820
Generations (lemmy.today)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/microblogmemes@lemmy.world
113 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 100 points 2 weeks ago (15 children)

The average mother having their average daughter at an average of 25 is historically probably quite an overestimate. 20 would be a much safer guess, but there's a good chance it's lower than that too.

Doesn't change the math that much though, easily less than a thousand generations since the advent of agriculture either way.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 15 child comments
    •
  • [–] 59 points 2 weeks ago (9 children)

    Surprisingly no. At least in central and western Europe, child marriages were very much a nobility thing. Securing alliances and such. And even for those the first child may well have been much later.

    I don’t have an individual statistic on hand but https://fakehistoryhunter.net/2026/01/18/age-of-marriage-giving-birth-in-medieval-europe/ has collected a bunch of sources that suggest that the usual age of first marriage in medieval Europe for women was around their mid 20s, pretty much the same as today.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 9 child comments
    •
  • [–] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 child)

    I'm not talking about child marriage. Traditionally women were considered to be of marrying age at around 15 or 16 (note that this doesn't mean they got married at exactly this age -- it means the lower bound). The blog you link seems to be intentionally or unintentionally conflating child marriage (prepubescent girls) with marrying between 15 and 20. And indeed the sources it cites seem to largely support an average marrying age of around 20 for women until the 17th century.

    This is also of course only for the medieval period, which is relatively recent all things considered. That still leaves 8500 years unaccounted for until the advent of agriculture, and during those 8500 years it's far more likely for women to have given birth to their first child younger rather than older than in the medieval period.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago

    Although interestingly we have to take into account how many children were born per woman and until what age. Then we have to consider how many survived.

    This would push the average age above that of the average age of first childbirth. The child must survive to eventually descend to you. I don't think it makes the age 25, but likely higher than 15

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [+] -14 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

    You're joking though. Right? Or are you thinking about wealthy people? The ones who might be written about?

    I come from several generations of "prom night" conceptions and "shot gun weddings".

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 26 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    You can't just look at the age of the mother when she has her first daughter. You also have to consider her age at the time of her last daughter. Even if she has her "prom night" daughter at 18, if she later has another daughter at 36, we're looking at an average age of 27.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago

    Plus talking about the deep past you have to consider infant mortality rates as well. If someone has 10 kids, but only the ones they had after 29 survived then that changes the math.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 44 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

    Read the page I linked. It specifically lists sources that specifically talk about peasants in medieval Europe who on average married later than nobility.

    Prom night conceptions and shotgun weddings are a phenomenon of the 20th and 21st century and would have been considered absolutely scandalous for most of history.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago

    Yeah, when we're talking about a 12000 year span and your references don't go past the last thousand, it isn't very representative. Relevant, certainly, but do you think that had much bearing in ancient Egypt? And that only gets us halfway through the time span we're talking about.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (-1 replies)
  • [–] 30 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    Lots of babies and children died before adulthood though, so its actually not a bad bet for 25 as an average birthing age for one that survives to adulthood. Not that every woman would lose her first 2 kids or whatever but enough certainly did to drive the average up somewhat from what it would be with modern medicine.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 5 points 1 week ago

    Tbf, it was also far more common for people to have a shitload of kids, which takes time and thus would mean the mother was a fair bit older for the youngest few. My grandma was the youngest of 12 and her mother was well into her 40s when she was born.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent