this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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I used to think the women of the past were all married young or spinsters, from reading little house on the prairie and other books. But looked up my ancestors on that Mormon website and was surprised to find that most were 28, 29. Even going pretty far back. This was mostly the US (and this area before unification) and southern Europe though, don't know that it can be extrapolated. I just didn't expect it.
Even then would be pretty recent considering human history, and I have a feeling that like you said that's very narrowed down through both region and religion.
Though funnily enough I grew up (middle school and high school) with kids from 2 different Mormon families as two of my closest friends, and knew kids from 2 others. Each of those 4 families had a minimum of 5 kids, and each one of those kids as far as I know, both guys and girls, got married by 23.
But it was normal in Europe to be betrothed as young as 5, and married at 12 or 13 for centuries.
If you go to the east, Akbar the Great was married off at 9.
Yeah but I think "marriage" like that was a lot different from what we consider it to be now. More of a way to link families, not love matches or even "teams" on their own. Like it wasn't for them, they were resources parents traded around in marriages and also fosterings, right?
yes mostly it was just a nobility thing. common people didn't do it i think.
monarchs and earls and such would "marry" their children to children of other monarchs, to establish peace contracts through becoming related by blood. These kids were expected to carry (some) children, but AFAIK it was extremely common for them to have affairs with other people as well, so it was more a formal thing and less a "true love" affair.
as for common people, though, marriage at 12 was common as well, just that they could more often choose so themselves. so, in some sense, i guess they were the "happier" people :)
Edit: ok so i just looked it up. The minimum age of marriage was 12 for girls and 14 for boys throughout large parts of medieval Europe. However, that didn't mean they married that young. Rather, they married when they could afford it as sustaining a family required resources. So, the better economically the family was doing, the sooner the kids could (and often would) marry.