"Elizabeth Alice Clement, a U.S. women’s historian at the University of Utah, said support for child marriage tends to be rooted in conservative or religious beliefs around premarital sexuality and pregnancy. The states with the most child marriages per capita are Nevada, Idaho, Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Utah, Alabama, West Virginia and Mississippi.
“Early marriage persists in some places much longer than it does in other more religiously conservative places because girls who are sexually active or become pregnant are seen as shameful to their families,” Clement said. “It even happens sometimes that very young girls are married to men who have statutorily raped them because the sex is seen as more problematic than the rape itself.” "
https://19thnews.org/2023/07/explaining-child-marriage-laws-united-states/
