This dissertation examines the politics of child marriage in the United States through three complementary studies that analyze legislative behavior, public opinion, and moral reasoning. Despite increased advocacy and awareness, progress toward eliminating child marriage remains uneven across states.States vary widely in their pursuit of introducing and enacting child marriage bans. These variations reflect the differences in institutional capacity and rigidity, political alignments as well as regional differences. Using a state-chamber-year dataset spanning from 2016 to 2025, the first paper examines how partisan control, institutional persistence and regional diffusion shape the policies surrounding child marriage. Results show that legislative introductions often serve as a symbolic gesture, while their passage into law depends on favorable political alignments and diffusion of bans among neighboring states. Chambers with higher proportions of women legislators were also significantly more likely to enact bans signifying the role of gendered representation in advancing protective policy. Together, these findings reveal that child marriage reform progresses through intersecting political and regional processes that produce uneven policy outcomes.The second paper examines how linguistic framing using the terms “child”, “minor”, and “teenager” shapes public attitudes toward the legality of marriage under age 18. In a national survey experiment (N ≈ 1,000) fielded in the 2024 Cooperative Election Study, respondents indicated under what circumstances people labeled as children, minors, or teenagers should be allowed to marry. Results show that referring to individuals under 18 as children significantly increases rejection of early marriage, while describing them as teenagers increases approval under certain circumstances. The study contributes to framing research by showing how small differences in wording can shape moral reasoning on issues that are emotionally charged but rarely debated.The final paper develops a normative argument grounded in feminist theory drawing on Susan Moller Okin’s framework of the “right to exit.” This paper addresses the challenges of implementing legal reforms in a fragmented state-level system. I argue that denying minors the right to exit marriage underscores the need for a federal ban on underage marriage, which provides a necessary foundation for protecting children and supporting their capacity to pursue independent, empowered lives. Despite implementation challenges, I argue that such a ban is a necessary first step. Together, these studies reveal how institutions, public discourse, and moral claims intersect to sustain or challenge the persistence of child marriage in the United States.
