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re: aurorawatcher

aurorawatcher wrote:

"... Liberty First - you ought to read Loretta Lynn's autobiography before you make statements like this was normal. She states clearly that getting married when you were 13 was not common in her region in those days and that her father wanted to scalp her husband..."

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Yep. It was so *un*common that Loretta was a mother at 14 and a grandmother at 29. Do the math. I cannot find *which* of her children made her a grandma at 29, but with her first born when she was 14, the *oldest* of Loretta's children was only 15 when she became a grandmother.

Now, before you mischaracterize my statement, I said, "It wasn't that very long ago that todays' 'children' (teens) were getting married and starting families of their own. Re: Loretta Lynn."

(A) I never suggested it was "normal", as in the norm rather than the exception, but rather *more* normal, as in not as uncommon, than it is now.

(B) Loretta Lynn is a great example for two reasons --
... 1 ) Her biography is easy enough to look up; and
... 2 ) It wasn't *that* long ago.


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"... If you study demographics you find out that the average age of marriage at the turn of the 20th Century was mid-20s for women and close to 30 for men. They didn't have birth control, so they used abstinence and delayed marriage to keep from having more kids than they wanted. It's a misperception that people were getting married when they were 15 on a regular basis in past generations. They weren't. There may have been exceptions, but society wasn't as dumb as we like to think..."

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Then you need to study sociology and anthropology a bit farther back.

Are you familiar with the custom of the Debutant Ball? At 16 young women were "presented" to society as Ladies, complete with being eligible to be courted by eligible bachelors.

How about farther back, in near-East, mid-East, and far-Eastern cultures that regularly arranged marriages for teens and young adults?

Before modern medicine, life expectancies were shorter, miscarriage and complications during birth were more common, and infant/childhood mortality was a lot higher. As a consequence, it was, anthropologically speaking, beneficial for women to marry and begin rearing children sooner. It helped ensure that more offspring survived to continue the family line. Six, eight, and even more children were *not* uncommon.

Regardless, marriage was but one example. (See below...)

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"... So, this whole thing about teens being adults back in the day -- semi-true. Of course, an 8th grade education in 1900 was a pretty solid education that assured you could run a farm or business and knew a bit about politics and the classics..."

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Bingo! Well, almost.

Not so long ago, as in within the last millenia, life was, well, simpler. Generally speaking -- barring training for specialty skills such as blacksmithing, artisans, or medicine -- youngsters were prepared to be independent individuals. The average young man was equipped with the knowledge and skills to hunt, fish, cure meats and hides, tend crops, build a shed or modest home, thatch or mend a roof, build and mend fences and walls, perform basic first aid, and/or a whole host of other appropriate skills to live independently. The average young woman was equipped with the knowledge and skills to cook, darn, knit, weave, sew, mill wheat, preserve foods, care for children. Generally speaking young men were prepared to be independent and young women were prepared to be homemakers of their own with minimal *formal* education *and* by the time they were young teens.

The real difference between then and now is technology. Starting with the industrial revolution and culminating with the technological revolution, the proliferation of technology throughout developed cultures has made life far more complex.

There are exceptions of course, but generally speaking...

Two centuries ago, literacy was *not* an absolute necessity to be an independent individual. Now, literacy *is* (nearly) a prerequisite to being an independent individual.

Two centuries ago, formal education was *not* an absolute necessity to grow into an individual capable of providing for oneself and one's family. Now, particularly with the dumbing down of the education system, a minimum of, at least, 8 years of formal education is absolutely required.

As a consequence, in modern, developed cultures, our offspring are dependent upon us (their parents) far longer than in the past and even in modern, *un*developed cultures. In the past, even though children stayed with their parents until they got married or whatever, they were not *required* to. They were prepared for and capable of being independent. Today, however, they're *not*. They *have* to stay with their parents *because* they are *un*prepared for independence.

Consequently, the protracted dependence of our offspring in our *culture* has lead to us treating them as dependents and, therefore, children. Developmentally, physiologically, and, even, anthropologically, they outgrow childhood when they reach adolesence. Our culture *needs* to acknowledge that.

Young adults *need* more freedom, more independence, and more responsibility than we currently allow them as "children". Note, this is *not* to say that we need to treat them as full-fledged, sovereign individuals -- as adults for all intents and purposes -- but we *do* need to quit molly-coddling them and treating them like children.