When children become brides in America Families often face poverty, unrealized potential
EVERETT, Pa. — It was the day of the birthday party, and the husband and wife had invited everyone they knew. They’d spent the morning buying food — a sheet cake, jumbo hot dogs, ground beef, soda, chips — and now were standing around a picnic table along a long lake under a cloudless sky, hoping at least some people would show up to eat it.
Today was the first time both sides of their family were supposed to come together, something that hadn’t happened at their wedding four months before. On that day, not a single member of the husband’s family had attended — not his brothers, who’d called him a fool for marrying like this, and not his parents, who’d told him the relationship would only get him into trouble. Just about the only people who’d gone that day, and were here so far on this day, had been the people involved in the wedding itself.
There was Maria Vargas, a shy and brooding girl who looked older than her 16 years, and her husband, Phil Manning, 25, who often acted younger than his. And nearby, smoking a cigarette, was a slight woman with long, narrow features, Michelle Hockenberry, 39, the mother who’d allowed her daughter to marry.
Even in an era when the median age of marrying has climbed higher and higher, unions such as Phil and Maria’s remain surprisingly prevalent in the United States. Between 2000 and 2010, an estimated 248,000 children were married, most of them girls, some as young as 12, wedding men.
Now, under pressure from advocates and amid a nationwide reckoning about gender equality and sexual misconduct, states have begun ending exceptions that have allowed marriages for people younger than 18. Texas last year banned it, except for emancipated minors. Kentucky outlawed it, except for 17year-olds with parental and judicial approval. Maryland considered increasing the minimum marrying age from 15, but its bill failed to pass in April. Then in May, Delaware abolished the practice under every circumstance, and New Jersey did the same in June. Pennsylvania, which may vote to eliminate all loopholes this autumn, could be next.
Nearly 70 percent of the unions end in divorce, research suggests, and for children in their mid-teens, it is higher still — about 80 percent. Teen brides are nearly three times as likely to have at least five children. Their chance of living in poverty is 31 percent higher. And they’re 50 percent more likely to drop out of school, which was the outcome that terrified Maria the most. The start of the school year was just two weeks away, and she still didn’t know whether her mounting responsibilities at home would keep her from returning to the classroom.
Girl, interrupted
This is how a child America gets married: in
It was a Friday, March 16. Maria woke early. She normally hated anything feminine — “a tomboy,” Michelle called her, who smoked, swore liberally, had skull tattoos — but today was different. Michelle did her makeup and hair. Maria put on a white dress and veil.
Then, fearing authorities would arrest Phil at the local courthouse, they drove into nearby West Virginia, where they wouldn’t be recognized and which has one of the country’s highest rates of child marriage. Within an hour of arriving at the Morgan County Courthouse, her mother had signed the form, the marriage license had been issued, an officiant at the ceremony outside had said, “It’s my pleasure to be the first to introduce Mr. and Mrs. Philip Manning,” and everyone had begun to cheer. Maria felt happier than she’d ever thought possible.
And now?
Now it was nearly five months later. She was waking once more, this time past 10 a.m., feeling exhausted again. She poured a bowl of Cocoa Puffs for Douglas’ breakfast, then looked at the mess around her. She swept the floor. Scrubbed the counters. Put in a load of laundry. Lit a scented candle.
Maria was a housewife, in every sense. In this trailer at the edge of town, which she rarely left and which she and Phil shared with an unemployed friend, she cooked most meals, swept floors and managed finances. Every month, Phil took home $1,600 from a furnace of a factory making drill bits, and every month, they spent about $1,150 of it on bills. To keep them disciplined, she’d stuck a budget to the refrigerator. “Monthly savings: $450,” it said. The sum seemed more hopeful than realistic, but it was what they had to save if they were ever going to get the money they needed to move to nearby Bedford, where she hoped to enroll at a high school that had on-campus child care for Douglas.
The possibility of going to school was the only remaining shard of a childhood that had long since splintered apart. She remembered the moments. She was 4, hugging her handcuffed mother, while Michelle was incarcerated for simple assault. She was 13, caring for her younger siblings, day after day, as Michelle watched her stepfather die of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. She was 14, hanging out with a 19-yearold man who, according to police reports filed in the subsequent criminal cases, had sex with her at least five times, got her pregnant, became her boyfriend and then later abducted her.
After Douglas was born, and after the father had gone to prison for the concealment and corruption of a minor, school seemed to matter less. Michelle told her she’d look after Douglas. But Maria couldn’t bring herself to trust him with anyone, not even her mother, and didn’t return to the classroom that year.
One of the first people, in fact, she allowed to care for Douglas was Phil, whom she’d met at a friend’s place when she was 15 and with whom she’d at first wanted only a physical relationship. But soon she couldn’t imagine being with anyone else and still couldn’t.
Girl meets man
Phil met Maria on Feb. 25, 2017, in a trailer on the other side of Everett, where a buddy from jail was living.
To him, she sure didn’t look 15, but he never asked. What he did ask for was her phone number. “I’d caught feelings” was how he put it, and that was that. He was 24, and he had a 15-year-old girlfriend.
What at first felt innocuous soon became a terrible secret. They saw each other as often as they could but lived according to rules. Never hold hands in public. Never kiss unless they were alone. Never tell anyone anything, least of all the truth — that they already were sleeping together. Phil tried to explain it to people. In many ways, she was more mature than he was.
“I’m here to support my family,” he again explained to Maria one morning. He was here, providing, each day another struggle to convince himself and others that he wasn’t a bad guy. He’d married a child, yes. But he wasn’t a bad guy.
That morning, he looked at their wedding photos on the bookcase against the wall.
“It felt right,” he said, sitting down. “There was a special connection.”
“You pedophile,” Maria said, just joking, but he winced.
A new way
Days before the start of the school year, the trailer was quiet except for the murmur of the television and the running of the faucet as Maria washed dishes, worrying.
“We can’t move right now,” she said quietly. “We don’t have the money.”
“I know,” he said, nodding.
She would decide to find another way, to change things. She would tell Phil she couldn’t have another baby, not now, and they would get back to using birth control. She would call Everett High School, and they would allow her to go part time in the morning, while Phil watched Douglas at home. She would start classes two weeks late, taking the ninth- and 10thgrade courses she’d missed. She would seize control of events. She would become an adult.
She had years to go and knew the delicate alchemy of this moment could evaporate. Douglas could get sick. Phil could lose his job. She may never graduate. But right now, early one Friday morning, those concerns seemed remote, as Douglas and Phil slept in the bedroom, and Michelle wrote her a Facebook message, telling her she was proud of her, and Maria headed out by herself for school, the child bride who didn’t drop out.