Sure, often before marriage, and not because the ages of deaths were clustering around 35.
That exactly contradicts what OLP said. Which is true?
What I said. ‘Average life expectancy’ is the mean age. That means if the mean is 35, a lot died younger!
I remember a middle school history teacher trying to sum up the world pre-Columbus, and he mentioned that there were no teenagers. Now, it’s true that the word didn’t exist until the 1950s, but my suspicions were gratified later on when I read that that’s another oversimplification. The Ancient Greeks were aware of, and wrote about, adolescence. The nature thereof has changed over the years, but the concept existed.
In other news, this isn’t really helping AU. AU, I don’t know about other posters here, but I want you to avoid some of the traps I fell into, though our situations are only vaguely similar. With that said, at your age I, like many before and after, sought solace in modern rock. My handle is taken from a band who released a song in 1997 called “Clumsy,” with the lyric “Maybe you should sleep/ maybe you just need a friend/ as clumsy as you’ve been/ there’s no-one laughing/ you will be safe in here.”
The distribution isn’t even, thereby skewing the mean.
Many things can cause that. It’s like a tenement or housing project with some eccentric millionaire in a penthouse on top. The average income of the building’s residents is pretty high.
Or, higher infant and maternal mortality can place the mean around 35, though that doesn’t mean the mode is anywhere around there.
It could also mean that a lot of people died before age 1 but those who lived lived into their 50s and 60s
That’s closer, yeah, before age 1, and a bit beyond that, with another uptick for women giving birth. All of this did result in an often low age of marriage, but with considerable variation due to what era, location, and walk of life we’re talking about.
AU, I don’t know your parents, but my mom was very overprotective and controlling. Not quite as much as it sounds like your parents are, at least in some ways (my sisters and I were officially allowed to date at 16, we could certainly hang out but only with friends my mom knew, etc.) But the thing is, my mom’s default was just “no”. At some point she got somewhat more realistic and let us do more things, but it took a lot of pushing back. If we’d just gone with it, she would have been extremely strict, because she wouldn’t have seen any reason not to be. Obviously, don’t go nuts or anything, but start putting up a little bit of resistance and see how it goes. Try to be mature and reasonable about it though. Take small steps. Just because they have a rule doesn’t mean they won’t reconsider it under certain circumstances. I’m sure your parents love you and want the best for you, so hopefully they can be convinced that a 16-year-old really does need a bit of space to hang out with friends and that kind of thing.
Not really, at least not in Europe.
Look up the ages of marriage in medieval Europe, and in early modern Europe, and you’ll find that they weren’t that different from today, at least in northwest Europe. Further south and east women tended to marry younger, but still late teens or early twenties, certainly not before 16. (It’s somewhat unclear, but it has been argued that at some points in history, women didn’t even enter menarche until about 16).
Child marriage was of course more common in Asia and Africa.
Sixteen is actually the exact age I’ve heard from the most conservative parents. Most common seems to be around 14 or so. Next most common is just letting them have them whenever. Especially since, when you go younger than 14, there’s not a lot you can do to stop it, since they don’t necessarily really date or anything. It can just be someone you’re always with at school.
I doubt saying that some guy on the Internet says he’s never seen parents that strict is going to convince anyone, but maybe finding out the ages that your parents’ friends have chosen would be helpful. Then again, in your neck of the woods, maybe 18 is more normal.
I think it’s been made clear that my parents know what is going on. Today they were confronting me about how distant I have been acting and lately they have been asking what I have been doing on the internet and forums and I keep telling them that it’s stuff that I am getting advice for I don’t want to talk to them about. They also pointed out how I have been “lost” and they were telling me (Hindi translated into English), “Don’t think we don’t know what’s going on. We went through your age too. We know what’s going on. We’re your parents.” In response to this, I said, “Fine then. So keep it to yourself.”
A lot of the time when I tell them (when they ask) that it’s private stuff that I am getting advice for on the internet, they tell me, “You’re not of that age yet. In one or two years, you can do whatever the fuck you want.”
I don’t think they are specifically opposed to me dating, just the idea that I am hiding stuff from them I think.
Why don’t you want to talk to them? You THINK your parents are inflexible and unyielding but that’s coming from a child’s perspective. Having an actual grown up conversation with them is the only way your relationship with them (and others) will evolve.
Because it’s an awkward topic to talk about with parents.
But seriously, you think I should talk to them about this?
If anything, their confrontation is making me even more resistant to them as every time I am in their presence, I feel embarrassed and awkward. Me finding out that they know what’s going on has increased the tension between me and them and on the other hand, I also feel like they have some misconceptions. For exAmple, I told my mom days ago that I was depressed about stuff when she asked what’s wrong But I didn’t tell what. The actual thing was over me being short and Indian…again…I was feeling extremely insecure that day. I am over it now but they are probably thinking it’s over some girl. But that’s not the case…I hardly give a shit about being rejected. I don’t care really if a girl rejects me. It was other issues related to dating in general that I have been depressed and stressed over for the past few weeks. But THEY don’t know that and I feel like they are thinking that I got obsessed with a girl and then got butthurt after being rejected. But like I said, it’s far from it.