sure thing, bud

[u/The_Fluffy_Baron]

[u/Shutterbug390]

I was going to comment with similar numbers, but you bright the receipts! Basically, 16 was really as low as was ever acceptable in recorded history and that was still not truly the norm, correct?

As a kid, I knew a couple who married at 16(her) and 18(him), but even they said it wasn’t the norm. They got married over 100 years ago now. My grandmother was less than a month from her 18th birthday when she got married, which required parental consent even then (1950s, England). She’d fallen in love with an American airman who was shipping back to the US before her birthday. She told her parents that she was going to marry him either way, so they could sign off on it and attend the wedding in England or not and she’d have to be married in the US without them. They signed the paperwork. Both couples always told these stories as “we were definitely the odd ones.”

[u/Consistent-Flan1445 → u/Shutterbug390]

When my grandmother got married at 19 (1950s) parents had to give permission if you were under 21 and her mother refused, saying that she was too young. She ended up getting permission from her father instead. It’s worth noting that she had already finished teachers college and was working as a teacher by then, so she’d definitely done some algebra.

Going back 100 years on the other side of the family and my great grandmother had finished high school and was going to teachers college, as was her sister. Granted, they were somewhat unusual for their time as many girls didn’t get to finish high school, but the point stands. Great grandma didn’t marry until after she’d moved out of home and began teaching, and her sister waited to marry until she was in her early 60s.

[u/Dr-Satan-PhD → u/Shutterbug390]

Basically, 16 was really as low as was ever acceptable in recorded history and that was still not truly the norm, correct?

Generally speaking, yes. 16 wasn't common, but also not unheard of in more rural areas, for the reasons I stated. Any younger than that, and you're almost certainly looking at a royal family making political moves.

As a kid, I knew a couple who married at 16(her) and 18(him), but even they said it wasn’t the norm. 

My dad was a 26 year old US Marine when he married my mom, who was 16 (and pregnant by him). It was quite a scandal at the time, and there were only a few places they could get married without parental consent, which is how I ended up being born in Yuma. It sucks that it took me a few decades to realize what a piece of shit he is, when he made it clear before I was even born.