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Comment by oska | Hacker News Reader

> The usual marriage age for a girl in premodern western European culture (and many other cultures worldwide) was "the onset of menses," or about 12 to 14 years old.

The wikipedia article [1] doesn't agree with you. It suggests marriage in the mid twenties was most common, although there was regional variation. Noblewomen, such as the fictional Juliet, married younger.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_patt...

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That article says, "[in western Europe], about half of all women aged 15 to 50 years of age were married at any given time, while the other half were widows or spinsters" which is entirely consistent with what I wrote: over half of women aged 15 were, or had been, married.

There is a large literature supporting the parent comment, started by Hajnal, not your somewhat sophistic argument. In the Western part of Europe, people married late and there were a lot of spinsters.

The passage you quote says little or nothing about the distribution of ages of married women within that range and the ages of those women married when they first married. On one hand, the married half of women in the age range could largely be the older half. On the other, the typical age of a newly married woman might be much younger than the typical age of an already married woman.

Correct. As I said, it is "consistent with" what I said -- not that it outright proves what I said is true. It's ambiguous.

I am sorry, but what you said about the age at marriage is wrong, whether or not you can twist the argument about what wikipedia said. Really, you either need to read some books about demography or, umm, leave it to the experts. If you read some books about demographic history, you will be interesting to argue with.

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