I have changed my mind - 16 is too young to get married in Scotland

When I first started looking into this story, I did not really see the need for the age to be changed.

So few people get married under the age of 18. Between 2016 and 2021, an average of 17 marriages took place where one person was 16 or 17-years-old, and only three where both were under the age of 18.

If it makes them happy, so what?

Sixteen is the legal age of responsibility in Scotland. If you are deemed mature enough to leave school, pay taxes, enlist in the army, have sex and vote in certain elections, surely you are mature enough to get married?

Get daily political analysis - subscribe for free to The Steamie

Then I started looking into it a bit more, and it turns out there are more things to consider beyond maturity and happiness.

Scotland is an outlier here - it is one of only a handful of countries worldwide that allows 16 and 17-year-olds to marry without parental consent. Some countries, which are generally accepted as pretty poor when it comes to women’s rights, do not even allow this.

The United Nations brands marriage before the age of 18 “a fundamental violation of human rights” as it can “compromise a girl’s development” by interrupting schooling and putting her at risk of early pregnancy and domestic abuse, and can push “boys into an adult role for which they are unprepared”.

Read more: Scottish Government consults on raising legal marriage age over grooming fears

Charities such as Barnardo’s argue that allowing 16 and 17-year-olds to marry is contributing to sexual violence and domestic abuse.

Scotland likes to see itself as more progressive and more liberal than other places, and the Scottish Government wants to be as closely aligned with the EU post-Brexit as possible.

Yet here Scotland is an outlier. Two years ago, England and Wales raised the minimum marriage age to 18. So even within the UK, Scotland is the outlier.

We spend so much time as a society highlighting the evils of abuse, yet here is an area we seem to be wilfully ignoring.

I tend to get a little bit defensive when talking about getting married at a young age. I got married at a (relatively) young age by my generation’s standards. I was 23 and my husband was 22 when we got engaged, and we were both 25 on our wedding day.

When I first got engaged, countless people told me “you’re far too young” or “you’re throwing your life away”. Plenty of people at wedding fairs automatically ignored us, assuming we were too young to be the actual bride and groom.

Hence, the defensiveness. When actress Millie Bobby Brown sparked outrage by announcing her engagement to Jake Bongiovi when she was still a teenager, for example, it just reminded me of the backlash I got for getting engaged while I was still a student.

So I am all for younger people getting married, especially if it makes them happy.

However, that is not what this debate is about. There is a big difference between getting married at 25 and getting married at 16.

The research I did suggests marriage under the age of 18 is not something we should sit back and allow in Scotland, so my mind has now been swayed - 16 is too young.