I am more surprised by you claiming they had Thanksgiving and Child Welfare Services in Kenya. 
I am more surprised by you claiming they had Thanksgiving and Child Welfare Services in Kenya. [/quote]
Look, just because my REAL birth certificate has me born in Kenya, it doesnāt necessarily mean I grew up in Kenya. My true Certificate of Childhood Locale clearly states I grew up in Hawaii. And by ādriving cross country,ā I meant ācross island.ā Itās a hapa thingā¦you wouldnāt understand.
[quote=āsteelersmanā][quote=āGuyInTaiwanā]Okay, so the mother left the kid at home for a week. In one sense, thatās fucked up, and I donāt think Iād do it. In another, not really. Maybe the kid could deal with it. When we had school holidays, my mother left my sister and me at home all day every day for up to six weeks, and we were a few years younger than that kid. We didnāt burn the house down or start juggling chainsaws, though we did plenty of other crazy shit that didnāt take a week to occur. Likewise, my parents were engaged with us at a whole lot of levels, but the crazy shit I (and probably several other users of this forum) used to get up to on the weekend with other neighbourhood kids in the hour and a half between morning tea and lunchtime would freak a whole lot of people out these days.
At one extreme, thereās a whole segment of society that may be present but does a really piss poor job of raising their kids simply because theyāre engaged in a rotating series of relationships that take preference to their children, substance abuse (including alcoholism) or simply just not even talking to kids. They donāt talk to their kids or they think that parenting is buying them a computer and letting them lock themselves away in their bedrooms to play 14 hours per day of World of Warcraft. Do any of those parents know what their kids are up to? At the other extreme are parents who schedule every moment of their kidsā lives down to the second, wrap them in cotton wool and hyperventilate if theyāre not onto their fourth language by the age of three, as if anyone not aiming to get their kids into Harvard by the age of seven is a terrible parent.
Everyone is so frickinā precious about kids these days.[/quote]
Girls used to get married and have children around the age of 13 and 14 about 150 years ago. Now they are not even allowed to stay at home alone. 
[/quote]
No they didnāt. 120 years ago the average first marriage age was 22. If you look at victorian iterature, you see that women do not get married before 18 in general, the lowest in an Austen novel was 17, and that was seen as early.
For as long as records have been kept, the average marriage age for women has not been in their teens.
[quote][quote=āMr Heā]
Girls used to get married and have children around the age of 13 and 14 about 150 years ago. Now they are not even allowed to stay at home alone. 
[/quote]
No they didnāt. 120 years ago the average first marriage age was 22. If you look at victorian iterature, you see that women do not get married before 18 in general, the lowest in an Austen novel was 17, and that was seen as early.
For as long as records have been kept, the average marriage age for women has not been in their teens.[/quote]
Iām not going into the debate and looking up references or anything, but the impression that I always got from books, documentaries and other non-peer-reviewed sources was that generally girls did not marry before 18 in pretty much all cultures, with the exception being in cases of extreme poverty on the half of the parents (one less mouth to feed) or in communities where there was likely extreme hardship/poverty (one less mouth to feed). Most of the stories Iāve heard about very young marriage happen in small African tribes, Bedouin lands or Aboriginal Australia, and I think those reasons may have had something to do with it (or with it becoming ingrained in a culture).
I know in Arab culture girls are regarded as women (and can marry) once theyāve had their first period (but again, few women marry very early).
During the High and Late Middle Ages, women were increasingly married away in their teens, leading to higher birth rates.[37] While women would be married once they reached reproductive age, men had to possess independent means of sustenance ā to be able to provide for a family ā before entering into marriage.[38] For this reason, the average age of marriage for men remained high, in the mid- to late twenties. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_household
(Aka, mens age = 30s, womens = teens)
Elite young men would usually marry in their mid-twenties, after a year or more of military service and some initial experience attending cases and even pleading in the criminal or civil courts.[4] Their brides, however, would be markedly younger women, between fifteen and twenty years of age.[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_in_ancient_Rome]
(Again same thing)
In the United States, I know that in the north (New England) women tended to marry a bit older - around mid twenties, while in the south women would marry in their young teens. Often in the south, before they were married they would be pregnant. This was because of the unequal gender balance.
So in general, itās a misnomer to say āaverage marriage ageāā¦ because that will balance the man and female. If the man is 35 and the woman is 15, then of course their average age is 25ā¦ but thatās not really accurate to say.
