Lynn Stanley, LICSW, of Concord, is the executive director of the National Association of Social Workers, New Hampshire Chapter.

People are often shocked to learn sixteen and seventeen-year-olds can get married in New Hampshire. Our elected representatives are again being given the opportunity to change the law to ensure only adults can get married.

This isn’t about maturity, it’s about legal rights and responsibilities that individuals obtain when they turn eighteen, regardless of their maturity level. Allowing marriages at the ages of sixteen and seventeen presents an immediate disadvantage to the children involved as they lack the legal rights and protections required to independently navigate legal systems.

The adult spouse becomes their guardian, the one who needs to sign permission slips. Sixteen and seventeen-year-olds cannot sign a lease on an apartment or retain an attorney. They cannot sign legal contracts. They cannot seek safety at a domestic violence shelter.

If a child becomes pregnant and the father of the baby wants to co-parent, he can easily do so outside of marriage by establishing paternity. If an eighteen-year-old boyfriend enters the military, servicemembers can designate anyone as the beneficiary of their Servicemembers Group Life Insurance, regardless of marital status.

Sometimes people ask if this is culturally insensitive. The United Nations and U.S. State Department state that child marriage is an abuse of human rights. We do not allow human rights abuses in the name of cultural sensitivity.

In the past 20 years, over 300,000 children, mostly girls, were married in the United States. Marriage is a legal contract, and most states, including New Hampshire, do not allow children to enter into legal contracts. Why is marriage different? We have loopholes that allow parents to give consent. Children are often coerced into these marriages. Older men, often to get out of a statutory rape charge, with promises of money and a ‘‘better life” for their daughter, use marriage as a weapon. These girls are then trapped by this marriage, as they have no other adult legal rights.

Surrounding states Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York do not allow marriage under the age of eighteen. Neither do Delaware, Minnesota, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania. Protecting children is a bipartisan issue.

Your Daily Puzzles

Cross|Word

Flipart

Typeshift

SpellTower

Really Bad Chess

There are a multitude of challenges facing our children. They are sometimes overwhelming and systemic. This piece of the puzzle is easy, we simply need to pass SB 359.

New Hampshire lawmakers, please protect New Hampshire children by passing SB 359.