[AskEurope] Fellow Europeans, what is the aspect of USA lifestyle that surprises you the most?
First of all, let's try to avoid American-bashing, and stay respectful to everyone.
I'll start: for me it's the tipping culture. Especially nowadays, with the recent post on !mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world with the 40% tip, it just seems so weird to me to have to pay extra just so that menu prices can stay low.
I was really surprised that quite a few states have a minimum marrying age of 0. And apparently, it's more common than you'd expect for girls as young as 14 to get married, often to far older men.
18-21 is very common here in the South. I haven’t heard of younger personally. But I’m not rural. Know of some towns very religious and inbred, I’m sure it’s happening there.
Children as young as 12 or 14 getting married is not at all common. The study the wikipedia article you posted claims less than 1500 hundred children over 18 years that were married at the age of 12-14 in a country of over 330million. It also points out that of those under 18, the vast majority was 17. Not to say that it isn't a problem and should be fixed, but its not common what so ever and I would guess 90% of americans will never meet someone married under the age of 18 and except for some of the most rural middle of now where places its considered pretty horrific and unacceptable by most americans.
Though I agree its too many, (even one is too many) my problem is saying its common. Saying that 1,321 over an 18 year period in a country of over 330 million people is a common occurrence doesn't sound common at all to me.
He said it was more common than you would expect. So it is a subjective matter. I happen to agree with him as I would expect the figure to be none in a developed country.
i suspect your response is the most common american one and the fact that a foreigner had to teach you about your own country says a lot about our educational and social systems.