List of child brides


This is a list of child brides, women of historical significance who married under 18 years of age.

East & South Asia

8th century

9th century

10th century

12th century

16th century

  • Ruqaiya Sultan Begum married Akbar, her first paternal cousin, at the time of his first appointment, at the age of nine, in 1551. Akbar's marriage with Ruqaiya was solemnised near Jalandhar, Punjab, when both of them were 14 years old.

17th century

18th century

19th century

20th century

Europe

From 380 A.D. to 1983 A.D., the age of majority was 21 years old in the Roman Catholic Church, which was adopted into canon law from Roman law. From 380 A.D. to 1971 A.D. the minimum marriageable age was 12 years for females and 14 years for males in the Roman Catholic Church, which was adopted into canon law from Roman law.
During the Holy Roman Empire, age of majority was 21 years old and minimum marriageable age was 12 years for females and 14 years for males. There were some fathers who arranged marriages for a son or a daughter before he or she reached the age of maturity. Consummation would not take place until the age of maturity. Roman Catholic canon law defines a marriage as consummated when the "spouses have performed between themselves in a human fashion a conjugal act which is suitable in itself for the procreation of offspring, to which marriage is ordered by its nature and by which the spouses become one flesh."
In England and Wales, the Marriage Act 1753 required a marriage to be covered by a license or the publication of banns. The Church of England dictated that both the bride and groom must be at least 21 years of age to marry without the consent of their families; in the certificates, the most common age for the brides is 22 years. For the grooms 24 years was the most common age, with average ages of 24 years for the brides and 27 for the grooms. While European noblewomen often married early, they were a small minority of the population, and the marriage certificates from Canterbury show that, in England, even among nobility it was very rare to marry women off at very early ages.
In England, the minimum marriageable age was raised to 16 in 1929. Before then, the minimum marriageable age was 12 for females and 14 for males. In 1971, the age of majority was lowered to 18 years old.
The age of majority is 18 years old since 1983 A.D. and the minimum marriageable age is 14 years old for females and 16 years old for males since in 1917 A.D in the Roman Catholic Church.

8th century

9th century

10th century

11th century

12th century

13th century

14th century

15th century

16th century

17th century

18th century

19th century

20th century

Middle East

BC: Ancient Egypt

7th century

14th century

18th century

19th century

;Wives of Abdulmejid I
;Wives of Murad V

20th century

21st century

  • Nujood Ali married Faez Ali Thamer in 2008. She secured a divorce aged 10 and is an activist against child marriage in Yemen.
  • Reem Al Numery married her cousin in 2008. After receiving international attention from 2 suicide attempts, she was granted a divorce by a Yemeni judge in 2010.
  • Shamima Begum married Yago Riedijk in 2015. Before her marriage, she left London to join the Islamic State in Syria.

North & South America

17th century

18th century

19th century

For the latter half of the 19th century, between 13 and 18% of native-born white female first marriages in the United States were of girls under the age of 18.

20th century

21st century