Any Maid or Woman Child
Any Maid or Woman Child
A New Nation and Its Marriage Laws
This chapter explains the English common law and colonial legal antecedents to early national marriage law in the extant states. It argues that the common law marriage ages of twelve (for girls) and fourteen (for boys) are based on presumptions about puberty and intellectual capacity, and that when North American colonial legislatures raised these ages, they did so largely to protect parental interest in their children’s labor and possible fortunes, not as a means to protect youthful people. It also argues that the differential ages of marriage and of majority (in western and midwestern states, where girls’ majority was lowered to eighteen) all had the effect of denying girls the protection of girlhood in the realm of marriage that were being offered to their brothers and to children more generally in legal revisions of the ealry modern period.
Keywords: English common law, Marriage age, Age of majority, Colonial and early national law, Puberty, Child labor, Intellectual capacity
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