February 12, 2007
From the desk of Jane Galt:Anecdotal evidence for child marriage in America
From one of my old favourites, By the Shores of Silver Lake, a sequel to Little House on the Prairie:
In no time at all, they reached the homesteader's claim shanty.It was a tiny room, boarded up-and-down, and its roof sloped all one way, so that it looked like half of a little house. It was not as big as the wheat stacks beside it, where men were threshing wheat with a noisy, chaff-puffing machine. The homesteader's wife came out to the buggy, lugging the basket of washing. Her face and arms and her bare feet were as brown as leather from teh sun. Her hair straggled uncombed and her limp dress was faded and not clean.
"You must excuse the way I look," she said. "My girl was married yesterday, and here come the threshers this morning, and this wash to do. I been hustling since before sun-up, and here's the day's work hardly started and my girl not here any more to help me."
"Do you mean Lizzie got married?" Lena asked.
"Yes, Lizzie got married yesterday," Lizzie's mother said proudly. "Her pa says thirteen's pretty young, but she's got her a good man and I say it's better to settle down young. I was married young myself."
Her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, wrote a book called Old Home Town, based on her experiences growing up in Missouri in the late 19th century. In it she similarly describes several girls married before the age of sixteen, in one case to a much older man.
From Christy, a similarly lightly fictionalised account of a woman's real experiences as a teacher in Appalachia at the turn of the 20th century:
I was wishing that I felt easier about Ruby Mae's decision, made while I was in Asheville, to marry Will Beck. She was still not quite fifteen, Will only sixteen. From the plateau of amy almost twenty years, it seemed to me that these child marriages were no good, that the girls caught in them never had a chance. They were worn out with having babies and drudgery by their middle twenties; usually they were grandmothers by their early thirties. And since they were rushing at the pretense of being grown up when they were scarecely out of childhood, they could bring so little to marriage. As Granny Barclay had once commented, "Green apples don't have much flavor."Then too, all of us at the mission had hoped that Ruby Mae would get more schooling. Since my first visit with her parents, we had succeeded in bringing about a reconciliation between the girl and her stepfather. But that had turned out to be a mixed blessing because about a month before school was out, Ruby Mae had gone back home to live. There during the summer she had more freedom for Will's courting. All too easily she had fallen back into mountain patterns where it was the accepted custom for a girl to get married when she should still be skipping around, climbing trees, catching lightning bugs, pumping high in a homemade swing, and playing elves and fairies in a cool glen.
Apparently it was still acceptable fifty years later; Loretta Lynn married a local bootlegger at the age of thirteen.
In Gone With the Wind, based on the experiences of Margaret Mitchell's grandmother, the average age of marriage of the female characters is something slightly under sixteen. Oh, and "the Wilkeses always marry their cousins".
Child marriage may not have been the norm in America in the 19th century, but it clearly wasn't too rare, because it's featured in some of the most popular historical novels based on real experiences. And I don't know how common it is in Islamic countries, either. Even if it's common in Muslim Europe--and I don't know that this is the case--this may be because parents are pushing their children into early marriages to protect them from the surrounding culture, not because this is the usual course of events back home. Do we really have good statistics on the average age of first marriage in Pakistani villages?
I am under the impression that in many western places, average age of first marriage has more to do with poverty and the supply of land than culture; it's primitive birth control. In Ireland, it rose sharply with the abolition of primogeniture, and fell again after the Famine, when the ratio of mouths to acres decreased.
Certainly marital rape was enthusiastically endorsed until pretty recently, and the tradition of forcing an unwilling bride, then holding up the bloody sheet as proof of virginity, seems at least as well anecdotally supported in the West as it is in the Middle East.
So when we have a senator write about a man putting a child's penis in his mouth, I assume that to mean in 40 years someone like yourself will take that to mean it was common practice among barbarians like us?
Not everything in the Little House books is true, but, in any case, such marriages are very rare in the books (I only remember this one) and, what is more and most of all, they were voluntary.
The bloody sheets are proof of virginity, not proof that the bride was unwilling and the groom forced her.
Surely it's at least suggestive that as recently as the mid-20th century (and indeed, into the 90s in some states) the law regarded "marital rape" as an oxymoron? What would you infer about the kind of practices likely to be condoned under a legal system that denies a woman the right to refuse intercourse with her spouse?
So, on the one hand, we have studies of historical records, and on the other, we have popular fiction.
What's that rag called? The Fictionist?
Child marriage is not quite so far back in history as you seem to imply. In South Carolina a girl can still marry as young as 14 with parental consent, although I doubt it's used much anymore.
And just to put a slightly different spin on it... I'm sure girls were sometimes forced into such marriages by their families, but probably more often they entered into them by choice (or even eloped) because their other options were so bad. Of course that's still an indictment of the culture by modern standards.
Please read journals from women during that time period. I have and have never seen anything of the sort you describe.
It would appear to me that this is yet another extension of the agenda to tar our history and prove "once and for all" that we're not all that great either.
How about this. The people "back then" had many of the same hopes, feelings, and passions that you have. Sometimes people did bad things to each other. But no where at least in the culture I come from was that kind of behavior condoned. Indeed, the whole concept of opening doors for women and respecting them and treating them well or else you don't deserve them just didn't spring out of no where.
Excuse me for not buying into the lie that just because some jerk might have behaved someway that everyone else did too.
Let us also note that in the passage Megan quotes, the girl's father mildly disapproves of the marriage. She certainly isn't being forced into anything. Neither was Melanie Wilkes.
Wasn't the average age of puberty somewhat older in past generations? That would seem to make very young marriages less likely.
One of the disconcerting things in the early marriages for Europe-based Muslims is that the spouse is very frequently living back in the home country. The reasons for this are many, from wanting to keep politico-familial relations viable to protecting the moral values of the couple.
But note that this is not exclusively Muslim behavior, either: Hindus and Sikhs are involved in this 'rather too young to our tastes' marriage marketplace.
Context please?
Are people just reflexively against having children now?
This is somehow terrible in modern eyes, but an older woman with a younger man is just spiffy.
If you do the math, you realize people applaud the relationship that will produce the fewest children- and in fact that's just what is going on in America.
I don't think such events were too common, but I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with it. Education, believe it or not, is a luxury good, I am sure many of my ancestors simply didn't have the time, money, or inclination to play. I won't demonize them for it.
Jane, I guess I don’t understand where you’re going with your argument now.
Are you saying that this proves your earlier thesis that “every Western society [] up until 100-200 years ago” was one “in which girls of 13 or 14 [were] routinely forced to marry their cousins, and in which the groom, if his conjugal attentions are resisted on the wedding night, [was] encouraged by his new in-laws to take his bride by force.”
Or have you just shifted the goal posts to trying to find anecdotal examples of young girls marrying older men in popular works of fiction?
Maybe this is going back a few to many years but certainly in Early Modern Europe we have two very distinct marriage patterns.
In northern Europe there is relatively late marriage (in C16th England, the average age for women was 26 until the C19th), in southern/Mediterranean Europe there is a very different pattern of MUCH younger marriage, often in the early teens. The reason for this that seems more accurate is what marriage symbolised. In the north, a newly married couple would set up their own house , not life with either of their parents. In the country, this meant waiting until land became available to buy or inherit, in the city this meant waiting until established in a craft or profession. Women would be expected to bring skills and a dowry (including linen, pots and pans etc) whilst men would be expected to provide the land/job. This is impossible for a 13 year old, hence the later marriage age.
In southern Europe, the married couple would more often move into one of their parents houses and live as part of an extended family (reminiscent of places such as Afghanistan and India today). Marriage was much more likely to be for social reasons/inter family politics (even among the non-rich) than for any other reason.
These differences became less pronounced by the Twentieth century (a few centuries late for my period of study!), but have influenced cultural norms.
Maybe where we see, in America, much younger marriages, this is a result of a more 'Italian' background and the general average of older marriages is reflective of the more 'Anglo-saxon' population (and therefore attitudes) of America at the time.
Alternatively, older marriages were the statistical norm but younger marriages just weren't especially frowned upon. Concepts such as 'childhood' were still relatively new and can scarcely be described as widely held.
Just a few thoughts for you, if America is nothing like Europe in this period then treat this as a wonderful bit of useless information to treasure until your next pub quiz/debate with friend/blog dispute....
LIZ
I found out recently, from my mother, that my Italian grandmother got married at 14 to my grandfather, who was 21 at the time. This would have been in 1921. The marriage was somewhat arranged by the families; my grandmother's family wanted one less mouth to feed. This was in the steel-mill culture of PA state.
It still creeps me out, but really speaks to how far women in my gene pool have come along!
Liz:
Should we chip in to get Jane a copy of The World We Have Lost?
In 1998, men's median age at first marriage was 26.7, only six months older than in 1890. Women's numbers have increased more. Their median age at first marriage was 22 in 1890, dipped down ot 20.1 in 1956 and by 1998 reached 25.Aproximately 1 percent of all 15-17 year olds have been married.
6.5% of white women and 13.4% of hispanic women aged 18-19 had ever been married.
Teens in the South were about twice as likely to have children than in the North.
http://www.clasp.org/publications/teenmariage02-20.pdf
AT: Absolutely!
Otherwise there's the more readable but more controversial (ok, outright wrong in some places)
Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England.
The economic historian in me sets up a little wail whenever I hear someone use anecdote as evidence (sorry Jane, love your blog otherwise!)
This may be a little off topic but I've never studied US history, is it fair game to assume that socially (ignoring slavery etc) it is similar to the UK/Northern Europe? Or am I just taking an overly Anglo-centric view of the world?
LIZ
Yeah, it's been pretty common through history. I just got out of a Classics class where the prof was talking today about how Athenian women were usually married between 13 and 15(to guys around the age of 30, for that matter). He didn't make claims about marital rape or incest, but I've heard enough other examples of that in various historical junk to make it seem in line with what I know of human history.
I don't know much about the subject myself, but I would join the chorus of people suggesting reading real history on the subject. A few points:
An 8th grade education was a big deal, and high school education was uncommon until fairly recently in American history. My great-grandmother grew up on the frontier in Washington state. She got an 8th grade education locally, but in order to go to high school, she had to go to go to a distant boarding school. She eventually got homesick, and went home and married the town blacksmith. She was 18 or so, he was about ten years older when they married in 1915. A lot of late 19th century/early 20th century couples would have followed more or less the same pattern. (The blacksmith's own mother had married at 16 and was eventually the town schoolmistress and one of the founders of a local church.)
Let us not forget the existence of "coming out" or "making a debut". Before coming out, a girl was a child. After coming out, she became a marriageable young lady. I'm not sure at what age it was generally done, or how rigorously the rules were observed on the frontier, but the custom has been quite widespread. That's more or less what the Mexican quinceanera (sp?) is, and it's at 15 years.
One of my grandmothers on my mother's side was married at 15 (I am 38) and her mother was married as 15 as well. In fact my great grandmother outlived both of her children. She's 92 now.
BSD
I side with Jane, who seems to be taken aback by the weird sort of vitriol against all things muslim. It's a bizarre phenomenom when we clutch on to this weird fascination of a culture that seems so different from how we are. Jane is just trying to show how not different we really are.
People seem to be the same across space and time. Ever read "War and Peace"?
Interesting how any criticism, no matter how justified, of Moslem norms is "weird sort of vitriol".
I wonder if Jane will ever discover what clitordectomy, aka FGM, is and where it is commonly practiced? I wonder what she'll say when she finds out that this practice is now becoming a norm within certain communities in the US?
What's bizarre is the rather pathetic efforts to pretend that Islam is "just like us", when events keep demonstrating exactly the opposite.
Hey I'm reading War and Peace right now and I'm loving it. Set in c. 1810 but written in 1860 it features
1. Child marriages by the bucketful. 16 year old girls marrying 30 year old men.
2. Fashionable elite who are against the war and wish to surrender at any time. These are the same elite who are atheist and also disparage the religious military types.
3. Intelligent military leaders who are forced into poor decisions by the impatience of the media and cultural elites back in the capital.
It could almost have been written today.
To be sure, it's best not to personify Islam, or think of it as a monolithic institution. It is a religion, much like Christianity. Don't forget that these are PEOPLE following this religion. It is not some symbol of evil.
Stanford wrote:
To be sure, it's best not to personify Islam, or think of it as a monolithic institution. It is a religion, much like Christianity.
It is a political program that includes a religion. A political program that's pretty effective at suppressing minorities, at gradually eliminating all non-Moslem ways of living, too, as the Zoroastrians of Persia, the Hindus of Pakistan and Bangladesh, the Christians of Syria/Egypt/Turkey can attest .... those few that remain.
Don't forget that these are PEOPLE following this religion. It is not some symbol of evil.
Well, gee, PEOPLE once followed Stalinism, and PEOPLE once followed Nazism, so I guess that those weren't evil, either?
Posted by Stanford at February 12, 2007 8:57 PM
I side with Jane, who seems to be taken aback by the weird sort of vitriol against all things muslim. It's a bizarre phenomenom when we clutch on to this weird fascination of a culture that seems so different from how we are. Jane is just trying to show how not different we really are.
People seem to be the same across space and time. Ever read "War and Peace"?
Egpytian pharoahs used the entirety of their surplus labor to build eternal monuments to themselves. Carthaginians sacrificed children. Roman fathers could legally kill anyone in their family. Japanese samurai and nobles killed themselves to restore honor. Tens of thousands of French nobles died in the 18th century duelling each other. Some men kill their daughters/sisters when they are raped to preserve the man's honor. And that's just off the top of my head. Learning about history and other cultures used to help educated people understand how different we all truly are, but now it's easier just to say we're all the same after getting the sampler plate in World Cultures class and spending a month backpacking across Europe.
It isn't necessary, or even a good idea, to analyze this question by studying novels, be it "Gone With the Wind" or "War and Peace," when legions of historians have studied the question carefully.
From D.M. Palliser, "The Age of Elizabeth" (1983) [the standard work on Tudor social history], pp. 41 to 42:
"Contrary to popular belief, youthful marriage was not the norm, and child marriage was normally confined to aristocratic property transactions, and was rare even in that circle. . . . A family reconstitution sample of ten widely scattered parishes shows a mean age at first marriage for women of almost 25 years in the period 1550-99, rising to 26 in the following half-century. . . . Later Tudor England falls neatly into the 'European' (or strictly north-west European) marriage pattern identified by J. Jahnal. He argues that at some time between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries the region adopted a demographic regime with a late age at marriage . . . . Hollingwsirth sees no clear evidence of the 'European' pattern before about 1560, whereas R.M.Smith details hints of it as early as 1377. Unquestionably a relatively late age at marriage normal by Elizabeth's reign . . . ."
From David Hackett Fischer, "Albion's Seed" (1989), pp. 76, 285, 675:
He reports average ages at marriage for women in seventeenth and eighteenth century New England as ranging between 18.5 and 25.3 (depending on the town and period). In the Chesapeake colonies, female mean age at first marriage ranges from 17.0 to 22.8, and in the eighteenth century backcountry, mean female age at marriage ranges from 19.1 to 19.8.
Obviously, Americans were marrying earlier than northern Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries, but it hardly seems that marriage at 14 was a feature of "every Western society" prior to 1800 or 1900. As I said before, I would actually challenge someone to find a county and a year in American history where such marriages constituted more than 0.1% of the total.
More anecdotal evidence in popular fiction (sort of):
Quantas is the worlds safest airline. We know that because Dustin Hoffman said so in the movie "Rain Man".
And anybody who's seen an episode of Hogan's Heroes knows the Nazi's treated our POW's pretty good.
"Child marriage may not have been the norm in America in the 19th century, but it clearly wasn't too rare, because it's featured in some of the most popular historical novels based on real experiences"
Alternatively, is it possible it is featured prominently because it was rare?
I have a relative who married at 14 back in the 40’s, but it was a shotgun marriage because this older dude got her pregnant. Too bad they don’t do something about that nowadays.
This topic caught my eye because my job involves Catholic marriage annulments. Whenever we have an arranged marriages, you can toss a coin and it will come down that the people involved are either Chaldean (usually Iraqi or Jordanian Catholics) or Albanian. Since Islam is an issue, apparently, I guess I should note that Albania is mostly Muslim. In the 3 years I’ve had this job, I’ve had a Sicilian outlier, but the marriage in that instance took place several decades ago.
The Sicilian marriage involved cousins, but one of the priests in that instance noted that the case was a good example for why they (the Catholic church) should not permit cousins to marry. I gather that the Catholics have a long history of byzantine (hah!) rules about “affinity,” as in who is or isn’t considered a relative for the purposes of marriage. I’m not Catholic myself so I can’t comment much on their history, but I gather that blood relatives are excluded for Catholic marriages, and certain relatives by marriage (e.g., stepchildren) are also excluded.
I will note that one of the grounds for annulment is the “force or fear” provision. I do not know how ancient that provision happens to be, nor do I know if that rule was always enforced in the past. I just know that ground exists and it’s used now, although rarely in my experience.
Both Albanians and Chaldeans report being forced into an arranged marriage, but only Chaldeans are married to their cousins (by force or voluntarily). Men report being coerced or tricked into marriage, as well as the women and girls in their late teens. It is not unusual for a 16-17 year old girl to be married off to a man who is ~30 years old, but I recall an Albanian case where a girl was betrothed when she was ~8 or so, but again, that particular marriage took place decades ago.
Only the Chaldean women report being forced into marriage as a form of protection, but that’s only when the marriage takes place in Iraq.
Both Albanian and Chaldeans report that often times the reason they are forced into marriages is family pride. Jane Galt wondered why we see so little of arranged marriages among Westerners, and I suspect that the “pride” issue is a good cause why. We are individualists. Parents are not going to arrange marriages to save themselves embarrassment because we don’t see the whole family as disgraced just because one kid didn’t get married.
The Albanians and Chaldeans seem to have parents who are preoccupied with what others think of them. They don’t want to back out of marriages, no matter how obviously they should, because they will be thought disgraced in the eyes of their neighbors, to such an extent that any other daughters they have will find their marriage chances in peril if one daughter balks at marriage.
Even men will have a hard time turning down a marriage if the bride-to-be is his cousin, as some Chaldeans have reported. From what I've seen, it is especially hard to back out of marriage if the couple is engaged, even if the couple never met before the engagement. Once betrothed, you apparently can’t back out without shaming the family. This is related to the reasons you see honor killings in the Arab/Muslim world: if they’re “shamed” the only way to retrieve their neighbors’ esteem is to kill the girl. We just don’t think in those terms, certainly not to the extremes that they do.
The father of one of the Chaldean women said that another problem is that the girl is just expected to marry the guy no matter what he’s like, and just accept him as is. From what I’ve seen (among both sexes and both Chaldean and Albanians) low expectations is absolutely key. It does not seem to make a difference if the potential spouse is crazy, retarded (literally), violent, abusive, promiscuous (if a man), a gambler (that is prevalent among complaints), the marriage will go on. To avoid disgrace, being married and staying married is vital.
I started reading this blog in April 2005, when I stumbled across Jane's "really long post" about gay marriage. In that post and ever since, Jane has regularly done something that too few chatterers in the chattering classes do: brought light to heated topics. My law school dean called what she does "sympathetic engagement with counter-argument"; another way of putting it might be "avoiding straw men." You see this all the time in her posts, perhaps most notably in the ones about abortion: Jane fairly presents the most compelling alternative to whatever it is she proposes, and squarely addresses it. This ability to sypathetically engage with counter-argument has, along with Jane's delightful prose, kept me coming back to this blog for the better part of two years.
Jane's history of fair fighting makes her two most recent posts surprising and atypical. After recently implying that Western culture has historically condoned young marriage, cousin marriage, and forcible marriage, and receiving a number of reasonable rebuttals in her comments box, Jane now says that in the West "marital rape was enthusiastically endorsed until pretty recently" and that there is a "tradition of forcing an unwilling bride" to submit to sex.
These are strong statements without a shred of support. It would be one thing to say that marital rape has been condoned or tolerated in the West, in spite of religious opposition (e.g., St. Joseph is considered a righteous man precisely because he did not rape the Virgin Mary, and even married her despite her pregnancy). But that sort of reasonable statement is apparently not enough fun to write. Too bad.
I agree with pretty much everything Joe Magarac wrote in his February 13, 2007 9:22 AM. A Jane Galt post is typically one in which she not only avoids logical fallacies, provides strong evidentiary (or logical) support for her opinions, and goes out of her way to be fair and objective to side she disagrees with. These last couple of posts on marital rape have been atypical and I would strongly encourage any new visitors to read through the archives for some of her more typical work and definitely stick around for future posts.
My grandmother was married at fourteen. Life was just different back then, and to compare it to today doesn't really work. Had more to do with survival than lust.
Further anecdotal information, from further back:
PARIS
Of honourable reckoning are you both;
And pity 'tis you lived at odds so long.
But now, my lord, what say you to my suit?
CAPULET
But saying o'er what I have said before:
My child is yet a stranger in the world;
She hath not seen the change of fourteen years,
Let two more summers wither in their pride,
Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride.
PARIS
Younger than she are happy mothers made.
CAPULET
And too soon marr'd are those so early made.
The earth hath swallow'd all my hopes but she,
Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 2
Presumably the idea of "14 is a bit young, but 16 is ok" made sense to Shakespeare's audience
Donna, was your grandmother a middle-class American or European? Also, was she pregnant? If not, was the marriage forced upon her? Please give particulars.
Let me note that my grandfather was a heavy smoker who lived to be 87 (and did not die of any cancer).
Personally, I think the whole idea of treating mid-teenagers (say, 14 and up) as children rather than as young adults is a horrendous mistake as well as a self-fulfilling prophecy. And I'm speaking across the board -- not just about sex & marriage.
History is full of examples of famous people in that age bracket who acted like adults (for better or for worse) Alexander the Great, Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, Messalina ( not saying that she was a particularly good role-model, though {{grin}} ).
To change the subject slightly: I once saw a reference claiming that 14 year old boys were able to become officers (i.e. midshipmen) in the British Navy in the Wellington era and actually command other men in battle. Does anybody know whether or not that's true?? Thanx in Advance.
If your culture assumes
1) Women can't control themselves, and
2) It's necessary for brides to be virgin at marriage (or not to bring a couple of little bastard children to the ceremony, when reliable birth control isn't available or is under-used)
then it's clearly necessary to get your daughter married as soon as possible after the first menses. That means either an older man who is able to support a family marrying a child bride (e.g., Loretta Lynn, married at 13 and a grandmother at 28), or two kids marrying and one of the families supporting them (this used to be pretty common among royalty, for two reasons - the parents often wanted to firm up an alliance with a marriage ASAP and/or to get the next generation of heirs ASAP).
Before effective birth control became available about 1960, even most cultures that didn't have Judeo-Christian-Muslim hangups about sex and didn't worry about virginity did worry about their daughters becoming single parents - although there were some cultures where normally the young woman would prove her fertility by gettin pregnant, and then the guy had no choice but to marry her.
The northern European pattern was different because they trusted their young women to a much greater extent - but there were also shotgun marriages when they slipped. My cousin was married in a shotgun marriage in North Dakota in the 1970's, but at least she was nearly through high school, not a 13 year old!
As for how far that northern European marriage pattern could go, consider Gerhard Domagk, the German medical researcher who discovered the first sulfa drugs. In 1914, at 18 years old, he went off to war with a picture of his high school sweetheart in his backpack. Nine years later, he proposed. It took two more years to get a house and make all the other arrangements so they could get married.
Tom Weaver:
As we've said, people in 17th-century England typically married in their mid-20s. Remember that Romeo and Juliet were Italian nobles.
There was a news report about 2000 or 2001 about a woman that had just gotten married, with her parent's permission at 13, I think it was in Annapolis, MD. The "Age of Consent" laws in various states usually define when a person may marry *without* his/her parent's permission.
When I was in the eighth grade in eastern Kentucky, one of my classmates got married. I was thirteen at the time and I assume she the same.
Averages don't tell you much about how common outliers are. For example, if the average is 19 years, you could get that by one half marrying at 14 and one half marrying at 24. The distribution is what matters for the current argument, and what no one has mentioned.
Enough about the US 100-200 years ago. What about Muslim countries today? Are "girls of 13 or 14 routinely forced to marry their cousins"? There is surely some incidence of this, but is it "routine"? Is it likely higher than was the case in the US 100-200 years ago?
See this table of average age of first marriage (women), by country:
http://www.dataranking.com/table.cgi?TP=po08-2&LG=e&RG=0
Of the countries with an average age below 20, most are African. Afganistan is the only predominantly-Muslim country with a below-20 average.
Interestingly, Morocco's average is higher than the United States, and Bahrain and Kuwait are not far behind.
I don't know how reliable these statistics are. But there's certainly no pattern of Muslim countries trending lower than non-Muslim.
The development of public use microdata samples of the U.S. census (see ipums.org) eliminates the need to appeal to anecdotal information. In just a few minutes, I was able to make a quick cross-tabulation of women's marital status by single years of age in 1880. In 1880, just 0.1% of females age 13 were married. The percentage rises to 0.6% for females age 14, 1.3% at age 15, 4.4% at age 16, and 9.5% at age 17.
Good work, hacker. I wish I knew how to do that kind of thing. I see that I was right when I said "one in a thousand" for marriage at 13, but a little low (it should be 6 in a thousand) for 14-year-olds.
Palliser's work, which I cited earlier, and the sources cited therein, suggest that the numbers would be the same or a little lower for Tudor England and most northern European countries in the early modern period.
Your statistics suggest, responding to billswift, that outliers (at least on the young side) are not that common. I.e., if we assume that substantially all women did get married in 19th century America, and the average age was 20, then only 0.1 percent of the marriages are 7 years earlier than the average.
Pace Megan, no one is presenting evidence (statistical or anecdotal) that any of these marriages were forced.
To the commenter who said "It's a bizarre phenomenom when we clutch on to this weird fascination of a culture that seems so different from how we are. Jane is just trying to show how not different we really are."
I recommend reading this about marriage in Muslim countries before making such a claim:
http://tinyurl.com/7k63m
Money quote: "In Iraq, as in much of the region, nearly half of all married couples are first or second cousins to each other. A 1986 study of 4,500 married hospital patients and staff in Baghdad found that 46% were wed to a first or second cousin, while a smaller 1989 survey found 53% were "consanguineously" married."
The point is not that child marriage, cousin marriage, etc. were the norm; the point is that clearly our culture permitted it until recently. For starters, New England and England are not the only areas in "the west"; my understanding, as Liz Ford's, is that there was considerable regional variation, with child marriage and cousin marriage being relatively common in Appalachia and almost unheard of in New England; relatively common in the south of Europe and less common in the north, with the exception of some ethnic groups.
As I understand it, the muslims in Europe mostly don't practice FGM; it's an African thing, and the only big Arab country where it was a cultural practice is Egypt, which has mounted a concerted effort to get rid of it. Of course, there are African muslims in Europe, but I don't think they are the majority, and at any rate, not all African muslims do it. I am against FGM, but there are adult african women who have chosen it voluntarily and argue that it is not that bad, and at any rate not any worse than what their tribes do to boys. (You should read about some of the more exotic forms of African male circumcision. Really cringe-inducing.)
Girls certainly were forced to marry men they didn't want to marry for all sorts of reasons, the obvious one being pregnancy, but also for things like getting caught after dark without a chaperone, or needing money. The US also had its own version of honor killings; the ostensible justification for lynchings in many areas was that if a black man were brought to trial for raping a white woman, her family would have to kill her rather than let her testify.
There's a tendency among many people to view muslims as some sort of crazy monsters. I would not want to live in a culture that views women as property, and I don't think it is right. But it wasn't that long ago before western culture viewed women as the property of their husbands; hell, my mother couldn't get a credit card in the 1960's without a husband or father signing off on it. That's not some indicator of a fundamentally sick culture; it's a practice that needs to be changed. Muslim parents love their children, just like western parents, and want them to be happy. The women who have escaped do have horrible stories of abuse, which are despicable and indict the culture for allowing it. But there's a tendency to assume that their stories are the stories of every muslim woman. They aren't. They're the stories of the muslim women whose families were so autocratic, unloving and dysfunctional that they were willing to turn their backs on them. Just as most of our great grandmothers did not spend their lives mired in the misery of being without property, the vote, or their own legal name, most muslim women probably aren't made miserable by it. Human beings have a remarkable capacity for being happy in adverse circumstances. Again, that is not a justification of any of these practices, which I abhor; certainly Europe should not, in my opinion, honour marriages contracted between fourteen year olds and cousins they've never met. But the demonisation of Arab/Muslim culture as something wholly other, something terrible and hate-filled and oppressive and uniformly awful, isn't right. If America could be a great nation in 1787 even though it permitted slavery, denied women and landless men the right to vote, harbored brutal penalties for homosexuality, treated women as the legal property of various men, and so forth, then surely Islamic countries can be great nations with some nasty practices they should get rid of?
Jane wrote "If America could be a great nation in 1787 even though it permitted slavery, denied women and landless men the right to vote, harbored brutal penalties for homosexuality, treated women as the legal property of various men, and so forth, then surely Islamic countries can be great nations with some nasty practices they should get rid of?"
Getting rid of these practices means getting rid of Islam, which ain't gonna happen. They're part and parcel of each other.
JG yesterday:
This [a "traditional society" in which girls of 13 or 14 are routinely forced to marry their cousins, and in which the groom, if his conjugal attentions are resisted on the wedding night, is encouraged by his new in-laws to take his bride by force] describes, of course, every Western society too, up until 100-200 years ago.
JG today:
The point is not that child marriage, cousin marriage, etc. were the norm; the point is that clearly our culture permitted it until recently.
Jane wrote:
As I understand it, the muslims in Europe mostly don't practice FGM; it's an African thing, and the only big Arab country where it was a cultural practice is Egypt, which has mounted a concerted effort to get rid of it.
Perhaps you should discuss this with Hirsi Ali, a Somali who suffered from the practice at an early age, or you could do some web searching and find out that FGM is also practiced in Sudan, was recently discovered to be practiced in the Kurdish areas of Iraq, etc.
Then you could find out that Somali immigrants to the US have not only introduced the alcohol-free taxicab, but also FGM as a cultural practice.
Of course, there are African muslims in Europe, but I don't think they are the majority, and at any rate, not all African muslims do it.
Jane, you aren't thinking about this very much, but rather seem to be emoting. Maybe if you did a little research that went further than a few 19th century novels, as several of your readers have done, you'd be able to think more clearly?
I am against FGM, but there are adult african women who have chosen it voluntarily and argue that it is not that bad, and at any rate not any worse than what their tribes do to boys. (You should read about some of the more exotic forms of African male circumcision. Really cringe-inducing.)
Jane, this is one of the dumbest things I have ever read on this web site. It's so dumb, I am not sure where to start on it. Shall I start with the difference between what an adult chooses to do, and what is done to a 5 year old (or 2 year old) girl? Shall I point out that "it's no worse than another practice" is a logical fallacy? Shall I point out that you are edging up to defending child abuse?
Maybe you have a cold or some other brain-fogging problem, but on this topic you don't seem to be deploying any logic or reason at all.
What I think the more likely answer is Jane has some kind of emotional baggage with this issue...perhaps something in her past or family or something...I hope she is able to let it go.
But even without trying to psychoanalyze her, what I think is interesting is how she brings up odd cases and points to them as some form of "the norm" or at least common practice, or whatever when no relative that I know, no journal that I've read even hints at this.
Maybe Jane is commenting on the fact that people got away with stuff more back in the days when we didn't attempt to legislate every single action we do? We're talking about a society that considered the act of taxation to be tyranny. The didn't exactly jump all over other people's business as long as it was kept relatively private. That's my understanding of it at least. There are always exceptions.
I have no qualms about saying 18th century America was vastly superior to the modern muslim world, even though I've been to neither. Dunno why she does though...
How about male circumcision, ellipsis? Is that child abuse? Chopping off part of an innocent infant's penis, permanently reducing sexual sensation and opening up the possibility of complications? It seems obvious to me that it is abusive and wrong, except that since *we* do it, it's somehow all right; cultures that practice FGM feel the same way.
I'm not defending FGM; I think it should be stamped out. (And feel the same way about male circumcision of all types.) But there is a difference between indicting a cultural practice, and indicting a culture. I'm trying to point out that FGM is not the act of monsters; it is, like male circumcision in America, a cultural practice that seems normal and desireable to its practicioners. I suggest the exhaustive essay on FGM in "Why do Men Barbecue?" for an anthropological look at the topic, as well as a discussion of its dispersion.
Last time I looked, Sudan and Somalia were in Africa. And FGM in Africa is not specifically a muslim practice; it's also common among Christians and animists, and varies by tribe, not religion. A friend who is an Egyptian Copt (i.e. Christian) learned that his great aunts had all had the procedure done; it stopped with his father's generation, thanks to a government campaign against the practice.
Isn't the problem the origin of these undesirable practices?
In the west, child marriage, marital rape, forced marriage etc were accepted as cultural norms, but very little religious slant or justification were used. They were seen as right because they were 'natural'.
The problem in the ME and other Muslim countries is the use of religion to justify these actions. Even if we ignore some of the more dramatic books, for those who like anecdotal evidence :-), tales such as the 'Bookseller of Kabul' where the family is 'liberal and 'middle-class' (interpret those on Afghani standards) the subjugation of women by men, the marriage of young girls to old men and polygamy is given religious justification and sanctioned by those who call themselves religious scholars. The same can be said of the Hudood ordinances in Pakistan, KSA and Nigeria; religion is manipulated to oppress women and girls.
Why is Islam used in this way when Christianity generally isn't? Well, Islam originated in a HIGHLY misogynistic culture and so its rules regarding women were pretty radically liberating at the time, Christianity evolved in a culture which although undoubtedly also misogynistic, was nowhere near as bad as pre-Islamic Arabia.
Muslims aren't crazy aliens from Mars, certainly, but it is an inescapable fact that Muslim countries and (thankfully to a far less degree) Muslim communities in the West tend to be highly patriarchal both legally and culturally in a way that negatively and severely impacts on women and evidence from the Quran is used to uphold this status quo by scholars.
Even at the worst time for women in the (north) West (IMHO, 1500-1900) the legal and cultural situation was not as bad as it is for a great many women in modern middle eastern/Islamic countries today. I'm not sure how a comparison to our mothers not being allowed credit cards (or being allowed to own property at all) can quite be compared to a widespread cultural acceptance of the marriage of girls 9-13 (cf: Afghanistan second marriage rates (where a man has taken a second wife when the first is still living))
FGM is the result of a system where dowries are VERY high and inheritance is patrilineal. There is therefore a massive problem if the girl is not a virgin on marriage and the way to insure this is FGM. The other way is make sure the girl marries very young before having time to be tempted.
I have a strong belief that it is no coincidence that where marriage is seen primarily in terms of property transaction we see much higher cases of child marriage, forced marriage, polygamy and FGM.
LIZ FORD
What AT said.
Also, as a lawyer, I have to object to the expression that women were treated as "property." Property is alienable: do you think it was easy to get rid of your wife in Tudor England? Or colonial America? Slaves were property; does anyone think that the law treated wives the same as it treated slaves? Were there any wives who wanted to switch their status?
If you want an analogy to properly understand Anglo-American legal history, it is this: married women were treated much as children are today. (The legal term is "feme covert.") No one would describe children today as "property," although they are not permitted to vote, or choose where they can live, or make enforceable contracts, or control their own property. Maybe it was wrong to treat women that way, but they weren't "property."
Jane wrote:
How about male circumcision, ellipsis? Is that child abuse? Chopping off part of an innocent infant's penis, permanently reducing sexual sensation and opening up the possibility of complications? It seems obvious to me that it is abusive and wrong, except that since *we* do it, it's somehow all right; cultures that practice FGM feel the same way.
Well, let's see. First of all, you are still engaging in the "tu quoque" fallacy: two wrongs don't make a right, Jane. Second of all, there's a rather energetic debate going on in Western civilization right now about circumcision of infant boys, although I don't expect you to know about it as you aren't a parent. But you could, if you searched a bit before posting...
And third, I don't propose to dictate what Sudanese or Somali or Kurdish parents do to their children, although I can deplore bad things. However I do think that FGM is not a good thing, and that is should not be a practice that is tolerated in the West. However, it is in the process of being established in the United States thanks to some Moslem immigrants. Once it's established deeply enough, it will be very difficult to get rid of.
Anyway, thanks for the red herring. It's tasty, with mustard.
I'm not defending FGM; I think it should be stamped out. (And feel the same way about male circumcision of all types.)
How do you propose to stamp out FGM among people who insist they are ordered to do it by Allah himself? Yes, Jane, I'm aware of the position taken by Al Ansar in Egypt; it is not mandatory. I'm also aware that the Egyptian government has opposed it. Maybe you should look into just what's going to be involved in "stamping it out" before casually accepting it into the US?
And then there's male circumcision....cool, so you want to tell Orthodox Jews that they must give up a practice that is literally holy to them, because you don't like it. Jane, do you have any idea how petulant and solipsistic you are coming across?
But there is a difference between indicting a cultural practice, and indicting a culture.
Well, now, that depends, doesn't it? If a culture were to hold that, say, cannibalism was a non-negotiable part of their culture, would it be possible to indict the practice without indicting the culture? I do not think so. And in anticipation of your response, let me state that I am not equating FGM with cannibalism, nor am I equating cannibalism with Islam, nor am I implying that you are a cannibal. I hope that covers everything...
I'm trying to point out that FGM is not the act of monsters; it is, like male circumcision in America, a cultural practice that seems normal and desireable to its practicioners. I suggest the exhaustive essay on FGM in "Why do Men Barbecue?" for an anthropological look at the topic, as well as a discussion of its dispersion.
I dunno, Jane, taking a pair of scissors to the labia and clitoris of a 2 year old seems like rather monstrous act to me. This is a custom I do not want to see taking hold in my country, not at all. Thanks for the pointer, I don't know when I'll have time to look at it.
Last time I looked, Sudan and Somalia were in Africa.
Yes, they are. Now, for the bonus round, tell us all what part of Africa contains the Kurdish region of Iraq...and then bear in mind that Sudan, Somalia and Kurdistan are not the only places where FGM is practiced. Search engines are your friend...
And FGM in Africa is not specifically a muslim practice; it's also common among Christians and animists, and varies by tribe, not religion.
That is true. But so far as I know, only the Moslems are bringing it into America and Europe. Furthermore, I suspect that it will be easier to convince, for example, a Sudanese Christian couple to not mutilate their daughters than a similar Moslem couple, for the simple reason that there's no justification in the Bible for the practice, but some Moslems point to verses in the Koran and a Hadith or two that they claim supports the practice. I'm not enough of a scholar of Islam to really debate that point, I'm just taking note that some Moslems claim Koranic mandate, and others do not.
A friend who is an Egyptian Copt (i.e. Christian) learned that his great aunts had all had the procedure done; it stopped with his father's generation, thanks to a government campaign against the practice.
I've no doubt that is true, and it proves that African Christians can give the practice up. It is an open question whether the same is true of all Moslems who currently practice it, however.
Thanks for responding. Please take care.
More anecdotal evidence for child marriages. :)
... it worked in preview, but the main site killed my link.
http://www.weddingcram.com/images/Cake_Tops/D944.gif
Respectful disagreement is a virture....I think...
Anybody want some ice cream? It's getting rather hot in here, don't you think?
As I understand it, Muslim law does give inheritance rights to daughters (although less than to sons), and does give property rights to married women, unlike English law of two hundred years ago. I remember Bernard Lewis commenting that early English female visitors to Turkey commented on the greater rights that Turkish women possessed, as compared to themselves.
I certainly do not like some aspects of some Muslim cultures, but let us not condemn Islam any more than it deserves.
I love the blog that you have. I was wondering if you would link my blog to yours and in return I would do the same for your blog. If you want to, my site name is American Legends and the URL is:
http://www.americanlegends.blogspot.com
If you want to do this just go to my blog and in one of the comments just write your blog name and the URL and I will add it to my site.
Thanks,
Mark
Jane, I can not disagree with you more.
Male circumcision has been shown to reduce the risk of AIDS by 70% in Africa. (Link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/07/06/MNGANDJFVK1.DTL Sorry-my 'HTML Fu' is not so good)If that percentage is good enough to call for mandatory vaccinating of pre-teen girls to reduce a very curable form of cancer, it should be good enough for snipping boys in regards to preventing an incurable disease. I've not seen any work that suggests that FGM prevents disease.
In my (very limited) experience, every single man I have met who has gotten 'cut' as an adult HATES the parent who made that wonderful decision not to cut them as a child. And the number one reason they had to have it done? They married women who had trouble with yeast infections. (So, your future daughter in law is going to hate you as well.) The friend who had it done whom I was closest to explained that the only way that he could keep his wife 'yeast-free' was 45 minute cleaning sessions pre-coitus.
Describing FGM as 'female circumcision' is a horrible misnomer. For most Americans that gives the false impression that it involves a simple snip. In her book, The Caged Virgin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, gives a very in-depth description as to what happens. Comparing what happens to those girls with what we do to boys is like saying getting a tattoo is no different than being branded.
In the post, you said, 'marital rape was enthusiastically endorsed.' Wow. Enthusiastically endorsed? Can you site references for that? I mean mainstream, middle class,non-edge of civilization, academic/civic/religious leaders enthusiastically endorsing martial rape. You are perhaps my favorite blog and I know there is no way that you would make such an extraordinary claim without evidence, but I've never seen that. I know it went on. I know that there was a feeling that it was impossible to prove, so there were rarely, if ever, any charges filed, but I've not seen enthusiastic endorsement of it.
(And by rape, I trust you are referring to rape rape, not the MacKinnon 'All-sex-is-rape' type.)
Finally, you wrote: Muslim parents love their children, just like western parents, and want them to be happy.
Really? How many western parents are happy when their son or daughter straps explosives on themselves and commit suicide while killing other people? No, it's not all Muslims. It is, however, an accepted mainstream thought within Islam. We~the US~ do not, and to my knowledge we never have, encouraged, approved, or endorsed suicide-murders of women and children for religious reasons.
Given that in many parts of the world urban life expectancy was in the 35-39 range and rural was 43-48, and given infant mortality rates (failure to reach 3rd birthday) was 10-20%, women who gave birth in thei mid teens were the only ones who could care for all their children (not just the eldest) thru age 15 before they croaked. Those who got a late start left orphans.
Sol - yes and no. A large part of low life expectancy for women was directly related to giving birth. Male life expectancy was much higher for most of history.
Muslim fanatics mutilate young girls, slit throats, fly planes into buildings, other unpleasantness.
Jane response: "America is just as bad...or at least it was 200 years ago! Sorta."
Ouch.
Excuse, could someone help me out here? I appear to be lost. Is this not the URL for Asymmetrical Information? I've lost my bearings a bit. First, catching up on recent posts, I came across one with the very odd premise that objections to the puerile driveling of some Edwards blog-hire arise from one's being scandalized at any criticism of the Pope's views. Hmmm. Ahem. Well, maybe I was missing something, so moving right along...Wait. Here's a couple more wherein the "interesting question" of "'[how] should a liberal society react when people with illiberal bedrock beliefs begin assembling political power'?" is answered "Don't be so sanctimonious. You (or your grandparents at any rate) are (were) every bit as illiberal and the only reason you think otherwise is because you're ininformed. If you weren't uninformed you'd understand, as I do, that everything is exactly the same as everything else".
I like this blog because it's usually the sort of place where writer and readers assumed a common body of knowledge/understanding at least to the extent that one could count on not being irritated by prim insults to one's intelligence - are there really readers here who need referrals to anthropological essays in order to learn that people have reasons for doing the things they do? Does Jane assume, e.g., that her readers heretofore believed that people practiced FGM in trance-like states of irrationality, and were utterly unaware that said people had rationales and justifications for the practice? Are there really readers here to whom it is world view-altering news that Americans (or Westerners in general), in some times and places, married young or married their cousins? Are writer or readers in need of laborious explications of why the term "FGM" has replaced the often inaccurate "female circumcision"? Have A.I. comments recently been infested with the denizens of the farther reaches of blogosphere wingnuttery, that finger-wagging remedial lectures on human commonalities have become necessary? Did I miss a turn and wander back into that long-ago freshman required sociology course where "but it's their culture, and our ancestors practiced slavery!" was the ne plus ultra in sophisticated analysis and commentary?
Nicholas Rosen: As I understand it, Muslim law does give inheritance rights to daughters (although less than to sons), and does give property rights to married women, unlike English law of two hundred years ago. I remember Bernard Lewis commenting that early English female visitors to Turkey commented on the greater rights that Turkish women possessed, as compared to themselves.
True, but one can also find anecdotes from the early modern age about the astonishment of Turkish diplomats and other Eastern visitors at the high status, courtesy, and freedom accorded to European women. Interesting, but I wouldn't draw conclusions about anything from snippets from traveler's tales, either way.
Nicholas Rosen, married women in England 200 years ago (and 500 years ago, for that matter) had property rights. The legal term is "dower rights." Also a considerable set of rights under the matrimonial laws. They didn't have the same rights they have now, but it is false to say that they had no rights, as though a married woman was at risk of starving in the street if she displeased her husband at any moment.
Single women would generally have had the same property rights (though not the same inheritance rights) as single men.
Alas, although I could explain dower (and its male correlative, curtesy) at some length, I am utterly unable to explain the Turkish law of marital property circa 1800. But I doubt anyone else here can do so either.
Are pregnant young teens really rarer in the US/UK now than 200 years ago? Does progress consist of guaranteeing that such mothers are not married?
A poster above referred to 14 year old midshipmen in the RN. IIRC 14 years was the minimum age limit in WW1. In the 18th century it was 12 years old. They were mainly there to gain experience, and could be sent aboard even younger: "The future Admiral Duckworth had been in three fleet actions before he was twelve years old."
The minimum age for a lieutenant was 18 years, so I imagine a midshipman could hope for some authority at a younger age than that. Further details in “The Wooden World”.
I love the point made by anon. On one hand we're talking about vaccinating girls as young as 11-13 because they could be having sex at any day now and we have to protect them from disease. On the other hand we're pretending to be appalled at these girls being responsible and raising a family.
I suppose if it was one or the other I'd take marriage of 13 year old (who wanted to) over 13 year olds just having casual sex and raising kids on their own or getting abortions.
I'd prefer neither because most 13 year olds I have met are no where near ready for marriage. I've never met a 13 year old in Afghanistan or in medeval europe though. I'd assume those types are a bit more mature.
After reading Jane's comments on the male circmcision, I'm afraid I'm going to be joining the increasingly long list of Jane's crtics. Sorry, Jane, but the others have you nailed this time -- you appear to be emoting your opinions without presenting an evidenced defense, in sharp contrast to your usual approach.
I can sort of follow your attempt to observe historical parallels in marriage and sexual custom, but the evidence you present is weak; and your views on male circumcision strike me as being highly illogical. In spite of the periodic misuse of the word "circumcision" as an alternate descriptor for FGM, it is nothing of the sort.
The worst provable consequence of a normal male circumcision procedure, so far as I am aware, is a slower rate of pleasure increase prior to coitus, something the female invovled will not likely object to. The best consequences are easier hygienic cleanliness and a reduced risk of STD and infection transfer (both M-to-F and F-to-M; a previous poster has already given a common example of each). Meanwhile, infanthood is the best time to circumcise; in adulthood, the procedure is excruciatingly painful and requires a recovery time of up to several days before the patient can move around normally.
The mildest form of FGM, by contrast, cuts off the clitoris at the base, nearly eliminating the possibility that the victim will enjoy normal sexual pleasure and coitus during her life. The severest form of FGM (sewing the outer labia together along 85-95% of the normal span) results in slow, painful urination and slow, painful menses, followed by a painful cutting-back-open when the woman is married. (There is also increased rate of urinary tract infections due to unavoidable trapping of menstrual debris inside the artifically enclosed vulval area, IIRC.)
You may have your reasons for opposing both FGM and male circumcision, but by what tortured logic would you argue them to be similar on a scale of moral attrocity? The closest male analogue to FGM would be castration, except that castrated males cease to produce impessionable offspring, so the custom -- no matter how tightly embraced by its initial adopters -- either does not become widespread, or if it does, it literally dies out in a couple generations.
Hating to be pedantic but the mildest form of FGM is just two symbolic cuts (as practised by many of the Mau-Mau in the 1960s). Between that and full clitorectomy, varying degrees of the clitoris and surrounding flesh are removed. A full clitorectomy as described by anony-mouse (good name, BTW) I would say comes in the middle of this spectrum.
LIZ
Jane wrote "If America could be a great nation in 1787 even though it permitted slavery, denied women and landless men the right to vote, harbored brutal penalties for homosexuality, treated women as the legal property of various men, and so forth, then surely Islamic countries can be great nations with some nasty practices they should get rid of?"
We were able to change those practices. Christianity allowed them, but did not require them, nor was American law ever required to be consistent with Christian doctrine. The Bible says that homosexuality is a sin - but it also says to leave the punishment of sinners up to God, so repealing the laws against homosexuals is as consistent with Christianity as enforcing them. Saint Paul's writings say that women should be subordinate to men, but other books of the New Testament ameliorate that. In any case, the Bible didn't call for women to be legally inferior to men as was the case in 1787, nor were women in America or western Europe ever required to cover their faces in public or to only go out accompanied by a male relative. Even in the middle ages when Christian women were the most subordinated, yet Christian lords often left their wives in command of their estates while travelling abroad.
By contrast, most Muslims even today believe that their religion absolutely requires that women cover themselves in public (whether that includes the face or not depends on the sect), that nonbelievers be subordinate to Muslims, and that the laws be based in the Koran. I have no idea how much of this is a true reading of the Koran. After all, if Buddhists can use nerve gas in terrorist attacks, it's possible for fanatics to read anything into any holy text. But the point is, Muslims believe it's the true reading of the Koran, and this is not going to change any time soon since they educate their children in schools that teach that and little else.
anon wrote: " ...Does progress consist of guaranteeing that such mothers are not married?"
It makes perfect sense if you look at it from the perspective of a government bureaucrat: Every (poor) unwed teenaged mother represents two more clients for the Welfare State apparatus, and doesn't every business want to expand its customer base??
And if they can find an excuse for throwing the father in jail instead of forcing him to support his family, that's even better, because now there are THREE people dependent on the State.
P.S. > Thanks for the references on 14 year old midshipmen; I intend to check them out.
ha - The purpose of vaccinating 13 year olds is that that age is specifically because it's supposed to be prior to sexual contact of any kind for the vast majority of the population. The far left tail of the curve, so to speak.
john w wrote:"P.S. > Thanks for the references on 14 year old midshipmen; I intend to check them out."
Nice to be useful.
"It makes perfect sense if you look at it from the perspective of a government bureaucrat: Every (poor) unwed teenaged mother represents two more clients for the Welfare State apparatus, and doesn't every business want to expand its customer base??"
Yep. I'm trying but failing to remember who coined the word bureaugamy for a family consisting of one woman, one or more children, and one bureaucrat. Unfortunately, it fits all too well - including my stepdaughter's family.
Regardless of culture, girls/women are strongly influenced by their fathers regarding marriage. In the West women tend to pattern their romantic relationships on their relationships with their fathers. If Daddy ignored you, you'll probably end up desperately seeking male attention wherever you can. If Daddy was supportive and respectful towards you, you'll probably end up with a husband who is as well.
Why would this dynamic be any different in Muslim countries? If a Muslim father treats his daughter as inferior quasi-chattle, is it surprising that she would end up in an arranged abusive marriage? To the extent that such attitudes and relationships are dictated by law, religion, and culture, is the extent to which each family is likely to adhere to them.
Western fathers have their problems, absenteeism chief among them, but AFAIK there isn't an explicit or implicit cultural norm that demands such, the way Islam is so frequently cited as the method behind its adherants' misogynistic madness.
Hating to be pedantic but the mildest form of FGM is just two symbolic cuts (as practised by many of the Mau-Mau in the 1960s). Between that and full clitorectomy, varying degrees of the clitoris and surrounding flesh are removed.
You're quite right, my research was outdated. I think my comparison between FGM and castration still stands, though. There's no evident gain in any form of FGM, whreas there is evident gain in male circumcision.
(In fact many of the rites and rituals in the ancient Hebrew law, beyond their symbolic significance, gave their practitioners hygienic and disease-prevention benefits that we only understand with the benefit of modern microbiology...)
John W.
During the 17 and 1800's you could be 12 and be a midshipment. In a time of not to accuate birth record you could sit for your Lt.'s exam at the Admiralty at the age of 18 and be the most important man on a small ship or frigate next to the commanding officer. Even as a midshipman you may be in charge of the ship's boats responsible for ferrying stores and mail from ship to shore. You were in charge of men and had authority over them. I think "childhood" is a relatively recent phenomena.
I know a couple who were married during the Korean war, because the guy was in the Navy and the gal's birth mother died when she was 16.
They're like family to me. They had also been dating since he was 15 or so.
That's techically a child bride, but I think Coleeen might hurt you (or talk you to death) if you give her trouble about it.
In Iran, after Komenei returned from Paris (and the Shah had left) the laws were changed to permit brides as young as 9, based on the example of Muhummed and Alysha, for whom he had contracted marriage 6, but did not consumate the marriage until she was 9.
What a wonderful example he was.
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