the communities that support them." And I could base my arguments on our present day understanding of the past - that such practices contributed to cultural values that we believe are wrong today (viewing women as property, etc.).

This is a complete irrelevancy. The reason why is because just because a culture believes something doesn't make it true. The fact remains (and can be empirically demonstrated) that a 14 year old is not an adult. A 14 year old has never been an adult (at least in any sort of context in which history has a claim).

To go back to my earlier example, this defense is a lot like saying that because slavery was acceptable and recognized as a potentially necessary part of previous cultures that we cannot claim that slavery is always bad. Yes, I see that you have tried to modify the position so that you can argue that slaves are harmed by their condition - and so it isn't the same thing. And yet, it was Aristotle who wrote that both slaves and masters benefited from their circumstances. And Aristotle's arguments were used to argue for American slavery by George Fitzhugh:

Fitzhugh argues that on the basis of the past, that slaves weren't just a thing of the past - they were a necessary part of a working family in the present. I think that it is quite appropriate to argue that rather than being beneficial to society in the past that child marriage was in fact harmful - even if we have no way to measure that harm - because that harm comes not to society directly but to the girls involved.

But this is par for the course for women in general in most of human history - and especially true of child brides. And yet you want to say that this situation was positive - both for the women and for the societies that allowed for this?

Perhaps you could provide some current references from these scholars?

I have no doubts that Mary was under the age of twenty. Thirteen or Fourteen is really unlikely - given the data that we have (which arguably is not much). The text itself provides very little information on this question.

Whatever CASteve's background is, mine is not a superficial knowledge ...

At any rate, here is the problem (which, with your background in history you should be able to recognize). There is a difference between determining that something is bad (like, for example, slavery) and our treatment of the practice historically. The historical practices themselves have no impact on the ethical or moral question. And certainly they don't have any real role in our discussing the present day policy of mandated reporting (which is what we were discussing before it got derailed). With our current knowledge and understanding, we know that girls who are young teenagers are not adults. And we believe that there should be a high level of scrutiny applied to any proposed marriage between a man and a girl of that age. We also know that statistically these marriages are generally problematic - girls in under-aged marriages are statistically much more likely to experience significant abuse. They are more likely to be unhappy in their marriages. They are more likely to get a divorce. They are very unlikely to reach the education levels of their peers. And, with these issues contributing, girls who enter under-aged marriages are far more likely to spend most of their lives in poverty.

On the ethical side of things, if we think that there should be some gender egalitarianism, that women should not be treated as property of men, that women should have autonomy and the ability to decide their own futures - if we think women should have a right to choose when to have children, and the extent to which they should be educated - if we value all of these things - regardless of the context in which we are looking - then we can make the claim that under-aged marriage for girls is a bad thing. It isn't dependent on context. It doesn't matter whether or not that marriage might in some ways improve their lives. And this is why I claim (and stand by that statement) that there is something fundamentally wrong with child marriage. Perhaps, instead of continuing to try and defend the idea through history, you deal with the ethics and moral issues that I raise that we recognize in the present.

And then we can get back to the issue of mandatory reporting ...

It’s fine that we disagree, but it seems like some of what you are disagreeing with are things that I never implied.

For example, I have not said that marrying at 14 is “positive“.  That implies that I’m suggesting it’s always or even often, or has been, a good thing. I don’t believe that, and I haven’t argued that.  In some post, I’ve said the opposite.

I don’t believe that marrying young is generally a good thing. Most of the time I would suggest it’s a bad thing. But that’s not the claim that you made so that is not my focus.  I’m discussing your specific claim that marriage at 14 is fundamentally bad. I don’t believe the claim that “marriage at 14 is fundamentally bad” is supported by evidence, seeing how even one example of it not being bad proves the claim wrong.

Clearly I am not arguing that it is never bad, so examples of why it shouldn’t be supported today or examples of how it can be bad (and often is in the United States and other countries/cultures) has no bearing on my point.

My point is that, while marrying very young is often (very very very often, especially in today’s world) detrimental to those who do it, the practice is not fundamentally bad in and of itself.  If something is fundamentally bad, that means it is always bad, but I don’t think you can make that argument and then support it. I’ve outlined why so there’s no reason to get into it again.

Like I said, I’m fine that we disagree, but because you have again implied I’m making arguments I’m not making I felt I needed to clarify once more.

Edited December 12, 2023 by bluebell

[Benjamin McGuire]

18 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I don’t believe the claim that “marriage at 14 is fundamentally bad” is supported by evidence, seeing how even one example of it not being bad negates the claim.

You haven't provided a single example that negates the claim. Not one. You haven't addressed any of the reasons why we (as a society) understand such marriages to be bad. Your appeal to history does not provide examples that negate the claim. Your appeals to history do not respond to the reasons why we view it as wrong today.

18 minutes ago, bluebell said:

My point is that, while marrying very young is often (very very often in some societies) detrimental to those who do it, the practice is not fundamentally bad in and of itself.

And your point is still wrong - you haven't actually defended this point. What is it about marriage at 14 (or child marriage more generally) that is good?

Edit: Better yet, explain to us how a girl who gets married at such a young age is better off than had they waited until they weren't a child to get married?

Edited December 12, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire

[bluebell]

54 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

You haven't provided a single example that negates the claim. Not one. You haven't addressed any of the reasons why we (as a society) understand such marriages to be bad. Your appeal to history does not provide examples that negate the claim. Your appeals to history do not respond to the reasons why we view it as wrong today.

And your point is still wrong - you haven't actually defended this point. What is it about marriage at 14 (or child marriage more generally) that is good?

Edit: Better yet, explain to us how a girl who gets married at such a young age is better off than had they waited until they weren't a child to get married?

I edited that post so you might want to go back and read it. I don’t see a reason to keep arguing the points with you.  You’re struggling to understand my point and there’s only so many ways that I can reframe it so I think we’re at an impasse.

I do think it’s important to note though that for almost all of history, a 14-year-old is not a child. They are now in our culture and society, but that is a very very recent development in the maturity levels of people that age. Very very recent, so recent that we can’t apply the label of “child” retroactively to 14-year-olds throughout history.  It’s just not accurate.

Often our presentism makes it difficult to look at practices of the past, or at cultures that still mirror the realities of the past, without bias.

To answer your call for a reference to support my argument, here is an expert from an article on the historical origins of Romany marriages. Even today they get married very young, both the bride and the groom are almost always teenagers with only a year or two between their ages. It’s interesting though when you look back to how the practice started.

“During the 500 years in which Roma were enslaved in Romania, young Roma girls were frequently raped by their owners or the sons of their owners. After this, the girls and the 'half-breed' children they often bore were rejected by both the Roma and the non-Roma communities. The Roma found that marrying their daughters off while they were still very young was a good solution, as once married and no longer virgins, the girls were no longer 'clean' enough to rape. In fact, the same tradition of child marriage was practiced in the past in very poor Romanian villages, where the young girls were also targets for rape by the estate owners.”

It’s horrible that such a practice was ever needed to keep girls safe, but it illustrates the complexities of this issue throughout history and different cultures.  And shows why, in some circumstances, marrying young was the better choice.

 

[Benjamin McGuire]

35 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I do think it’s important to note though that for almost all of history, a 14-year-old is not a child.

No. This is wrong. It will always be wrong. This is part of the issue here. If we define a "child" based on societal metrics - that is, when we decide (as a society) that they are adults and will function as adults, then this is a variable and it will change from group to group and over time. But, if we define a child in terms of the biological development that they experience, then this isn't something that changes through history. This distinction matters a great deal in terms of the issues we are looking at here - because my concerns about the harms being done to child brides are not that concerned with the societal roles but with the biological and psychological development of the individual. It is the lack of this development in someone who is 14 years old. And this lack of development isn't any different now than it was a thousand years ago. In that context, for all of history (and not just almost all of history) a 14-year-old is developmentally a child.

43 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Very very recent, so recent that we can’t apply the label of “child” retroactively to 14-year-olds throughout history.  It’s just not accurate.

And yet, here I am. Not only can I apply that label, and I can apply it accurately. It is the developmental issues which are far more important than the societal issues when we start talking about the harms of child marriage.

45 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Often our presentism makes it difficult to look at practices of the past, or at cultures that still mirror the realities of the past, without bias.

I have two responses to this. The first is this. We recognize that modern man has a better understanding of the the natural world, our environment, and ourselves than our ancestors did. Is there any real question to this? To use an example of this, I can say with absolute certainty that not only does the earth travel in an orbit around the sun, it did so thousands of years ago, despite historical interpretation suggesting that it didn't. Is it presentism to suggest that historical persons were wrong when they claimed that the sun traveled around the earth?

The second issue is related. When we discuss morality and ethics, we have to make some sort of decision about moral relativism. That is, are there moral absolutes or not. If you want to claim that there are no moral or ethical absolutes, then perhaps the discussion has already ended. You don't have to worry about whether or not harm was created historically through child marriage because it's acceptance by society indicates that it wouldn't be bad, but good. This would certainly fall under the label of presentism. I suppose that you would argue then (as I have pointed out) that more apparent forms of harm (like slavery) weren't bad, but good? That would avoid presentism (of the sort you suggest), but would you agree with it? I am trying to understand where you draw the line here between being concerned over presentism and moral relativism ...

On the other hand, I am not just pointing to the question of good and bad, I am raising the issue of harm that occurs through child marriage. Slavery presents a relatively easy to understand harm. And for this reason, we generally conclude that slavery was bad in the past just as it is bad today (it is certainly bad for the enslaved). Likewise, ff that harm in child marriage is directly connected to the age of a person and their biologically connected development (rather than to their societal role), then that harm exists as much in the past as it does today - even if that harm wasn't as pronounced for cultural and societal reasons.

So I am being a presentist? You are going to have to do more than simply try to label me with that here, because it isn't clear at all (to me anyway) that my presentism impacts my argument in any significant way. Where is my bias?

59 minutes ago, bluebell said:

To answer your call for a reference to support my argument, here is an expert from an article on the historical origins of Romany marriages. Even today they get married very young, both the bride and the groom are almost always teenagers with only a year or two between their ages. It’s interesting though when you look back to how the practice started.

This doesn't answer the call for reference. Your statement was:

2 hours ago, bluebell said:

most scholars believe that Mary the mother of Jesus was around 13 or 14 when she married and gave birth. 

There is nothing about Mary the mother of Jesus in this. This is about the conditions of the Romas between 1300 and 1800 AD. I don't disagree that there were times and places when child marriage was able to improve the situation of a girl. I have never denied this. But, this doesn't make child marriage good. Something bad can always be better than something that is worse. In any case, if we have children today that are getting married to get out of worse situations, we have even greater societal problems. But still, Romany marriages have nothing to do with marriages at the time of Jesus. And this isn't a quote from a scholarly article (original source can be found here).

[ksfisher]

11 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

my concerns about the harms being done to child brides are not that concerned with the societal roles but with the biological and psychological development of the individual. It is the lack of this development in someone who is 14 years old. And this lack of development isn't any different now than it was a thousand years ago. In that context, for all of history (and not just almost all of history) a 14-year-old is developmentally a child.

At what age, then, does a child become an adult?  25 is the age that I've seen mentioned for full brain development. 

[Benjamin McGuire]

56 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

At what age, then, does a child become an adult?  25 is the age that I've seen mentioned for full brain development. 

Generally, between the ages of 17 and 19, we see the end of adolescence. While there may be a gray area here, 14-year-olds are not in that gray area, and it is that fact that drives part of this discussion. I think that it's safe to say that in general, the indicators of adulthood can be identified objectively, they follow a distinctive progression, and they have a high correspondence to age.

The age 25 thing is a bit of a misnomer. It is around that time that the brain has reach its largest size - and is the most complete in that sense (it's about this point in time that the prefrontal cortex gets as big as it gets). But, the brain continues to change, develop, and adapt over an entire lifetime. We don't really have a lot of good data on this because brain development requires longitudinal studies (of the same individuals) and when we discovered that it was continuing to expand up until around 25 it was in part because we extended some studies to an older age. Previously, most studies had stopped once an individual stopped growing externally (around 18-19 years old). Given this, it seems that our ability to reason continues to develop over an entire lifetime. I would hate to think that my thinking ability peaked 30 years ago ... but it's later development also points to the issue that 14-year-olds are really a long ways from being what we would consider adults.

Edited December 12, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire

[bluebell]

3 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

No. This is wrong. It will always be wrong. This is part of the issue here. If we define a "child" based on societal metrics - that is, when we decide (as a society) that they are adults and will function as adults, then this is a variable and it will change from group to group and over time. But, if we define a child in terms of the biological development that they experience, then this isn't something that changes through history. This distinction matters a great deal in terms of the issues we are looking at here - because my concerns about the harms being done to child brides are not that concerned with the societal roles but with the biological and psychological development of the individual. It is the lack of this development in someone who is 14 years old. And this lack of development isn't any different now than it was a thousand years ago. In that context, for all of history (and not just almost all of history) a 14-year-old is developmentally a child.

And yet, here I am. Not only can I apply that label, and I can apply it accurately. It is the developmental issues which are far more important than the societal issues when we start talking about the harms of child marriage.

I have two responses to this. The first is this. We recognize that modern man has a better understanding of the the natural world, our environment, and ourselves than our ancestors did. Is there any real question to this? To use an example of this, I can say with absolute certainty that not only does the earth travel in an orbit around the sun, it did so thousands of years ago, despite historical interpretation suggesting that it didn't. Is it presentism to suggest that historical persons were wrong when they claimed that the sun traveled around the earth?

The second issue is related. When we discuss morality and ethics, we have to make some sort of decision about moral relativism. That is, are there moral absolutes or not. If you want to claim that there are no moral or ethical absolutes, then perhaps the discussion has already ended. You don't have to worry about whether or not harm was created historically through child marriage because it's acceptance by society indicates that it wouldn't be bad, but good. This would certainly fall under the label of presentism. I suppose that you would argue then (as I have pointed out) that more apparent forms of harm (like slavery) weren't bad, but good? That would avoid presentism (of the sort you suggest), but would you agree with it? I am trying to understand where you draw the line here between being concerned over presentism and moral relativism ...

On the other hand, I am not just pointing to the question of good and bad, I am raising the issue of harm that occurs through child marriage. Slavery presents a relatively easy to understand harm. And for this reason, we generally conclude that slavery was bad in the past just as it is bad today (it is certainly bad for the enslaved). Likewise, ff that harm in child marriage is directly connected to the age of a person and their biologically connected development (rather than to their societal role), then that harm exists as much in the past as it does today - even if that harm wasn't as pronounced for cultural and societal reasons.

So I am being a presentist? You are going to have to do more than simply try to label me with that here, because it isn't clear at all (to me anyway) that my presentism impacts my argument in any significant way. Where is my bias?

This doesn't answer the call for reference. Your statement was:

There is nothing about Mary the mother of Jesus in this. This is about the conditions of the Romas between 1300 and 1800 AD. I don't disagree that there were times and places when child marriage was able to improve the situation of a girl. I have never denied this. But, this doesn't make child marriage good. Something bad can always be better than something that is worse. In any case, if we have children today that are getting married to get out of worse situations, we have even greater societal problems. But still, Romany marriages have nothing to do with marriages at the time of Jesus. And this isn't a quote from a scholarly article (original source can be found here).

Sorry, I didn’t realize you were asking about Mary. I thought you just wanted an example that supported my assertion that sometimes marrying young might have been the better option.

https://www.betweentwocriminals.com/posts/how-old-was-mary-when-she-married-joseph

There are dozens and dozens of links that say the same thing, but here’s one. I picked it at random.

Here’s a fun link that discusses the construction of the idea of adolescence in the United States. And how it was the change in the culture that brought about the need to redefine the stages of life during puberty and before adult.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1081602X03000423#:~:text=The concept of adolescence was,of adult responsibilities by teenagers.

[MustardSeed]

I might state that a girl marrying at 14 is fundamentally bad  regardless of culture because 14 is too young to make such decisions.  My culture bends my views for sure, since, in my culture, it doesn’t matter who you are or what culture you are from, 14 is considered underage to consent, sexually or otherwise. 
I don’t know if people were built differently historically making 14 legitimate age to consent. 

[CV75]

28 minutes ago, MustardSeed said:

I might state that a girl marrying at 14 is fundamentally bad  regardless of culture because 14 is too young to make such decisions.  My culture bends my views for sure, since, in my culture, it doesn’t matter who you are or what culture you are from, 14 is considered underage to consent, sexually or otherwise. 
I don’t know if people were built differently historically making 14 legitimate age to consent. 

It is probably why the Neanderthals died out after interbreeding with our ancestors.

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, MustardSeed said:

I might state that a girl marrying at 14 is fundamentally bad  regardless of culture because 14 is too young to make such decisions.  My culture bends my views for sure, since, in my culture, it doesn’t matter who you are or what culture you are from, 14 is considered underage to consent, sexually or otherwise. 
I don’t know if people were built differently historically making 14 legitimate age to consent. 

It's such an interesting issue to study!  

Is it our culture that says that 14 year olds cannot make such decisions (even though our culture also currently says that they are old enough to make permanent decisions about their gender) or is it something innate in 14 year olds? 

Or is it our culture that creates a 14 year old that is too young for such decisions while other cultures create teenagers that are capable of them?

And what exists in a 16 year old or a 17 year old that means they are capable of making such decisions that is lacking in all 14 year olds?

I honestly have no idea the answer to any of that.  I find it fascinating though, especially the social construct of adolescence that happened in the late 1800s and early 1900s and the way different cultures view the world.  Especially cultures so different than mine, like those where formal education doesn't or didn't exist and there is no society outside of the family and village structure.  Or cultures where life expectancy meant that if you didn't start having kids early you didn't get to have kids at all.  The history nerd in me has always lamented that women and children are generally "silent" historically and we know so little of their world and their thoughts and feelings.  All my best questions have so few answers!

But leaving out all of that, for me it all boils down to the use of the word 'fundamental' and what I would have to know to feel comfortable stating unequivocally that all marriages of 14 year olds now and throughout history are/were bad on a fundamental level.

I don't know that so I can't state it.  I actually think it's completely unlikely that such is/has been the case.  And I don't feel comfortable declaring that another woman's marriage was or is fundamentally bad based solely on the age she was when she got married.

But moral reasonable people disagree all the time, especially on subjects that also have a strong emotional element (some more reasonably than others).  

 

[Calm]

6 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Is it our culture that says that 14 year olds cannot make such decisions (even though our culture also currently says that they are old enough to make permanent decisions about their gender) or is it something innate in 14 year olds? 

Or is it our culture that creates a 14 year old that is too young for such decisions while other cultures create teenagers that are capable of them?

And what exists in a 16 year old or a 17 year old that means they are capable of making such decisions that is lacking in all 14 year olds?

I honestly have no idea the answer to any of that.  I find it fascinating though, especially the social construct of adolescence that happened in the late 1800s and early 1900s and the way different cultures view the world.  Especially cultures so different than mine, like those where formal education doesn't or didn't exist and there is no society outside of the family and village structure.  Or cultures where life expectancy meant that if you didn't start having kids early you didn't get to have kids at all.  The history nerd in me has always lamented that women and children are generally "silent" historically and we know so little of their world and their thoughts and feelings.  All my best questions have so few answers!

 

Ability to reason seems to me a pretty subjective choice to determine adulthood.  In a society where one does what one’s parents did and there is significant social support for starting a family, having a more mature brain that reasons more effectively may make little difference to the choices being made.  So the level of mental maturity needed to make appropriate choices seem to me to be very culturally dependent.

I think a more objective measure of appropriateness of marriage at whatever age is maternal and infant mortality rates.  I am not aware if much has changed over history, if it has that may mean adjustments should be made, but I am going to assume these aren’t that different over time.  If anyone wants documentation let me know, but I am only putting this up to show how I think lowest age of marriage could be calculated with the least amount of disagreement .  Infant mortality rates are currently highest for those 15 and younger, lowest for 30 to 35.  Maternal mortality rates for first birth seem lowest between 20 and 29.  This is not just surviving childbirth, but long term effects (putting up this research as interesting:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664584/ )

Fertility is a factor as well in most cultures as children are generally seen as a benefit.  Fertility is highest in late teens, so in a society where motherhood and the number of children is of primary importance and there is little difference in opportunities for women if marriage is delayed, the combination of mortality rates and fertility rates may indicate marriage is best in early 20s barring other factors.

However, there are other factors besides pregnancy and childbirth that determine maternal survival.  In your case of the Roma girls, marriage at age 14 even though problematic because of not being fully physically matured most likely (in the sense of lowest mortality rates for infants and mothers), since the probability of pregnancy in their teens was so extremely high, it becomes a choice of which is healthier, marriage or no marriage and marriage wins there.

If one speaks in ideals…as in an ideal world marriage and childbirth of the first child occurs at a time that maximizes not only the ability to choose well, but the amount of good choices to have and maximizing maternal and children’s health and benefit to society by having sufficient replacement numbers of birth for economic stability (in a sane economy that is not dependent on constant growth for not collapsing), my guess is we would likely find age of marriage between 20 and 30 would be ideal.

Having created that ideal measure, we could say that marriage before age 20 is always bad, but since we don’t live in an ideal world, living their best life possible in a particular culture may end up as choices between bad choices and in those cases marriage at age 14 while not good, is not as bad as the alternative.

 

[bluebell]

43 minutes ago, Calm said:

Having created that ideal measure, we could say that marriage before age 20 is always bad, but since we don’t live in an ideal world, living their best life possible in a particular culture may end up as choices between bad choices and in those cases marriage at age 14 while not good, is not as bad as the alternative.

 

This is my thinking as well. 

Even with all of its flaws, we live in a very privileged society, especially as women.  We might sometimes judge the choices of others more harshly because we compare them to our 'not ideal but still really great' options.  But that's not the world every gets to (or got to) live in.   I don't think something is automatically fundamentally bad just because it's not ideal.

[Danzo]

I think this conversation provides a great example on why mandatory reporting laws are bad.  

23 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

No. This is wrong. It will always be wrong.

Because certain practices are viewed by certain people as being evil, they feel that when something like this happens, they must call the police.

Punish must happen (that is all the law really does, doesn't it)? 

Punishment.

Jail.

Someone must pay.

Break up the family.

These are the tools that the state uses when someone reports "abuse".

Surely you can understand why someone would be hesitant to talk to a "mandatory reporter" 

You really know nothing about the circumstances of my mother and father in law's marriage, yet you have no problem condemning what for them produced much happiness and joy (lots of struggling as well). In their circumstances the marriage was better (Especially for my mother in law) than the alternative.  The marriage took her out of a circumstance of deprivation and neglect.  

[MustardSeed]

Cultures are protected through deep beliefs of what is right and what is wrong. At work I interact with people who operate very differently than do I do to their cultures. Sometimes cultures are  defined and accepted. Sometimes they are not.
I work with a Samoan family that break all sorts of laws regarding how many people live in the home, and what levels of privacy are afforded to the children. They also tend to be more violent and explained to me that this is part of their culture. I am required to report, so we have an understanding between us that they will not tell me about anything that they are not comfortable with me reporting. Some people might not be happy with that arrangement. But we were taught in school and we cannot treat people unless we respect their cultures.
Sometimes this is hard for me. I disagree strongly with the idea that anybody the age of 14 can possibly of sound mind, agreed to commit their entire life to somebody, and to begin a sexual relationship. I also acknowledge that there are many people if not, thousands who have successfully made it work.

but I do understand the need to make way for culture. Even as I write this, though, I’m thinking of certain cultures that to me look really damaging. I suppose there are plenty of people who look at my life and the culture of my religion, and how damaging they “know” it is.  
Maybe this is just one of those categories (add to the list of many) where I admit, I know nothing. 

[Danzo]

3 minutes ago, MustardSeed said:

Cultures are protected through deep beliefs of what is right and what is wrong. At work I interact with people who operate very differently than do I do to their cultures. Sometimes cultures are  defined and accepted. Sometimes they are not.
I work with a Samoan family that break all sorts of laws regarding how many people live in the home, and what levels of privacy are afforded to the children. They also tend to be more violent and explained to me that this is part of their culture. I am required to report, so we have an understanding between us that they will not tell me about anything that they are not comfortable with me reporting. Some people might not be happy with that arrangement. But we were taught in school and we cannot treat people unless we respect their cultures.
Sometimes this is hard for me. I disagree strongly with the idea that anybody the age of 14 can possibly of sound mind, agreed to commit their entire life to somebody, and to begin a sexual relationship. I also acknowledge that there are many people if not, thousands who have successfully made it work.

but I do understand the need to make way for culture. Even as I write this, though, I’m thinking of certain cultures that to me look really damaging. I suppose there are plenty of people who look at my life and the culture of my religion, and how damaging they “know” it is.  
Maybe this is just one of those categories (add to the list of many) where I admit, I know nothing. 

The issue isn't whether marriage at 14 is a good thing or a bad thing.  There are certainly better options than marrying at 14, and we certainly should be supporting  those.  The issue is that many of those options weren't available (for many different reasons)  at the time and marriage might have been the best option available at that time.  The issue is whether calling the cops is going to make things better.

[MustardSeed]

10 minutes ago, Danzo said:

The issue isn't whether marriage at 14 is a good thing or a bad thing.  There are certainly better options than marrying at 14, and we certainly should be supporting  those.  The issue is that many of those options weren't available (for many different reasons)  at the time and marriage might have been the best option available at that time.  The issue is whether calling the cops is going to make things better.

I hear you- I think the issue being discussed here is the definition of what “fundamentally bad” is, (does it include Consideration for history, culture, anecdotal evidence of success etc) - …and one application of that might be whether or not somebody reports something. 

That’s my understanding anyway ? 

 

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, MustardSeed said:

Cultures are protected through deep beliefs of what is right and what is wrong. At work I interact with people who operate very differently than do I do to their cultures. Sometimes cultures are  defined and accepted. Sometimes they are not.
I work with a Samoan family that break all sorts of laws regarding how many people live in the home, and what levels of privacy are afforded to the children. They also tend to be more violent and explained to me that this is part of their culture. I am required to report, so we have an understanding between us that they will not tell me about anything that they are not comfortable with me reporting. Some people might not be happy with that arrangement. But we were taught in school and we cannot treat people unless we respect their cultures.
Sometimes this is hard for me. I disagree strongly with the idea that anybody the age of 14 can possibly of sound mind, agreed to commit their entire life to somebody, and to begin a sexual relationship. I also acknowledge that there are many people if not, thousands who have successfully made it work.

but I do understand the need to make way for culture. Even as I write this, though, I’m thinking of certain cultures that to me look really damaging. I suppose there are plenty of people who look at my life and the culture of my religion, and how damaging they “know” it is.  
Maybe this is just one of those categories (add to the list of many) where I admit, I know nothing. 

I want to clarify my use of the term culture because I know I've used it a few times in this thread and I don't want to give the impression that I believe culture trumps morality or that something is ok if the culture says it is (not that you are saying that at all).

When I've used the word culture I've been thinking about those cultures where earlier marriages either offer/ed benefits that outweigh waiting (usually because the women have no legal rights or protections outside of marriage and remain more vulnerable to abuse single, like we read with the Romani girls), or those that are set up so that the focus of female existence is almost solely the family unit and responsibility, and have created young women that are much more prepared for marriage at a younger age and also have no other options after puberty in the community to miss out on (like with the ancient Jewish culture and Mary the Mother of Jesus).

I don't think that cultural acceptance determines whether or not marrying young is good or bad, but I do think that culture can make it so that marrying young is a benefit to a woman or that culture could mean that some of the reasons marrying young is generally detrimental today aren't applicable in those specific situations.

(Not trying to convince you to agree with me, I just wanted to make sure that my use of the word culture was being understood.   )

 

[Benjamin McGuire]

21 hours ago, bluebell said:

There are dozens and dozens of links that say the same thing, but here’s one. I picked it at random.

Except that these don't represent a scholarly consensus. Kyle Echols, after all, who authored that link works professionally in digital marketing. He has, for the past six years, been the Director of Marketing for North Texas Clinically Integrated Network.

We can go the other way just as easily, right?

Scholars are generally not interested in trying to ask this question because there isn't any real answer in the texts. Raymond Brown, for example, in his mammoth work The Birth of the Messiah, doesn't even attempt to put a guess in as to the age of Mary at the time that Jesus was born (or conceived). He does include a lengthy discussion about the early Christian tradition though, that Mary was much older, and had made a vow of celibacy:

Quote

In the present sequence Mary is betrothed to Joseph; yet she is a virgin, and this means that she has not yet been taken to her husband's home where she would have had marital relations with him (NOTE on "betrothed" in Matt 1:18). When she is told by the angel that she will conceive a child, why does she raise a "How" question, as if there were some difficulty? Why does she not assume that the conception will occur when she is taken to Joseph's home and has relations with him? If we leave aside the naive suggestion that she did not know "the facts of life," how can we explain the psychology of her question. A famous ancient solution is that Mary had already committed herself to a lifetime of virginity. Her question in 34, which reads literally, "How can this be, since I do not know a man?", is taken as if the verb were future: How can this be, since I shall not have sexual relations with a man? Such a theory became popular as part of a belief that Mary remained a virgin all her life, even after the birth of Jesus. It presupposes that her marriage with Joseph was a mutually agreed upon marriage of convenience in which he had agreed to respect her resolve of virginity and to lend her the protection of marriage, lest she be annoyed by more ardent suitors. To support this picture Joseph is portrayed as an elderly widower, in harmony with his statement in the Protevangelium of James 9:2: "I already have sons and am old, but she is a girl." This approach flourished at a time when Christian women were entering ascetic or monastic orders to live a celibate life; and so it was even proposed that Mary made a vow of virginity as if she were a nun. (pp. 303-4).

Brown dismisses this idea. And, Brown goes on to suggest that the best reading is a literary one, where the Mary's age isn't even a consideration in the purpose of the text. We aren't meant to draw out an age for Mary in these references but information about Jesus. This points out the problems we have with the text and with the conclusions people have and do draw from it. I stand by my comment that there is no scholarly consensus about the age of Mary when Jesus was born. Given the differences between the two accounts (Matthew and Luke) as well as the relatively late writing of the texts, most scholars aren't particularly interested in taking these accounts as some sort of first hand witness of the events they describe.

22 hours ago, bluebell said:

Here’s a fun link that discusses the construction of the idea of adolescence in the United States. And how it was the change in the culture that brought about the need to redefine the stages of life during puberty and before adult.

And I don't have any disagreements with the information here (it represents a lot of dated ideas, but that is only to be expected from a historical review). But, when we talk about harms to child brides, my focus is not on the cultural and social expectations but on the biology of development and how this becomes a way for us to look at the harms that can occur. It isn't just social and cultural expectations that have helped us redefine the demarcation between child, adolescence and adulthood, it is the biological understanding that we have developed.

[Benjamin McGuire]

19 hours ago, Calm said:

Ability to reason seems to me a pretty subjective choice to determine adulthood.  In a society where one does what one’s parents did and there is significant social support for starting a family, having a more mature brain that reasons more effectively may make little difference to the choices being made.  So the level of mental maturity needed to make appropriate choices seem to me to be very culturally dependent.

Except that it isn't very culturally dependent. Anecdotally, I spent an afternoon a couple of weeks ago at the Georgia Aquarium watching the whale sharks. We also stopped in for a dolphin show, where, we were told, the dolphins had the cognitive awareness of a four-year-old. The challenge that you have with this sort of assertion is that we understand that the capacity for mental maturity is connected to the biological development. We are talking about fourteen-year-olds and there is something of a gray area here because fourteen-year-olds (like teenagers of really any age) are learning how to be adults as part of their development. Any of us who are parents can recognize the fact that our children can, in one moment, do things that are surprisingly mature, and then minutes later do something that makes us question whether or not they will survive to adulthood. The biology really does provide limits on that mental maturity.

I think that there is this sense (in this discussion) that marriage ages in the past were all really young, and that it all worked out. But, really, there was a lot of variation. In England, for example, in the 14th and 15th centuries, the average age at first marriage for women was 21. Peter Laslet's book (The World We Have Lost), pointed out that between 1619 and 1600, in Canterbury, the thousand marriage certificates that were issued could be broken down as follows: 13 years old: 1, 15 years old: 4, 16 years old: 12, 17 years old: 17, and the rest (all 966 of them) were 19 years old or older. The average age for women in this group? 22.8 years old. The youngest were all children of nobility and gentry (where the parents had something to gain from the marriage).

One thing about making appropriate choices that is clear here is something that bluebell hasn't really made much of. In the 15th century, in England, you had to be 21 years old to marry without family consent. And this would help explain, perhaps, why the age of first marriage was this high in England in that historical period. Whether or not we want to think that there was some level of mental maturity that may have been there, it was also believed that there were limitations on it. Even in our country today, where child marriage is allowed, it has to be arranged by the parents. And this suggests to me that we have never really felt that there was within a fourteen-year-old girl the mental maturity to make such a decision appropriately. The difference today is that we don't believe that it is a parent's place to take the autonomy away from children and make these decisions for them (ignoring in this all of the other problems that can come with child marriage).

20 hours ago, Calm said:

Fertility is highest in late teens, so in a society where motherhood and the number of children is of primary importance and there is little difference in opportunities for women if marriage is delayed, the combination of mortality rates and fertility rates may indicate marriage is best in early 20s barring other factors.

Best for who though? One of the challenges we have when we look at history is that women who were constantly either pregnant or breastfeeding (breastfeeding reduces the risk of a new pregnancy) had issues. Was it good for them? That fact that in a world today where we have the means to delay childbirth (which lots of women take advantage of), and where we have given women more autonomy, the fact that women are choosing to have children later maybe should tell us something. I think that at the very least, the past and even into the present we (speaking of our society and culture as a whole) have a problem of undervaluing motherhood and childbirth.

 

[Benjamin McGuire]

19 hours ago, bluebell said:

I don't think something is automatically fundamentally bad just because it's not ideal.

I agree with you.

In this case, though, just like issues like slavery, I find that the harm created by underage marriage makes it fundamentally bad. It may still need to happen from time to time because we don't live in an ideal world. That doesn't change the fundamental badness of it.

Since you don't like the label being applied to child brides, perhaps you could provide an explanation of how it is good - not in a particular context (where it might be better than something else) but how it is good in its own right. If you cannot, then I think that we can conclude that it is fundamentally bad (or - to soften it a little - that at the very least that it is fundamentally not good).

Edited December 13, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire

[Benjamin McGuire]

3 hours ago, Danzo said:

Because certain practices are viewed by certain people as being evil, they feel that when something like this happens, they must call the police.

The problem here is that you are offering innuendo with no substance.

Perhaps you could share the specifics of the practices that most of us would find evil such that we should report it.

There is a funny thing that happens with mandatory reporters that seems to go against your seeming expectations. They don't get a list of reportable offenses. They are given a set of metrics - if you see this, then it has to be reported. Most of the gray areas where we run into situations that are difficult to determine don't come to light because of the broad set of mandatory reporters out there - they come because a family has interactions with professionals and law enforcement for other reasons. And when child protective services gets a request to look at a family by law enforcement, they generally take a closer look than they otherwise might.

But, to go back to your point - what if, the certain practices are in fact evil? Shouldn't we call the police (or whoever)? And if we don't, aren't we complicit in the problem?

3 hours ago, Danzo said:

Surely you can understand why someone would be hesitant to talk to a "mandatory reporter" 

No, actually, I can't understand it from the perspective that you are painting. It leads me to conclude that there really is something going on there that they feel the need to hide. If there isn't any issue with what is happening, then mandatory reporters aren't going to call it in ...

3 hours ago, Danzo said:

You really know nothing about the circumstances of my mother and father in law's marriage, yet you have no problem condemning what for them produced much happiness and joy (lots of struggling as well). In their circumstances the marriage was better (Especially for my mother in law) than the alternative.  The marriage took her out of a circumstance of deprivation and neglect.  

I don't have to know. I have no problem condemning it. The fact that in this instance it produced much happiness and joy means that this is an outlier - and exception. And we shouldn't be using outliers or exceptions to produce policy. The fact that it was a better alternative to something worse tells me that if we have worse in our society, then our focus should be on eliminating the things that make such steps look appealing to anyone. We shouldn't be promoting such a thing or defending it.

Edited December 13, 2023 by Benjamin McGuire

[webbles]

20 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

There is a funny thing that happens with mandatory reporters that seems to go against your seeming expectations. They don't get a list of reportable offenses. They are given a set of metrics - if you see this, then it has to be reported.

Not all mandatory reporters get a set of metrics.  In Arizona, all parents and guardians are mandatory reporters (section A.3 at https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/03620.htm).  I'm pretty sure that Arizona doesn't hand out a set of metrics to all parents and guardians.  I would bet that a lot of parents and guardians don't even know they are mandatory reporters.  In Wyoming, everyone is mandatory reporters (section 1 at https://law.justia.com/codes/wyoming/2011/title14/chapter3/section14-3-205).  I'm also pretty sure Wyoming doesn't hand out something to every single person to tell them what they are mandated to do.