We overlook the natural order of things. Every other species breeds as soon as it is able, it is only the conventions of society & religions that seek to inhibit breeding. My own Great grandmother married at 15, was widowed at 17 with 2 young sons, being married at that age was not considered unusual in the mid 19th century & it is believed that Mary gave birth to Jesus at 14 or 15. Life expectancy was shorter so the need to breed to maintain the population was that more important
All very true PF, and young marriages were not unusual going back far further than the 19th century. After the Black Death 0f 1348, then 1370 when the population fell by between 33% and 50%, there was a need to repopulate anyway, so young women / girls had babies with a gusto, with even Kings involved! There was also then a real danger to the woman going through childbirth with a high rate of deaths, and child bearing whilst very young was considered ideal as in fact that is the best time for any girl / woman to bear children.
Also do not forget that family sizes were often very large to allow for the inevitable facilities, with 10, 12, 14 or more in one family right into the 20th century. Look at the tablets in churches on the tombs of even the very wealthy. "Died 6 months", "Died 1 year", "Died 2 years", or "Died 14 years", and the like, is very common within one families listing.
No it is only the morals of late Victorian England that have continued up to about the 1960s, when it was "very wrong" for a girl to fall pregnant out of wedlock, let alone have one whilst very young, which in the slums of the great cities during the 19th century they did.
So it is really only modern values that still give us all a shock when a girl produces a baby in her early teens, or before!
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Topic: I.. just.. I'm lost for words. Grandparents at 29? (Read 3302 times)