The legal age of marriage in 1960 depended entirely on which state you were in and whether a parent signed off. In most states, a woman could marry on her own at 18 and a man at 21. With parental consent, the floor commonly dropped to 16 for girls and 18 for boys, and in a handful of states it dropped much further, or disappeared altogether.
Marrying Without Parental Consent
The dominant pattern set two different ages depending on sex. Women could marry without parental consent at 18 in the large majority of states. Men had to wait until 21. That gap traced back to the English common law idea of “majority,” which treated 21 as the threshold for full adult legal status. Because men were expected to hold property and enter contracts on a family’s behalf, most states kept 21 as the baseline for male applicants.
A few states broke the pattern. A couple set the age at 19 for both sexes, and at least one state used 21 for women as well as men. But the 18-and-21 split was the rule in 1960, and it stayed in place until the 26th Amendment prompted a nationwide rethinking of age-of-majority laws in 1971.
Marrying With Parental Consent
Written approval from a parent or guardian unlocked much younger ages. The most common framework allowed girls to marry at 16 and boys at 18 with that approval. The rules were far from uniform, though. Some states dropped the floor to 14 for boys and as low as 13 for girls as long as the parental or guardian approval was on file.
Proving consent was usually a matter of a sworn affidavit from the parent or guardian. Many states also required the minor to submit a birth certificate when applying for the license. If none was available, a parent’s sworn statement of age, a baptismal certificate issued near the time of birth, or a military identification card could substitute.
States With No Statutory Minimum
Not every state had set a clear floor by statute. Where legislation was silent, courts fell back on common law principles inherited from England. Under those rules, boys could marry at 14 and girls at 12. The reasoning, rooted in Blackstone’s Commentaries from the 1760s, treated those ages as the earliest point at which a person could meaningfully consent to a marriage contract. A marriage involving anyone younger was considered “inchoate and imperfect” and could be voided by either party upon reaching the age of consent.
A handful of states went further and had no statutory minimum for marriages with parental consent, which effectively allowed marriage at any age if a parent or guardian approved. This was not theoretical. Documented cases from the early and mid-twentieth century show children as young as nine being married under these provisions. Several of those same states still lack a minimum age today.
Exceptions That Lowered the Age Even Further
Even in states with clear floors, three exceptions appeared often enough to be a national pattern.
- Judicial approval. A judge could authorize a marriage for a minor who didn’t meet the usual age requirement. This was the most widespread exception. The judge had discretion to grant or deny a waiver, and the criteria were often vague or unwritten.
- Pregnancy. Roughly one in five states allowed minors to marry below the usual floor if one partner was pregnant. The stated rationale was to legitimize children born to unmarried parents, a legal concern that carried far more weight in 1960 than it does now.
- Emancipation. A minor who had been legally emancipated by a court gained adult legal status, which generally included the right to marry without parental consent. This pathway was less common because emancipation itself was hard to obtain.
These exceptions meant the “minimum” age on paper was not always the real floor. A state with a stated minimum of 16 for girls with parental consent might still allow a 14-year-old to marry if a judge signed off.
Barriers That Had Nothing to Do With Age
Clearing the age requirement was only one step. Three other hurdles applied to couples of any age in 1960.
Race
More than 20 states prohibited marriages between people of different races, and no amount of parental consent or judicial approval could override those bans. Anti-miscegenation statutes voided interracial marriages automatically, and in many states applying for a license across the color line was itself a criminal offense. The Supreme Court struck down all such laws in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia.1Justia Law. Loving v. Virginia, 388 US 1 (1967) At the time of that decision, 16 states still enforced the bans; in 1960 the number was higher, as several states repealed their laws in the years between.
Blood Tests
By 1960, the overwhelming majority of states required both applicants to submit blood test results proving they did not carry communicable syphilis. These laws had spread rapidly starting in the late 1930s as a public health measure. As recently as 1980, 34 states still had the requirement on the books, and the last state did not drop it until 2019.
Waiting Periods
Many states imposed a mandatory waiting period between the application and the issuance of the license. Three days was common, with some states requiring five. The stated purpose was to discourage impulsive marriages, and the practical effect was to give clerks time to verify ages and parental consent. Judges could sometimes waive the wait in emergencies, including pregnancy.
Crossing State Lines To Marry
Because age rules varied so sharply, couples whose home state told them they were too young often drove to a state with lower thresholds. The practice was common enough to have its own legal label: evasive marriages.
The general rule, drawn from the Uniform Marriage Evasion Act of 1912 and later court decisions, was that a state could refuse to recognize a marriage performed elsewhere if that marriage violated the home state’s public policy. Two 16-year-olds who crossed into a neighboring state to marry without parental consent could find their marriage declared void when they returned home. Under conflict-of-laws doctrine, a marriage valid where performed was generally respected elsewhere unless it offended a “strong public policy” of the couple’s home state, and marriage of a minor without parental consent was specifically identified as the kind of restriction that could trigger that exception. The Full Faith and Credit Clause did not reliably override this, because for most of U.S. history the implementing statute only required states to give effect to other states’ judicial proceedings, not their public acts or statutes.
How The 1960 Framework Unraveled
The structural change came in the early 1970s. After the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 in 1971, most state legislatures promptly lowered their general age of majority to 18 as well. The 21-year threshold for men disappeared almost overnight, and the gender distinction in marriage age went with it. As one congressman had argued during the voting age debate, it made little sense to treat 18-year-olds as mature enough to serve in the military, pay taxes, and marry, but too immature to vote.2Constitution Annotated | Congress.gov | Library of Congress. Voter Age Qualifications, the Korean War, and the 1950s
In 1970, the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act recommended 18 as the standard age for marriage without consent, with 16- and 17-year-olds still permitted to marry with parental or judicial approval. Many states adopted that framework or something close to it. A later reform wave starting around 2016 began banning marriages under 18 outright. Delaware and New Jersey were the first in 2018, and as of mid-2025, 16 states and the District of Columbia have enacted full bans. The handful of states that had no minimum age in 1960 still lack one today.