Re: Gary Puckett and the Union Gap

Rosemary <mentally_subnormal@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

fergus wrote:
Rosemary wrote:

One of the problems IMO is that girls now start puberty a lot earlier
than they used to, so it's pretty common for a 12 year old girl to
look like a sexually mature woman

Back in the dark ages when I was a teenager the age of puberty was
about 12/13. Has it changed much recently? Or is it just displayed
more strongly?

I was thinking of a little further back than that, really. I know I've
read old advice leaflets to girls from the first half of the twentieth
century which gave the average age of starting periods as 16/17.

Hmm. If they were written by doctors, they might well have been wrong
(depends on the doctor). If they were written by Marie Stopes or
similar, they were based on accurate observation.

[snip]

Isn't is also to do with when girls are considered old enough to be
good mothers? Other then with men who are of the "f*** 'em and leave
'em" mentality - who are one reason for having a mandatary age of
consent at all - to protect the vulnerable. That together with the
increased chances of forming a marriage which won't work if it starts
very young.

Oh yes, there's definitely that involved. The problem I'm thinking of is
that most girls become sexually mature younger than girls used to,

What time periods are we talking about? 19th century diets were
famously very very bad. I suspect that there's a fluctuation in this
sort of thing: when diets are good, puberty isn't delayed; when diets
are bad, it is. 19th century urban working class people in general were
almost certain to have an appallingly bad diet, for example.

18th century rural people generally had a pretty good diet - but where
are the records of when puberty started for that lot?

but I
don't see any reason to believe they become emotionally and cognitively
mature any earlier.

The opposite appears to be the case if you ask me.

[snip]

There's a lot more to raising stable families than the ability to
produce babies and for the stability of society there's a lot to be
said for not reproducing as soon as people are physically able.

Yes, but in the past, it wouldn't have been considered normal for girls
to wait for well over ten years after becoming fertile to start a family.

My mother waited until she was 28 to start a family - although back in
1966, that late was unusual.

Not that I think all twelve year olds should be having kids! I just think
it causes a problem.

I think one of the reasons for some early pregancies is that there are a
lot of females of our species who have very poor self-esteem, and very
poor prospects generally - but having a baby is something almost any
lass of the right age can do, and it's something that gives you some
sort of status in society. Not forgetting the fact that it's a way to
increase your benefits income and ensure you will be housed by the state
if need be - I don't suppose that's often the *reason* a young lass gets
pregnant, but I bet plenty of 'em bear it in mind.

I knew one lass at university who got pregnant allegedly `accidentally'
- she'd made it to her third year and had somehow avoided making any
mistakes up until then (she got a lot more sex than me, that much I do
know and don't ask how I know because it was all a bit scurrilous and
very grubby in some corners), right up to the point where a chap she
fancied settling down with turned up.

I wasn't the only one who came to the same conclusion quite
independently of anyone else.

[snip]

Is that bad? It used to be the norm certainly in some parts of the
country not to marry until at least late teens, and, in most places,
not to have pre-marital sex. That was as much to do with social
expectations as with religion. Now there seems to be a whole load of
pressure, particularly on young girls, to have sex much sooner than
they would otherwise wish.

Well, in the past, girls weren't usually having to cope with sexual
feelings from the age of ten or eleven,

I don't see why not, given the apparently straight link between how far
up you've grown and when puberty starts - it seems to me from the
evidence presented here that any society which feeds its kids up as much
as our one current does would result in early puberty. All it takes it
`lots of food' - and prehistoric societies in Europe could certainly
afford to have *some* people feed themselves up to obesity. Those old
stone goddesses are respresentations of what really fat women really
look like - well, the naturalistic humaniform ones are, anyone.

Consider also: way back when in prehistory, life expectency was very
short. If you're not likely to live past 30 or so, you'd better start
young on the family.

Just some thoughts.

and I bet you there was a lot of
pre-marital sex going on

`Speak for yourself', a book by the Mass Observation people, notes that
they found more illicit shagging (including carefully-recorded
back-alley knee-tremblers and regular wife swapping, which appeared to
be perfectly normal) going on in 1930s `Worktown' than in Blackpool -
when this information was originally published, the mayor of Blackpool
complained about the evidence, on the grounds that it was bad for
business to suggest that Blackpool *wasn't* a sink of depravity.
`Worktown' was later revealed to be Bolton.

So much for the 1960s being when the social order broke down, eh?

[snip]

Rowland.

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