Early America, Sex, Marriage, family #5


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Topic: Religions > Atheism
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Date: 23 Sep 2006 05:54:21 AM
Object: Early America, Sex, Marriage, family #5
PART 5
EARLY AMERICA
SEX, MARRIAGE, CHILDREN, GAYS, LESBIANS, BOYS AS GIRLS, ABORTION,
BREECHING, FAMILY AND OTHER MYTHS
More mariage info
Among the aristocracy of the Southern colonies, marriages were still
largely arranged. Restrictions on the inheritance of couples who married
without parental approval, and laws requiring the approval of parents in
marriages involving minors, acted as a strong brake on the heart. Courtship
could be a protracted business negotiation. A young man, interested in a
young woman, would first interest his father in the union. His father would
then write a letter of introduction to her father, including financial
settlements the young man would have upon marriage. The recipient, if
interested, would reply with a letter setting forth his approval and his
own financial gifts. The young couple were then free to see if they had
anything in common. Falling in love before this point was considered a
brash breach of etiquette.
The corporate interactions of New England society created more apparent
spontaneity, but in fact the process of evaluation had been going on all
the young people's lives.
SOURCE: The Writer's Guide, Everyday Life in Colonial America From 1607 -
1783. Dale Taylor. Weiter's Digest Books (1997) p 122
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Some information on age
Many traditions describe marriage at a young age. For certain low classes
established here, it was possible; however, early marriage was impractical
for most. Immigrants could not enter into indentures until age twenty-one,
and then were further bound to celibacy for five to seven years. This drove
the marriage age up to between twenty-five and thirty and had the effect of
removing many people from the reproductive pool until they became infertile
or died, limiting the ability of the population to grow dynamically.
Through the period aristocratic marriages were conducted with
twelve-year-old brides, but it is questionable whether they were
consummated until later. Statistics for the South commonly show ages
between fourteen and sixteen for women, but men generally were in their
majority before marriage.
SOURCE: The Writer's Guide, Everyday Life in Colonial America From 1607 -
1783. Dale Taylor. Weiter's Digest Books (1997) p 121
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In nineteenth-century America, the "age of consent" for girls in many
states was as low as nine or ten, which rather makes a mockery of the term.
What one author calls "the myth of an abstinent past" stems in part from
lower fecundity and higher fetal mortality in previous times, making early
sexual activity less likely to end up in pregnancy or birth. The proportion
of fecund fifteen-year-old girls in America increased by 31 percent between
1940 and 1968 alone. In 1870, only 13 percent of European girls were fully
fecund at age 17.5, compared to 94 percent of American girls the same age
today 11
11. Phillips Cutwright, "The Teenage Sexual Revolution and the Myth of an
Abstinent Past," Family Planning Perspectives 4 (1972): 24, 26; Jane
Lancaster and Beatrix Hamburg, eds., Schoolage Pregnancy and Parenthood:
Biosocial Dimensions (New York: Aldine, 1986).
SOURCE: The Way We Never Were American Families and the Nostalgia Trap
Stephanie Coontz Basic Books, A Division of HarperCollins Publishers (1992)
p 184
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ORAL TRADITIONS
There are a number of oral traditions that can be referred to in the
Hemings-Jefferson saga.
(1). The Thomas Woodson family oral tradition
The Thomas Woodson family oral tradition is basically that Thomas Jefferson
and Sally Hemings (1) became lovers in France (she was approx 14-16, he was
approx 44-46--the Common Law age of consent during Jefferson's day was
10-12) or (2) he had his way with her sexually. The result was that in 1789
she became pregnant, and a male child was born to her after she returned to
Monticello in 1790
[ Just to set the record straight on this matter, DNA proved that no male
member of the Jefferson family tree fathered Thomas Woodson ]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In any case, single women in New England during the colonial period were
more likely to be sexually active than to belong to a church----in 1776
only about one out of five New Englanders had a religious affiliation.
The Churching of America, 1776-1990, Winners and Losers in Our Religious
Economy, ROGER FINKE and RODNEY STARK,RUTGERS UNIVERSITY PRESS
New Brunswick, New Jersey (1994) p. 22
_______________________________________________
In the USA last century, the age of consent was 10 years old. California
was the first state to change the age of consent to 14, which it did in
1889. After California, other US states joined in and raised the age of
consent too.
(Source: http://www.ageofconsent.com/comments/numberone.htm)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Campaign to Raise the Age of Consent, 1885-1914
http://www.binghamton.edu/womhist/teacher/aoc.htm
[excerpt]
Introduction
In the late nineteenth century,"Age of consent" referred to the legal age
at which a girl could consent to sexual relations. Men who engaged in
sexual relations with girls who had not reached the age of consent could be
criminally prosecuted. American reformers were shocked to discover that the
laws of most states set the age of consent at the age of ten or twelve, and
in one state, Delaware, the age of consent was only seven. Women reformers
and advocates of social purity initiated a campaign in 1885 to petition
legislators to raise the legal age of consent to at least sixteen, although
their ultimate goal was to raise the age to eighteen. The campaign was
eventually quite successful; by 1920, almost all states had raised the age
of consent to sixteen or eighteen.
Objectives
To understand the class, gender, and racial tensions within the
age-of-consent campaign of the late nineteenth century; to investigate the
differences in the views of diverse supporters of the campaign; to
understand the broad appeal of the campaign to many groups of women; to see
how reformers' solutions to the problem of the sexual exploitation of
wage-earning women changed over time.
[end excerpt
***************************************************************
You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the US and a couple from overseas as well]
***************************************************************
.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
****************************************************************
USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
*****************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
****************************************************************
]
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