Average Age of Marriage in the Post-Industrial World
In agrarian societies, girls were married off at an early age. However, as industrialization
took place, the average age of marriage began to increase. In the book Social Problems
in Global Perspective, we read:
Children were affected by the move toward industrialization in several ways. In
agricultural times, children were married-off at puberty—or even before! Today,
with an average age of marriage in the United States around 26 years old,
marriage at puberty seems unbelievably young. But if we turn it around and
begin from the basis of physiology, we begin to see, in fact, the basis for some of
our social problems: Human biology dictates reproduction—and therefore
marriage—at puberty; that’s what puberty means: a biological readiness for
sexual reproduction.
Industrialization spawned a new stage in the life cycle between childhood and
adulthood: adolescence. With children squeezed out of the workplace and with an
increased need for more formal schooling, children no longer moved straight from
the nursery to marriage. The age of responsibility and independence slowly
increased. Today we have college and graduate school, and postpone marriage.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, postponement of marriage to the age of
eighteen seemed like a late marriage pattern to those remembering pre-industrial
clan days. By the same token, many of our putative social problems related to
teen pregnancy were not nearly the problems then as they are now—not because
“teens” did not get pregnant, but because teens were generally expected to marry
and move into motherhood.
(Social Problems in Global Perspective,
http://books.google.com/books?id=ECW...66&lpg=PA66&dq
=average+age+of+marriage+puberty+industrialization &source=we b&ots=QlLW
YFoHBc&sig=j5AotdGnLYvn18UQzMeDU-n6fzw#PPP1,M1)
Even today, we find that the average age of marriage remains very low in countries that
have not yet industrialized. This has nothing to do with religion, but rather it has to do
with the economy. In Asia, for example, the under-developed and agrarian countries
have a very low average age of marriage. Conversely, the Miracle Dragon states such as
Taiwan and South Korea have a much higher average age of marriage. Researchers can
see the shift from early marriage to delayed marriage with their very own eyes, as many
countries today begin the shift towards industrialization.
Child marriages remain prevalent in parts of the agrarian world today. According to the
official website of the United Nations:
• In Ethiopia and some areas of West Africa, some girls get married as early as age
7.
• In Bangladesh, 45 per cent of young women between 25 and 29 were married by
age 15.
• A 1998 survey in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh found that nearly 14 per
cent of girls were married between the ages of l0 and 14.
• In Kebbi State of northern Nigeria, the average age of marriage for girls is just
over l1 years, compared to a national average of 17.
(United Nations,
http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2005/pressk...d_marriage.htm)
It would be absolute hubris for the post-modern man to look down on the sociological
norms of ancient civilizations.للمزيد من مواضيعي
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28.06.2013, 23:39
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