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Originally Posted by robodog
You are correct in that women got married at a young age (heck they still do in many parts of the world) back then, you are incorrect in the age of their mates. Most would have been in their 20's with the upper bounds generally being around 40. Remember how much shorter life expectancy was back then, unless the man was going to be around to support his new wife her family likely would not have allowed the marriage. Juliet was 13 and was to be married to a man in his early 20's, this was a normal situation. She would have been expected to bear her first child within the first two years of the marriage. If you go back in time even further the biological necessity of women maturing quickly becomes evident, if you only live to your mid to late 20's on average then for there to be any chance for knowledge transfer between generations you have to give birth at a young age. This of course does not mean that all or even most young women today are mentally mature enough to handle a kid at these ages. Western society does a fairly good job of extending childhood into the late teens, which is a good things in some ways but in many ways it is bad. When your hormones are telling you one thing and society quite a different one it can be quite confusing.
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Kind of an unusual first post for me, I know, but I want to point something out: life expectancies in the past were a lot better than the numbers make them look, because the numbers factor in infant mortality. Before the modern era, there were huge numbers of diseases that could easily kill newborn babies... in most times and places each baby born had, IIRC, only about a 50/50 chance of making it to its 5th birthday! Once you had made it that far, you still had a pretty good chance of making it into old age. Most societies weren't that different from us in that respect (not as good, but still, it's not like everyone was dropping dead at 45.) Places like England during Shakespeare's time were the exception, with lower life expectancies usually caused by overcrowding and poor waste management (imagine living in a city where everyone was emptying their chamberpots right into the street.)
I think the pressure to have lots of kids came partly from that high infant mortality: it takes a lot more pregancies to have a given number of kids if half of them are going to die in childood.