Curmudgeon's Lair

How could ME (medieval) girl and modern girl have differed?

ME girl knew everything that she needed to know to run a household by the time that she was fourteen. She could cook, sew, weave, manage finances, cook, and knew how to deal with children because she had been caring for her siblings. Modern girl does not. My great grandmother could do everything that she needed to when she married at fourteen in the late 19th century. they were raised to be wives and nothing more. Modern girl is raised to have a job or even a career.

As far as sex went, ME girl frequently slept in the same room as her parents and siblings and knew the fundamentals of sex from her earliest memories. Modern girl does not.

Although Modern Girl's hormones awaken to the same extent as ME girl's, she is not prepared to deal with the complexities of relationships, child-rearing, and running a household. ME girl was frequently illiterate. Modern girl starts learning to read at five or younger.

One of the best arguments for the artificially prolonged childhoods in the western world, is simply that our societies are far more complex and it takes far longer to learn the things that are necessary for modern life.

For many reasons, Modern Girl and ME Girl are not the same even when they are the same age.

More to come.

I have recently been subjected to false accusations of being in favor of pedophilia. I expected that because I felt certain that some people would misunderstand the nature of my posts on the subject of Age of Consent. In those posts I made no value judgments whatsoever, neither pro nor con.

There are some solid arguments for the prolonged childhood that is encouraged in the Western World, especially America, and I intend to eventually go into them. The most important thing to note is that our cultural values might not be someone else's.

Madame du Pompadour saw one of her royal bastards married off at twelve. Marriages in France of that period were governed by the influence of the Catholic Church. This made divorce nearly impossible to get. The reasons for child brides among the nobility was to secure an alliance between houses. In those cases, the marriage was more of a promissory note. Until consummation occurred, the marriage could be set aside and annulled. Once consummation occurred, divorce became impossible. The twelve year old girl was wed to a seventeen year old boy and went to live with him and his family. Pompadour tried to persuade her daughter to consummate the marriage as soon as possible so that it could not be annulled if a better offer became available to the boy's family. However, the family wisely waited until the girl was fourteen before allowing for consummation to occur.

In the cases of child marriage within the western world, consummation could not occur until the girl got her menses. For me that would have been 10 years old. A modern American ten-year-old girl is not equivalent to a ten-year-old girl in the middle ages or even in the 19th century when my great grandmother married at fourteen. How can a ten year old girl from one period in time differ from another? You would be astonished. But we will get to that. But keep in mind that you cannot judge the past by the present.

At that time, very few people ever made it to forty, much less what we consider to be old age nowadays. Accident, disease, war, and hard living accounted for a large number of lives each year and not even the nobility were immune.

<a href='http://marriage.about.com/od/arrangedmarriages/Arranged_Marriages.htm">A good set of definitions</a> At one time children, especially daughters were little more than property. They were raised to be obedient in ways that are anathema today.