The only context where the arbitrary age of '18' means anything, is within the Western culture. It's this culture that requires every boy and girl to study for many years, so they are indoctrinated into its unnatural lifestyle and become cogs in its economic machine.

Whoever wrote Genesis chapter 3, had good insight that human life is a curse, but a different curse for men and women:

16) To the woman He said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

17) To Adam He said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life."

Western culture seeks to impose mens' curse on women as well.

What is interesting is that through out history, certain groups try to impose their values, mortality and beliefs on to the 'uneducated'.

In recent times before feminism, it was 'Christianity' that tried to impose it's values onto 'savages'. There is no denying that many missionaries did some good whilst others blinded by their belief system did a lot of damage.

Sadly, in the belief that they are doing some good, zealot missionaries are blind to all except their rigid belief systems and woe betide anyone who choose to challenge their rigid beliefs.

No Joe, I do know what I'm talking about and so do you, these are the real choices that parents in the third world have to make, either live in poverty supporting unmarried daughters, cast them out on to the street or marry them off. That's the reality I'm talking about and it's the reality which silly White Feminists and Traditionalists refuse to accept,they might as well all just kneel down and pray together for all the good these programs will do. The idea that UNICEF or any other group can change the condition of billions of people is laughable, they could re colonise the old empires then exhaust the coffers of the Western world in one gigantic redistribution of wealth and still not make a dent.
This is White supremacy, Orientalism, neo colonialism...disguise it with whatever flowery Liberal names you will but we know that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..it's a duck.

Mohammad (peace be upon him) married Alisha when she was 11 years old. Therefore, marrying 11 year olds is permitted by God.

End of story.

The age of consent is 13 in Spain, 14 in Italy, 15 in France, and 16 in most North European countries. The USA is totally bizarre. The age of consent is nominally 18, but then there is the "three year rule" in many states. This states that a male may have sex with a female who is 16 years or older, provided that he is no more than three years older than the female.

Traditionally, females have always married son after the onset if puberty. This is getting out of kilter today, as young females are reaching puberty at earlier and earlier ages. Nobody knows why. It is thought that increases nutrition is causing young female bodies to react to what seems to be an ideal time to breed. Some girls are reaching puberty at 6 years old and special drugs have been developed to suppress the early onset of puberty.

Males are hard wired in their DNA to be sexually interested in females who capable of breeding. That this is happening to females at younger and younger ages does not alter that biological imperative. Couple this to the very sexy fashions now prevalent among very young females and it is hardly surprising that males of all ages are getting interested in very young females.

There seems to be a lot of people who are rather laid back about this. Do they have a daughter themselves. I often hear of people who say that it is OK for a woman to be a "sex-worker". To which I would say is it OK for your daughter to be a "sex-worker" or your sister or some other person for whom you have affection? If it isn't then it's not OK for anyone else's daughter, sister etc. If you have way-out liberal views about any such topic the same applies.

It's all relative, Gadfly:

A Catholic father came to know that his daughter has come to no-good: he was so sad and upset that he wouldn't eat and became ill. His daughter then came to see him on his death-bed and the father, with his very last bits of strength whispered: "Why, Why did you do it, why have you become a protestant?", so the daughter replied: "Me a protestant? Never! You didn't wear your hearing-aid, father, I said that I became a prostitute, not a protestant!". The father sighed with relief, asked for some food and soon after recovered.