In my genealogy data base I find lots of 14-15 year old girls getting married. Within a year they are having the first of their dozen or so children. (Usually with the same husband, until death do they part.)
It was not uncommon 100+ years ago. Now we try to treat them as children until they're 26.
Having alot of children is the rule, not the exception, in human history.
Why?
Infant mortality.
I recently have been working through my family tree as well. Just one or two generations back and it seems to be very common to have 8-12 children. My own mother had 13 brothers and sisters.
And I do find the girls often got married off at a very young age.
Oddly, I am starting to believe teen girls/boys back then were far more mature than what we have today. They knew a lot from being planters or farmers and they also had engrained in them a work ethic and family values, plus a healthy dose of religion.
Somewhere along the line in our culture...it became far more important to keep a child immature and we see that result in the number of “adult children” still living at home in their parent’s basement. I do very much use the term “adult children” and I see it up close nearly everyday in my work.
Grown “kids” still living at home. I show up to take the dog for the daily walk. Every day at several homes there is an ‘adult child’ home watching TV, playing games etc. Why are the parents paying a dogwalker several hundred dollars a month to walk the dog? The only answer I can come up with is because the adult child can’t handle the simplest of responsibility.
Personally I agree it is an amazing culture change when one considers the bigger picture.
As ASA Vet said, it’s not the age so much as the character. One hundred years ago (read the ‘Little House ‘ books) a teenage girl was ready to be a wife and mother by training and character. The pioneer women had a deep sense of duty and responsibility, character and self sacrifice (and deep Christian beliefs and morals) . They also had many useful skills in cooking, sewing, childcare and healing. Laura Ingalls Wilder had more maturity at 16 than I probanly do in middle age.
But yes, rewarding selfish, uncivilized teenage boys and girls to behave like animals only compounds the problem each generation.
That’s a different world than today. I agree we do tend to infatilize kids. You could take the North Avenue bus in Chicago to the end of the line as a 14 year old boy carrying a 12 gauge, hunt in the fields there and not a person would say a word.
You fix that by ending government’s role in education and child labor. We’re in agreement otherwise.