Nornagest comments on What truths are actually taboo? - Less Wrong
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I'm not an expert on developmental sexuality in preindustrial Europe, but for most of the feudal era child marriage was a lot rarer than pop culture would have us believe and almost exclusively an upper-class phenomenon. It also didn't necessarily imply immediate consummation; most of the feudal women we know about that did marry at thirteen or fourteen didn't bear children until a few years later. Women from the peasant and mercantile classes (the vast majority of the population) often wouldn't marry until their early twenties, for a variety of basically economic reasons.
Upper-class feudal women did marry young by our standards, but usually that would have meant sixteen to eighteen, not twelve.
From Farewell to Alms; Asia:
Egypt:
Europe:
To put these averages in perspective; from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22Adulthood-t.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
I've seen claims that ancient Greece & Rome may have been very different from the later medieval patterns; from http://community.feministing.com/2010/02/14/misogyny-and-relationship-inequality/comment-page-1/
(Quotes extracted from searching my Evernotes: http://www.evernote.com/pub/gwern/gwern )
Thanks! This makes a strong enough case to upturn the history book I read (in high school, and of typical epistemic quality for high school history books).
I'd say it's more that 'it's complicated and dependent on region'. After all, there is a specific claim there that in Grecoroman society the stereotype that girls got married the moment they started bleeding was true. And no doubt anthropologists could list societies fitting every marriage age bracket from before conception to 'never'. (But it does mean that we can't pride ourselves on how civilized we are compared to our barbaric ancestors as of, say, 5 centuries ago.)
Or feel ashamed at how much more sexually repressed we are as savageorange was doing above.
More materials: http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/GUS/HISTORYCHHS.HTM http://womenofhistory.blogspot.com/2007/08/medieval-marriage-childbirth.html