“Sorry That Happened to You”: Testifying, Trauma, and the Politics of Child Marriage in the United States

ABSTRACT

In the United States, the marriage of minors remains legal in 40 of 50 states despite evidence that the practice often leads to the physical, sexual, and emotional abuse of girls. As a political issue, child marriage has failed to capture the attention of the public or media. Yet, over the past six years, a majority of state legislatures have put marriage age reforms on their legislative agendas, in some cases leading to policy adoption of a child marriage ban. Using archival data from 50 states and in-depth interviews, I argue that the advocacy of a small group of child marriage survivors precipitated progress on marriage age reforms. I find that legislators responded positively to narratives given by child marriage survivors and expressed a paternal need to protect girls. I also examine the limitations of placing survivors of traumatic life experiences at the forefront of policy action. This article contributes to our knowledge of how gender justice issues rise to the legislative agenda and how certain overlooked issues require a high level of personal traumatic disclosure to gain attention.

KEYWORDS:

• Agenda setting
• gender justice
• child marriage
• survivors

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Druscilla Scribner and Kaitlin Kelly-Thompson for useful feedback on early drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amber Lusvardi

Amber Lusvardi PhD, is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. Her research focuses on agenda setting on gender justice issues. Her work has appeared in International Studies Quarterly, Women’s Studies International Forum, and Gender and Development. Lusvardi’s dissertation “The End of the Child Bride: Social Movements, Strategic Action, and State Level Policymaking on Child Marriage” won the 2023 Best Dissertation Award from the State Politics and Policy section of the American Political Science Association.