Fraidy Reiss

Fraidy Reiss is a United States–based activist against forced marriage, child marriage, and teenage marriage.

Life Reiss was raised Haredi Jewish in Brooklyn, New York. At age 19, she entered an arranged marriage to a man she had known for three months. She married the man, and had two children with him.

According to Reiss, in the first week of her marriage, her then-husband began to abuse her, repeatedly threatening to kill her and engaging in other forms of violence. Reiss says she only realized that she was experiencing domestic violence when she spoke with a therapist outside of her community. Nonetheless, her family encouraged her to stay with her husband.

Reiss graduated at 32 from Rutgers University, and was commencement speaker. She began work as a journalist. Reiss left her husband after twelve years of marriage, and was shunned by her family after doing so. She finally was able to obtain a divorce three years after leaving him. Reiss subsequently left Judaism, and became an atheist.

Upon learning about the phenomenon of marriage under the age of 18 in the United States, Reiss took on ending marriage under the age of 18 in all 50 U.S. states. In 2018, the first two U.S. states – Delaware and New Jersey – signed laws ending all marriage before 18. Also in 2018, American Samoa, a U.S. territory, ended child marriage. Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and the U.S. Virgin Islands followed in 2020, then Rhode Island and New York in 2021, and Massachusetts in 2022. In 2023, Vermont, Connecticut, and Michigan ended child marriage. Washington, Virginia and New Hampshire followed in 2024. In 2025, Washington, D.C., a U.S. district and the nation's capital, also passed legislation to set the marriage age at 18, as did Maine, Oregon and Missouri, bringing to 16 the total number of states that have ended child marriage. In 2026, child marriage became illegal in Oklahoma.

Media Reiss has written several op-eds for outlets like The Washington Post, The Star-Ledger, CNN, The Hill, and Refinery29 (co-authored by Chelsea Clinton). In 2017, Forbes named Reiss one of five women who are tackling some of the world's "most urgent issues". Reiss was featured in Great Big Story's "Defenders" series about fearless, headstrong, undeterred women fighting for change in the spirit of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and was one of the titular "gutsy women" featured in Hillary and Chelsea Clinton's 2019 book, The Book of Gutsy Women and subsequent Apple TV+ docuseries, Gutsy.

Reiss lent her expertise to the A&E documentary, I Was a Child Bride: The Untold Story, with Elizabeth Vargas, in 2019.