>age old problem of people getting married way, way, way too young If it was a problem, why did so many societies choose that path back then? Lower overall lif

>age old problem of people getting married way, way, way too young If it was a problem, why did so many societies choose that path back then? Lower overall life expectancy and the prevalence of disease required you to play a game of probabilities with reproduction. Say you want four adult children. According to one source, 50% of children died before adulthood back 500 years ago [1]. So, you must plan to have eight children. Is this task doable if you start in your late 20's/early 30's? Likely not. Also, life expectancy for the mother was far lower than today [2]. The mother will be providing the food to nurture the infants, so her early demise is to be avoided. Starting earlier is again preferred. Modern society sets up different incentives for the marriage equation. We're told careers are more important than starting families. Monogamy is not the only path to fulfillment, but people must seek the other paths on their own. Normalizing non-monogamous relationships for the unprepared leads to disastrous consequences for all parties involved. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality-in-the-past https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality-in-the-past [2] https://www.sarahwoodbury.com/life-expectancy-in-the-middle-ages/ https://www.sarahwoodbury.com/life-expectancy-in-the-middle-...