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Originally Posted by hagatha
As well, I do a lot of family tree research and have noticed that a lot of my ancestors were married as teens to men in their early to late 20's. It was not unusual back then and there were no real laws in place to prevent it.
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Keep in mind that demographically, the rate of mortality was much higher at younger ages then... people were lucky to live past 50, in many places. Not that I'm saying it was any more "right" or wrong then, but I personally believe that our "ancestors" were forced to mature a lot younger then than we are now, which of course affected the culture and gender expectations.
E.g. a 15 year old girl back then was a woman, not a girl... expected to be fully capable of all the things that someone who is maybe 25-30 now would be able to do. I don't know about you, but I don't know many 15 year olds today who are anywhere near capable of that kind of responsibility... including deciding whether or not they are emotionally and financially ready to have sex and deal with any and all consequences independently of their parents and partner.
In any case, I dated a 17 year old (junior) when I was 14 (sophomore)... but given that we were only one year apart in school, it didn't seem to matter that much. We were also evangelicals, so we didn't even kiss (once on the cheek, and that was exciting
)... but my parents still freaked out about us being alone together (Asian mom thing).
I don't know what I would do if I was the parent in that situation, but probably would have laid down some pretty strict boundaries and had some serious talks about STD's, pregnancy, and condoms with BOTH of them in front of me. Then I'd kick him in the balls.
(kidding, sorta)