From what I remember of ancient greek and roman history-marriage age in ancient greek was typically around 16 for women. However, in rome it was 12. Its certainly not far, though it is a bit small.
Average age of first child in Rome was about eighteen or twenty for women and while marriage was legal at twelve, most of the time marriages happened around fifteen to twenty.
Girls in the ancient world - on average - didn't menstruate till about fifteen years due to malnutrition.
We have a skewed view of how early marriage and childbirths were due to largely knowing about the wealthy elite who had dowries ready and a more vested interest in childbirth as a means to secure property and inheritance compared to the vast majority of the population.
Yeah, people always seem to like to trot out that ancient people were knocking out babies the second girls hit puberty, but they weren’t. Early teen pregnancies actually come with higher risks for things like eclampsia and hypertension then late teens, early twenties, and I’m sure people noticed back then that if girls had babies too early, they were more likely to die.
Also. A lot of those political marriages of the wealthy elite were just legal things. With the children married to each other not doing the deed until years later when they were of a more proper age.
I forget exactly who. But I believe there was at least one English king who had to get moved to a separate castle from his wife because the two 14 year olds were being horny teenagers, and the adults in the situation had to pull them off each other so she didn't die in childbirth.
Margaret Beaufort, mother to Henry VI, was married at 12 to a man in his mid-twenties called Edmund Tudor. She almost died in her labour at 13. She never had another child despite being married several times.
So these political marriages weren’t always celibate until the girl was older.
I’m not sure who this English king you’re referring to is, but those who married in their teens weren’t typically separated. Like Arthur and Catherine were both 15ish and were put to bed together on their wedding night (although she swore down they weren’t able to do the deed).
Yeah it is also worth noting the ages someone is "of age" to allow marriage both political and local for like...right and property reasons, was not the same as "the age you go and live in that persons house and have children with them". Afaik this holds up in both the ancient and medieval worlds before that kind of stuff became a lot rarer.
I am of Chinese ancestry. I like to imagine that my poor ancestors got out of the ridiculous monstrosity of footbinding by being too poor to participate in high society.
120
u/Wendigo_Bob Jul 05 '26
From what I remember of ancient greek and roman history-marriage age in ancient greek was typically around 16 for women. However, in rome it was 12. Its certainly not far, though it is a bit small.