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The article uses the 1950s a reference point for the age at which people leave the home and parents, but the 1950s are actually an anomaly, weirdly young for ma

The article uses the 1950s a reference point for the age at which people leave the home and parents, but the 1950s are actually an anomaly, weirdly young for marriage and household formation, at least for Western Europe culture.

duaneb 10y ago
...anomaly for the recent past, not biologically, obviously.
- forkandwait 10y ago
  Not so fast, "obviously". I believe that "neolocal" households are unique, mostly, to post middle age Western Europe. And the 1950s are anomalous within that time scale. Otherwise we see patri- or matri local multi generational households in which adulthood is not correlated with setting up a new household at all. You would marry someone and the move into their parents house. Sure you would start having children, but there isn't the same leaving adolescence thing.
  - duaneb 10y ago
    Why is that time scale interesting to you as opposed to e.g. the last 150k years?
    - Retric 10y ago
      I don't think we can say anything meaningful about peoples behaviors 10k-150k years ago, and even approaching 10k quickly get's sketchy. Humans have a long period between when it's possible to get pregnant and when it's safest to get pregnant. This may suggest prehistoric females tended to wait around a decade after puberty, or there was huge selective pressure and we still ended up like this.
pjlegato 10y ago
Er. The usual marriage age for a girl in premodern and early modern western European culture (and many other cultures worldwide) was "the onset of menses," or about 12 to 14 years old. ("Romeo and Juliet" takes place just before Juliet's 14th birthday.) Even in the modern era, the typical marriage age for women was 16 or 17 well into the 20th century in most of the western world. The reference point of the 1950s to the present is an anomaly because it's weirdly old in western culture, not weirdly young.
- oska 10y ago
  > The usual marriage age for a girl in premodern western European culture (and many other cultures worldwide) was "the onset of menses," or about 12 to 14 years old. The wikipedia article [1] doesn't agree with you. It suggests marriage in the mid twenties was most common, although there was regional variation. Noblewomen, such as the fictional Juliet, married younger. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_pattern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_patt...
  - pjlegato 10y ago
    That article says, "[in western Europe], about half of all women aged 15 to 50 years of age were married at any given time, while the other half were widows or spinsters" which is entirely consistent with what I wrote: over half of women aged 15 were, or had been, married.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - forkandwait 10y ago
      There is a large literature supporting the parent comment, started by Hajnal, not your somewhat sophistic argument. In the Western part of Europe, people married late and there were a lot of spinsters.
    - lambertsimnel 10y ago
      The passage you quote says little or nothing about the distribution of ages of married women within that range and the ages of those women married when they first married. On one hand, the married half of women in the age range could largely be the older half. On the other, the typical age of a newly married woman might be much younger than the typical age of an already married woman.

duaneb 10y ago

...anomaly for the recent past, not biologically, obviously.

forkandwait 10y ago
Not so fast, "obviously". I believe that "neolocal" households are unique, mostly, to post middle age Western Europe. And the 1950s are anomalous within that time scale. Otherwise we see patri- or matri local multi generational households in which adulthood is not correlated with setting up a new household at all. You would marry someone and the move into their parents house. Sure you would start having children, but there isn't the same leaving adolescence thing.
- duaneb 10y ago
  Why is that time scale interesting to you as opposed to e.g. the last 150k years?
  - Retric 10y ago
    I don't think we can say anything meaningful about peoples behaviors 10k-150k years ago, and even approaching 10k quickly get's sketchy. Humans have a long period between when it's possible to get pregnant and when it's safest to get pregnant. This may suggest prehistoric females tended to wait around a decade after puberty, or there was huge selective pressure and we still ended up like this.

pjlegato 10y ago

Er. The usual marriage age for a girl in premodern and early modern western European culture (and many other cultures worldwide) was "the onset of menses," or about 12 to 14 years old. ("Romeo and Juliet" takes place just before Juliet's 14th birthday.) Even in the modern era, the typical marriage age for women was 16 or 17 well into the 20th century in most of the western world. The reference point of the 1950s to the present is an anomaly because it's weirdly old in western culture, not weirdly young.

oska 10y ago
> The usual marriage age for a girl in premodern western European culture (and many other cultures worldwide) was "the onset of menses," or about 12 to 14 years old. The wikipedia article [1] doesn't agree with you. It suggests marriage in the mid twenties was most common, although there was regional variation. Noblewomen, such as the fictional Juliet, married younger. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_pattern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_patt...
- pjlegato 10y ago
  That article says, "[in western Europe], about half of all women aged 15 to 50 years of age were married at any given time, while the other half were widows or spinsters" which is entirely consistent with what I wrote: over half of women aged 15 were, or had been, married.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - forkandwait 10y ago
    There is a large literature supporting the parent comment, started by Hajnal, not your somewhat sophistic argument. In the Western part of Europe, people married late and there were a lot of spinsters.
  - lambertsimnel 10y ago
    The passage you quote says little or nothing about the distribution of ages of married women within that range and the ages of those women married when they first married. On one hand, the married half of women in the age range could largely be the older half. On the other, the typical age of a newly married woman might be much younger than the typical age of an already married woman.