For overall human history, from the times we have some records, 42 years was a life.
Marriage in early to mid teens normal, the bride going to live with the grooms family, till they could get out on their own.
Even after puberty, there is a period of adolecent sterility, so sixteen is about as early as they give birth.
With your children reaching childbearing years, you had ten years left to help out, babysit.
You would not most likely live to see your grand children marry.
42 is over a long time, often it was less. Just getting children to young adults, is all you can do if you live in a time of drought, famine, and beng alone having to make a living farming at 14 is a rough start.
Arranging a marriage where the child would have a broader support is the wise and kind thing to do.
Up to 100 years ago most lived by farming. Most places the farm land has been worked for a long time.
North America is founded on genocide, and taking other people's land, most do not do that.
Most of the world strives to live on their land, and within their means. China was long famous for feeding eleven people on a half acre. That was the best of land. What is being called child marrage was the best, they would grow up working with the group they would spend their lives with.
It is better to inheret land of your own, or to be rich, but for most, it is the differance between being part of a group with land, or being landless and alone, a begger, thief, prostitute. Then your life was sure to be short, with no chance of your children surviving.
The world over more girls than boys are born, and have a higher survival at all ages. Men die and leave widows, children, and any system will have to care for the surplus of women, one way or another.
To marry young left the family with more to feed the rest, if the husband died, the widow, her children, were with her husband's family. Where else could they survive?
Very little of the world lives in the modern west, including a lot of the modern west. Many do not have a place in life, just a job, and that is not sure.
For all the wonder of westrern culture, we are not healthy, worlds most obease, do not live as long as some others, our education is equal to Bulgaria and Romainia, and people are not happy. We lead the world in unmarried childless women, and in single mothers.
What was standard fifty years ago, high school sweethearts marrying and starting a life, is now near impossible. Food and rent are beyond their income potential. Half of all marrages last eighteen months, a new record in human history. Mostly it is economic stress. Children often grow up with several sets of parents and step parents.
We lead the world in drug use, crime, the number of people in prison. Our economy is falling, the cost of living rising, we have the lowest saving rate on earth, and the highest personal debt.
Most remaining wealth was in home equity, and we are seeing that vanish.
So taking a several generation look forward, what is their future going to be like?
Traditional cultures do have people, some are not good, but overall, they plan for generations yet to come, based on a long history of what worked.
Child brides are a problem, so are non child brides. The first, you know where she has been, she becomes a daughter of the family, and in time, it will be her home, her children, and they will care for her in her old age. If she is nine, her husband ten, they will come to terms before they have children.
Older brides have a past, their own ways, and there is more differance to overcome.
Both systems have problems. Both can be exploited. By both sexes.
Taking the purpose of marriage to be providing a support system for the next generation, those that stay together, raise the best children they can, will produce the strongest lines over hundreds of years.
In traditional systems, the core is the Family, the Clan, Community, village, Tribe, and National Governments are far away. The village plans the next generation of the village, based on the last, and many before it.
In the West, The National Government makes rules for villages and families they have never met, one rule for all classes, economic levels, and consider age as the only factor as for when to start school, work, have sex, marry, and are often ignored.
Walmart can replace twenty locally owned stores, the local factory can be bought and sent to Mexico, all with the approval of the National Government.
It is the Nanny State, that tells everyone what they can do, and takes them for everything they can.
Eighteen year old girls can marry seventy year old men for love of being a rich widow.
In other places twelve year old girls with poor parents, not much prospect in marrying in their own age bracket, all the good ones were taken before ten, will marry a fifty year old man, to become a rich widow and be able to help their family. They will eat, not be a burden on their family, have good clothes, live in a comfortable house, and most have no complaints. The other choice was becoming a prostitute.
They were part of the surplus female population, and they found a respectable place in life.
When her choices are, starve, kill herself, become a prostitute, or marry an older man, he is the lesser evil.
Before WWII very few women could support themselves in the West. In that short experiment, we have produced more single and childless women than ever existed, and more single mothers. As the economy is sheading jobs, their earning potential is declining, and they now compete directly with men in a smaller job market.
For many thousands of years couples raising children have been the main factor in civilization.
Only Islam addressed the surplus female problem, allowing several wives, if they were willing, if you could support them, and if they were young, you should be a good father to them before being a good husband.
No system is perfect, it is only as good as people, and in the case brought up here, he did not do right by her, she told her parents, and they took her back. Worse things have happened to girls.
The community supported her, she had a right to divorce him, his shameful actions are now known, he was judged by local community standards, as being a bad man, and violating a sacred trust.
It may not be your system, your economy, your religion, but it is a system that has worked for 1300 years.
Western Culture has undergone many changes, and is only a few hundred years old.
Two hundred years ago this story from a missionary would be grounds for a slave raid, for she would be much better off picking cotton on your plantation in Virginia, the private property of her Massa.
24 Aug 2008, 12:51 pm
