this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2025
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[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 day ago (5 children)

That’s not a well-founded assumption. The average age of first birth was only 21 as recently as 1970. Go back a few hundred years and it’s way younger than that. Many women throughout history became mothers as soon as they were able (right after the onset of puberty). Many cultures had rites of passage into adulthood for boys and girls of that age. There was no such thing as adolescence.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Don’t they say teenagers/adolescence were invented in the 50s as that was the first time people were able to afford to allow their kids to carry on education?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 day ago (1 children)

As the other commentator says, medieval Europe was mostly early twenties. Studies of stone age remains suggest a first birth age average of 19.5 and contemporary hunter gather societies have a comparable average. Sexual activity generally begins earlier, during adolescence, but the most "reproductively successful" age for beginning childbearing has been shown to be around 18-19. Also, this age at first birth isnt "Average age of a child's mother" as many women would have multiple kids over their life, so the average sibling would have a much older mother at birth than the firstborn.

Its important to remember that puberty has shifted massively since industrialisation, "menarche age has receded from 16.5 years in 1880 to the current 12.5 years in western societies". So the post-puberty fecundity peak, that use to happen 17-19, when women are fully grown enough to minimise birth complications, now happens at a disressingly young 13-15. Not only is this a big social yuck for most western societies, but it's reproductively unideal, because of the complications linked to childbirth at that age.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Huh, that’s interesting. Do we know why the menarche age has receded?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

if you click that second study link it's exactly about that

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Maybe 23 would be a better average, but even if wvery women in your line gave birth at 12.5 that only doubles the other. And its fair to say not every mother would have been a first child. Also many still would have been born later than 25, so it probably evens out pretty well.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

First births yes, but what about average age? Our ancestors may have been second born, third born, eighth born etc

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

High maternal mortality meant that having more than about 7 children per woman was rare. Total fertility rate was about 4.5 to 7 in the pre modern era. Population growth was low due to infant and early childhood mortality though.

If you start having children at age 12, you can have a child every year and reach 7 children by age 20. Without contraceptives, people weren’t having such large multi-year gaps between children like we do now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

Based on my own genealogical research, the trend I typically saw was 6-8 kids, between 18 and early 30s, about 20% of which died. Plus consider that some of those will be sons, and some daughters never become mothers, 25 is pretty spot on for the average age for a mother-to-mother generational gap.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 14 hours ago

Yes abd the field of genealogy, the size of a generation is given as 25 years. I believe specialists of genealogy who had to defined this metric did think about the way couple had kids in the past.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 day ago (3 children)

In Western Europe at least back to the early medieval period it was common for anyone who wasn’t nobility to have their first child around 22. The younger you are the more likely you’re going to have serious (fatal, back then) complications. It was the nobility that was marrying off barely pubescent kids.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What was it like outside of Western Europe?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No idea, I'm not as read up on that. It would shock me if it was significantly different just because risk of death from complications is a hard biological line the younger you get, pre-modern medicine.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

There are definitely cultures who have practiced polygyny to get around this issue. Some still do today, for example in many different countries in Africa where people still practice a pastoral life.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I don't see how polygyny gets around the issue of risk of death from pregnancy.

Polygyny would get around the issue of men getting killed.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Polygyny is where one man has many wives.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Edit: This first point was wrong, but the second point still stands.

Polygyny wouldn't solve the aforementioned problem if we suppose that the birth rate of men and women is roughly the same. If one man has many wives, some of whom even die, then several other men won't have any wives.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

The birth rate of XY babies is actually slightly higher than XX babies. On the other hand, babies with higher testosterone tend to have weaker immune systems and so are more susceptible to infant mortality from disease.

Otherwise, I’m not sure what the problem is with men who don’t have wives? They simply don’t reproduce. Throughout history men have reproduced at a lower rate than women. In polygynous cultures it’s only the very powerful and wealthy men who have many wives. The poor and powerless men have few or none.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Huh, really? I thought there were slightly more women than men, but maybe that depends on the economies etc.

As for your second point, yes, exactly. They don't reproduce. So it doesn't matter if many men get one wife each, or if a few men get many wives each, the number of pregnancies won't change, and the number of pregnancy-related deaths won't change either. So (again), I don't see how polygyny helps in this situation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I guess I’ve forgotten what the problem was exactly. High maternal mortality? How is that not solved by having many redundant wives?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

You don't just "have many redundant wives". It starts out roughly 50/50 from birth no matter what you do.

You either have more women by having a lot of single men, or a lot of dead men, or by taking women from other places.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Yes I mentioned that earlier in the thread. Polygyny = some men have many wives, others have none.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

Which does nothing to help with the issue of mothers dying from pregnancy, unless there's something more that you know?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago

Could we say (for no other reason than I'm stoned and it sounds good) the rough average mother-age is 18-ish? Then there would be roughly ~110 mothers since Jesus cheated and respawned for our sins.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 day ago

It was the nobility that was marrying off barely pubescent kids.

Same as it ever was.