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When Children Have Children
Judy, the 21-year-old front desk receptionist, was pregnant and married. Not terribly unusual. What stunned us was learning Judy got married when she was 16 — and kept it a secret from everyone outside her family until she graduated from high school.
Legal age of marriage varies from state to state. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a law to “end child marriage” in 2017, raising the age of consent to marry from 14 to 18 years old. However, the law allowed 17-year-olds to be married with parental and judicial consent. But this was the mid-1990s and knowing someone who wed at that young age was a novelty.
Her name was actually Xhudi, but everybody called her Judy. The Albanian spelling was exotic, but Judy stood out among the other receptionists for another reason (which was difficult, considering she was thin as a pin). Dozens of women walked through our company workplace with pregnancy bellies. And we didn’t pass judgment on the decision made between her and Edon, her husband, to start a family. It just seemed unfathomable that she spent her final two years of education withholding her wedding from the world.
“You had friends who weren’t Albanian, right?” I asked.
“Of course,” Judy replied.
“Did you introduce them to Edon?” I asked.
