The Age of Consent and Catholicism
Tonight I noticed this image go by on Reddit. It accompanies this Wikipedia article on the age of consent.
I noticed something interesting. There seems to be a strong correlation between a young age of consent (12 to 15 years old) and Catholic countries. I created this little graphic to illustrate.
- This image shows the age of consent. The blue countries have an age of consent between 12 to 15 (disgustingly, the age of consent in Yemen is nine, but forgo that for this experiment).
- Hover your mouse over the image. It should switch to a shrunken version of this image, which shows various flavours of Christianity by colour. The Catholic countries are yellow.
What’s the cause of this correlation?
May 5th, 2008 at 7:56 am
In Iran, the legal age for marriage for girls is also nine. I think it comes from Mohammed’s wife Aisha, whom he married when she was six and consummated the marriage when the girl reached nine.
May 5th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Methinks it’s the influence of the civil law of Rome, mixed with the laws that came down via Alfred the Great of England. I think even Alfred had the marriage law at 12 for girls and 14 for boys. In Rome, the tutela for girls ended at 12 and at 14 for boys.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:13 am
the age of consent in the philippines is 18.
May 7th, 2008 at 5:38 am
It’s a “relationship,” NOT correlation.
May 7th, 2008 at 11:02 am
This is far from conclusive.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Ok, so neither “a” nor Ewan provide a link so I can’t check their blogs, but from a research design perspective, yeah, the word perhaps shouldn’t have been “correlation”. There is a relationship. However, Darren isn’t trying to prove anything scientifically. He is puzzled by the apparently relationship (age of consent -> Catholic country) where the age of consent is the dependent variable.
The puzzle is interesting and warrants some scientific consideration, and I’m not about to venture the direction in which the arrows go (dependent or independent variables) but not sure that’s the scope of Darren’s inquiry.
Just on the fly, I would say that there is a high likelihood that when the majority of a country’s population is catholic, the age of consent tends to be raised. But then again, I’m just making a conjecture.