To think the age of consent should be raised to 18 if there is a significant age gap?

I agree

Really?
You can divorce.
You're kinda stuck if you vote in a party that turn out to be evil dictators.

Voting doesn’t jeopardise the rest of your life. Getting married does.

And yet the vote is to be given to 16 and 17 year olds.

I think Romeo and Juliet clauses are a good idea. They are not uncommon around the world - in parts of Europe, Canada and the US, according to Google. We've already got something like this with the age of consent being 16, or 18 if the relationship is with someone in a position of trust/authority. I don't think there's anything wrong with a law that says 16 if the relationship is with someone up to (e.g.) 4 years older, otherwise it's 18.

You absolutely can (and should). Far better in my view to be sexually experimenting (safely) than to be tied down at the age of 16.

But by allowing (and sometimes encouraging) women to get married at 16 you're normalising the idea that young marriage is a good thing.

Surely you can have sex without " settling down" though.

People do indeed mature at different ages and of course not all men are predators.

But its not just about avoiding predators (although that's a significant part of it). It's about enabling women to have the maximum power and autonomy they can at a time when they have their lives ahead of them so they can make good, informed choices. A young woman has so much more to lose than a young man by becoming sexually active young, even more by being married off and producing children when she's barely old enough to work or vote.

Sure, early marriage might just work out but no one loses by allowing that young woman to keep her options open, explore the world a bit, learn about herself, get an education and work towards a career. Just a few years longer.

You can't prevent teenagers from experimenting sexually and a higher age of consent isn't going to wipe that out. And you can't prevent predatory men from being predatory. But raising the age of consent to 18 would send a signal to younger people of both sexes that having sex and settling down young is suboptimal. It would send a signal that this is an age to find yourself, to learn about the world and focus on your future, not on closing your life down to marriage and chilldren early.

It would also help to denormalise the idea that a 16 year old girl is ready for sex and make older men think twice about targeting them.

Well in that specific example she sounds vulnerable as no 16 year old should be living with a partner. Did she have a bad childhood?

The issue imo is maturity, understanding, ability to cope with life, good and bad! 15 year old children used to enter the workplace, but their lives were different, perhaps focus on living and not the virtual helped with resilience and their family networks were closer. Not saying the past was perfect, but honestly can any of us say that those in their late teens are as prepared, knowledgeable about the realities of life, knowing more about a social influencer flogging tatty clothes than how to spot and deal with coercive or abusive behaviour. Institutions designed to protect us are also failing abysmally to deal with issues head on for fear of the very few, thereby failing far too many. Age of consent should be about being ready, do we think 18 is right in this moment?

I have seen a couple of marriages under 21 work well but both were under 20 like one couple were 17 and 18 and another were 18 and 20. They are near 40 now and still are happily together from what I can see. I envy people who met their loves at a young age!
In both cases they didn’t have kids until their early 30s so had the whole 20s to just focus on their marriage (and friendship and traveling etc)

But yeah usually doesn’t work out and it’s usually the woman who suffers from what I’ve seen, as they often rush to have kids and before 30 the man pisses off and leaves her to take care of the kids while he has the kids EOW and easily gets back into dating and living life as a single man .

However if one is 18 and the other is a grown adult in their late 20s and beyond, who has lived a substantial part of their adult life before getting with a teen just finishing their school exams, I just think it’s wrong even if they do get married and stay together

So women have less brain capacity then men, best we keep them at home and not out in the big wide world in case a man thinks for them, how patronising, not all women need talked down too and not all men are predators

People mature at different ages i cant beleive people need to be told this

So how does this fit in then?

Btw my ex went out with an 18 ( almost 19) year old at the age of 25. He was a virgin and had never really had a " proper" girlfriend before then
She had lived with an ex boyfriend for 18 months previously and he hadnt been her first lover.
But according to everyone here he was holding power and experuence over her.

I agree OP, I don't think it's unworkable. And some variances are already in place in practice (eg a 15 year old wouldn't be prosecuted for having sex with a 15 year old but a 30 year old might be).

Exactly. And without anything to compare it to they have no meaningful benchmark of what a good relationship is like. And then the sunk cost fallacy comes into play: you’re still married, he doesn’t cheat (to your knowledge) and doesn’t hit you so it must be OK.

The marriage may or may not be tolerable but even if its OK the woman has been robbed of her right to make an informed decision.

Marriage under the age of 20 is almost universally a terrible idea in my view.

@Thepeopleversuswork
Its not OK. A teenage girl lacks the emotional maturity and experience to choose a lifetime partner. The fact that some people muddle through it doesn’t make it OK.

Agree with this - these women might have convinced themselves they were not coerced or taken advantage of but isn’t that kind of the point? They were too naive to realise and it is an indictment on their husband’s character that they pursued them in the first place.

I think the age of consent should be raised to 18. Men take advantage of younger women’s innocence of relationships on an endemic scale.

I find it chilling how much its still normalised in our society too. So many posts on here from women who have met and married a bloke 15+ years older than them while in their teens and insist that it is OK because they are still married.

Its not OK. A teenage girl lacks the emotional maturity and experience to choose a lifetime partner. The fact that some people muddle through it doesn’t make it OK.

I don’t think the age of consent should be 18 full stop. I was 16 when I first had sex and felt more than ready - as did many of my peers. Kids are going to do it regardless anyway.

I do agree there is some nuance though and it kind of depends a lot. 18 and 16 - fine imo if e.g., one summer birthday Y12 and one autumn birthday Y13. 18 and 16 not fine if one in Y11 and one left school and in work.

I guess you could say over 20 and under 20 but then two people could both be 19 and then one have a birthday so that wouldn’t work.

Maybe you could say a maximum 10 year age gap if under 25? Although I still think 24 and 16 is vile.

So I agree with you in principle but like many others I think it is too unworkable.

I was 17, DH was 26. As you say, no coercion or abuse, and been married over 30 years.

Do you always "refuse to believe" other people's opinions? How odd.

The age of majority is 18 in this country and I think it's sensible to align consent laws with this age personally. I think this stems from a desire to protect 16 year olds from predatory men when we know that viewing an image of a child of this age is regarded quite rightly as an offence. A schoolgirl should not be suddenly a target of the attentions of older manipulative men and shouldn't the law assist this?

It’s difficult because I think 16 is old enough to be having sex with other people close to your own age so I don’t agree with a blanket increase to 18, but I agree it’s problematic particularly in view of the fact that 16 year olds now are more like 1990’s 14 year olds in terms of socio- emotional development- they tend to live in a much more parent- centric vs peer- centric world and are less savvy. Also the internet has made it more likely that the average 16 year old will come across predatory/ controlling men that are unknown outside their RL social group- these guys always an existed but because they were in your town generally they had a rep and you knew to avoid them.

I think an age gap law might not be a bad thing between the ages of 16-18- maybe 5 years.

just for consistency I also think reducing age of voting to 16 is utter madness.

I remember my friend at 17 dating a 39 year old 🤢 even back then I said it was creepy.

And there were other teens I knew he had been with too and tbh I think he was older than 39. And he probably had children older than my friend and an ex wife despite claiming he had neither.

Some grown men really will go as close to the age of consent as they can. It’s scary.

Every time there’s a thread like this I realise how fucked up and defensive a lot of people are about heterosexual relationships. I was 17 and had a boyfriend ten years older. When I was 27 I could see that 17 year olds, however mature in outlook, were basically children and I had absolutely no interest in them as an adult.

Age of consent being 16 means that 14/15 year old girls can be abused by adult men who can argue that they thought they were 16 because 16 year old girls are still at school. Very few 18 year olds are walking around in school uniforms talking about their GCSEs.

We have think 25 in shops to buy alcohol because the onus is on the shop to ensure customers are legally old enough to buy alcohol, not on the underage customer to know whether getting hammered is a good idea or not. Putting the responsibility on 16 year old girls (and boys) to navigate the gauntlet of abusive and predatory adults is a shitty thing to do to our young people.

I refuse to believe you are serious.