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Post by spaceflower on Mar 3, 2015 13:42:00 GMT
I know that in many countries girls as young as 9 years can get married off. Maybe even younger? All one can hope is that the marriage is not consumated at that age. But poor girls, their future is decided at such an early age and they have no say. But which age should be the the lowest in your opinion? I was surprised to read (old article, I know) that 12 is ok in Kansas. www.nytimes.com/2005/08/31/opinion/31iht-edkansas.html?_r=0Most states would consider sex between a 22 year old an a 13 year old as rape. In Sweden it would be ok if the was 15 (but marriage is not ok before 18).
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Post by tangent on Mar 3, 2015 17:34:53 GMT
When you look at ancient cultures, marriage at 12 years of age was quite normal. A woman would get married as soon as she was capable of bearing children. Today, we do not regard this as good practice because society places many different social pressures and adult practices on the child. A child of five, for example, can enter a beauty pageant complete with adult underwear and makeup. And to compensate, we insist that children cannot get married until they are 16 or 18. We're all screwed.
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Post by Alvamiga on Mar 3, 2015 23:35:54 GMT
I think those pageants should not be allowed. They are wrong in so many ways!
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Post by raspberrybullets on Mar 8, 2015 2:42:14 GMT
Well considering your brain is still developing until you're 24, or is it 25? I'd say marriage shouldn't be allowed until that age. Especially if you're more or less stuck with that decision for life.
Of course it brings up a whole other issue which is the obsession most cultures seem to have with marriage and the way couples, especially women, are looked down upon and treated if they are in a relationship without being married. Get over that problem and people wouldn't feel so pushed to marry early and regret the choice later.
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Post by spaceflower on Mar 8, 2015 15:34:42 GMT
Actually I consider not marriage but having children the irreversible choice. If you have children with someone, you will never bequite free from that person, even if you leave him/her and marry someone else. You always have to cooperate about the children. So there should be a law against having children before your're 20 (or 24 years old).
Marriage is not important in the Nordic countries. Many couples move together and start a family without ever considering marriage. But this is of course not the case in many countries.
If your son/daughter of 16 moves in with a partner, the police is not coming. But if an ethnic group has a big party for the young couple and some religious ceremony (which has no legal value), then the police can interfere. B/c then it is marriage under the legal age (18 years). Some might say that this is a double standard. But that is b/c the teenagaers living together can leave each other but the young girl who is (religiously) married cannot do so without reprisals.
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Post by tangent on Mar 8, 2015 19:05:12 GMT
Marriage was originally a means of ensuring mothers and babies wouldn't starve if the fathers tried to clear off and abandon them. Society still aims protect children either through marriage or a legal contract where partners live together. I don't see much difference between the two, if two people live together they are as good as married in most people's eyes. But where children are involved, I would always go with the contract that provides them with the most protection and if that's marriage, then fair enough. Besides, it's a good excuse for a party
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Post by raspberrybullets on Mar 9, 2015 8:00:27 GMT
I don't mind the contract part for the protection of children - the problem is when people are shunned for living together while not being married. Or women getting abused for being even seen talking to a man when they are not married to him and he's not her family.
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Post by tangent on Mar 9, 2015 9:36:53 GMT
I don't mind the contract part for the protection of children - the problem is when people are shunned for living together while not being married. Or women getting abused for being even seen talking to a man when they are not married to him and he's not her family. Up until the 1960s when contraceptives were invented, it was the only way society could protect its teenage daughters from getting pregnant and being unable to raise their children. Mothers were fiercely protective and wouldn't let their daughters even look at boys. I went to a boys only school that was so carefully controlled, our school leaving time was fixed so we wouldn't meet the girls from the girl's school next door. And if you were to get pregnant, you were forced into a shotgun marriage for no other reason than to ensure your child would be taken care of. To a large extent, we are still coming to terms with the alternatives. A couple in their mid 20s know what they're doing but would you want to encourage your 16-year daughter to move in with the 25-year old boy next door? The problem as I see it is that general rules always have ridiculous exceptions.
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Post by raspberrybullets on Mar 9, 2015 10:44:13 GMT
What has all that to do with anything about 16 year olds moving in with boyfriends? Protecting children would if anything, prevent that. If parents are looking after their kids, loving them, and not being all anal about them having a boy or girl friend, they won't have any need to move out. Then when they are older, more mature, they'll make a hopefully smarter choice on who they want to be more permantly with, and potentially have children with.
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Post by tangent on Mar 9, 2015 23:50:01 GMT
It's for you to take what you want from it.
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Post by Moose on Mar 10, 2015 0:28:53 GMT
Contraceptives were NOT invented in the 1960s. The Pill was. I would imagine that contraception has been around since humans made the connection between semen and pregnancy.
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Post by tangent on Mar 10, 2015 15:31:32 GMT
Yes, you're quite right. I meant the Pill. But I can assure you, from my own evidence, that contraceptives were unknown to the general population before the 1960s. It is only because of the Pill that other forms of contraceptives became generally available.
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Post by spaceflower on Mar 11, 2015 1:16:09 GMT
Marriage was originally a means of ensuring mothers and babies wouldn't starve if the fathers tried to clear off and abandon them. Society still aims protect children either through marriage or a legal contract where partners live together. I don't see much difference between the two, if two people live together they are as good as married in most people's eyes. But where children are involved, I would always go with the contract that provides them with the most protection and if that's marriage, then fair enough. Besides, it's a good excuse for a party Accordning to the law, parents have to support their children until they are of age. Regardless if the parenets are married or not, if they live together or not. The children also have the right to inheret, regardless if their parents were married or not. (There might be a surprise when they turn up after the funeral.) Long ago, "bastard children" did not have the right to inherit their parents or their relations. But we have more human laws now. And also means to decide the paternity if the father should deny it. So no need for marriage to protect the children now. But what people don't know is that married people always inherit each other, unmarried not. So unless they write a will, the partner will have nothing; all goes to the children.
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Post by spaceflower on Mar 11, 2015 1:35:31 GMT
Yes, you're quite right. I meant the Pill. But I can assure you, from my own evidence, that contraceptives were unknown to the general population before the 1960s. It is only because of the Pill that other forms of contraceptives became generally available. Really? Condoms have been known for centuries. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condom#Before_the_19th_centuryOf course, there might be harder to get in the country than in the big cities. The history of the diaphragm is interesting: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaphragm_(contraceptive)
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Post by tangent on Mar 11, 2015 2:33:05 GMT
Really? Condoms have been known for centuries. They may have been known for centuries but the general population certainly didn't know about them. There's a big difference between the elite and the commoner.
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Post by tangent on Mar 11, 2015 2:42:12 GMT
Accordning to the law, parents have to support their children until they are of age. Society has stepped in to ensure children are protected. When I said, "Marriage was originally a means of ensuring mothers and babies wouldn't starve," I was talking about ancient cultures and perhaps society up until the mid 20th century when child-orientated laws started to appear. But laws passed in one country are not necessarily passed in another and so I think we still have a fair way to go before we can be sure that children are protected.
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Post by ProdigalAlan on Mar 11, 2015 19:05:06 GMT
Really? Condoms have been known for centuries. They may have been known for centuries but the general population certainly didn't know about them. There's a big difference between the elite and the commoner. You don't get anyone more common than my Dad and he certainly knew about the use of condoms. It was part of his basic training when he was conscripted for WWII. Mum and Dad got married in 1948 and the only reason I didn't arrive until 1953 was because of condoms. In due time he was the one giving the lecture to new recruits. Even my brother and I got that lecture in 1970
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Post by Moose on Mar 12, 2015 0:17:09 GMT
Steve I gotta go with Alan on this one . I think that condoms were well known before the sixties! Do you think you might have led a sheltered life?
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Post by tangent on Mar 12, 2015 0:25:23 GMT
I dunno, maybe I was a member of the elite No, it was a complete surprise when I found out they existed at the age of 26. I don't think I lived a sheltered life, I think I lived in a society where no one ever talked about these things, and therefore they didn't exist.
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Post by Moose on Mar 12, 2015 0:36:44 GMT
I guess that one major difference is that you probably did not have sex education in school?
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Post by tangent on Mar 12, 2015 19:39:48 GMT
I was off sick when we had sex education but in any case it was geared towards rabbits and not people. We had a book in which there were diagrams of rabbits' bits and pieces. Had condoms been known about at school, I'm sure my class would have talked about them in the changing rooms.
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Post by Moose on Mar 13, 2015 17:44:46 GMT
Your generation was taught to have sex with rabbits!? Dude!
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Post by JoeP on Mar 13, 2015 18:59:42 GMT
They were taught to breed like rabbits.
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Post by Alvamiga on Mar 13, 2015 19:29:48 GMT
When I was at school, sex education was about 40 minutes one registration period, although the girls kept having these strange, secret meetings before that. The sex education class (being very generous with the term) was so poorly presented that I'm sure it did significantly more damage than good. Those that knew already already knew and those that didn't just got confused.
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Post by Moose on Mar 13, 2015 22:10:33 GMT
Steve I would still be genuinely surprised if noone your age had heard of condoms as a teenager even if you were not taught about them. Is Bill around? What does he think?
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Post by tangent on Mar 14, 2015 11:50:12 GMT
Wiki says, "In Britain from 1950–1960, 60% of married couples used condoms." I'll accept that my original statement of their not being in general use was wrong. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure they were expensive, and chemists would hide them round the back so they were not accessible to schoolboys.
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Post by Alvamiga on Mar 14, 2015 17:20:14 GMT
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Post by Moose on Mar 14, 2015 17:26:36 GMT
Surely the better thing would be if they WERE accessible to school boys
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Post by tangent on Mar 14, 2015 18:23:04 GMT
Surely the better thing would be if they WERE accessible to school boys Sex happened but it was much less common. News of a 15 or 16-year old girl having sex on the common spread like wildfire one day, it was so unusual. I learnt about it through my friend who went to a different school. This was a question on Yahoo, which seems to tally with my experience. Q. In the 1950's was there teenage pregnancy and sex?
A. Yes, it did happen. However, they did not have the birth control back then that is available today. But, girls did get pregnant and usually got married very young or they were sent to live with an aunt that lived in another state. There were two girls that had to leave jr. high because of pregnancy and 6 girls in high school that I knew about. I graduated from a class of 400 so six was not bad. It was really hushed though. Not as open about it as they are today. Would it have been better if school boys had had access to condoms? No, because we were living in a culture where sex outside marriage was forbidden and, for the most part, they didn't want to have sex and couldn't find a girl who would allow it.
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Post by Moose on Mar 14, 2015 18:52:20 GMT
Again I woonder if everyone in the fifties considered sex outside marriage forbidden. Maybe nice middle class boys . I do not doubt that it was not as prevalent as it is now but still I wonder how many people were virgins on their wedding night
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