Pregnant at 15, married at 16: She's speaking out to end child marriages

[Jilly_in_VA]

Chloe was a high school student in Idaho when she met a young father online in early 2015. They soon began dating and 10 months later, she was pregnant. But there was a problem: Chloe was 15, and her boyfriend was 22.

Chloe said he convinced her that the only way that he could avoid prison is “if we got married.”

So that’s what they did. On a cloudy day in March 2016, she married her older boyfriend believing it would shield him from statutory rape charges.

“He had researched it,” said Chloe, who was 16 at the time of the wedding and had convinced her mom to consent to the marriage. “He told me, ‘This is what we need to do. And if we don’t and I go to jail, it’s going to be all your fault.’”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pregnant-15-married-16-she-s-speaking-out-end-child-n1281606

[secondwind]

1. Such a pretty young woman, and her baby girl is gorgeous... what a shame that she has to be an adult

sooo fast!!!

[hunter]

2. My crazy grandma was just sixteen years older than my mom.

That's probably been the norm throughout a million years of human history where it takes a village to raise a child and the village enthusiastically embraces that responsibility.

It doesn't work so well now.

These days in a world with a human population approaching 8 billion, we must support realistic sex education, the economic empowerment of women, and free birth control.

[2naSalit]

3. +1

It's also not so unusual in a place heavily populated with a certain belief system.

[jpak]

4. "It's going to be all your fault"

What a pig

[Progressive Jones]

5. I'd have done "awful, awful things" to any 22 year old who even touched my teenaged daughter. nt

[hunter]

7. My parents lost all control of me when I was fifteen.

All they could do was survive the storm.

My mom says me and my siblings didn't become actual adult humans until the age of 25.

In my case that's especially true.

I quit high school at sixteen. The next nine years were a very wild and occasionally terrifying ride for them.

My own kids were a little less terrifying. Maybe because I knew what to expect.

[MFM008]

6. my grandmother

on moms side had her first kid at 15. Then had 8 more.
it was a bad scene from the start.
bad. bad. bad idea.

[Demovictory9]

8. k&r