One more dismal thing about the whole virginity=bleeding+pain business.
According to a randomly-Googled Australian Government safe-sex site called of “I Stay Safe”
The thickness and elasticity of the hymen varies according to the level of oestrogen [spelled “estrogen” in American English —fl] (female hormones) in the body. Before puberty, the hymen does not have much stretch, so would usually be damaged if a large enough object passed through it. Once you go through puberty and start to develop oestrogen, the hymen becomes thickened and more elastic in nature. At this point it looks like a hair scrunchy. It will easily accommodate an object such as a tampon or penis and simply stretches out and back.
In other words the ancient tradition of expecting blood and, for that matter, innocence and inexperience on a woman’s wedding night probably has an uncomfortably large something to do with the also ancient (and still practiced in parts of the world today) tradition of marrying girls very young — at or soon after menarche, before normal adult estrogen levels are well established.
Eww.
Submitted by 2553 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-12-04 01:12.
Like a hair scrunchy? Makes me think of it in a whole new way.
Of course the girls are married off too young-younger the body, more malleable the mind.
Submitted by 2553 (not verified) on Thu, 2008-12-04 19:04.
I think the tradition of marrying young girl / older man probably existed for a good reason, disgusting as it may seem by modern standards. People could die at any time, by disease, violence, or famine. Most children didn't survive past age 3, so she needed to start as early as possible in order to have a decent chance of producing a few children who survived to adulthood to have children of their own. For the man, he usually needed extra time to establish a stable means of supporting his children - such as apprenticeship for several years before establishing his own business, waiting for his father to die or retire to take over the farm, or whatever.
It may not have been the only or best way of doing things, but it worked well enough for the times.
[Agreed. Given the general availability of adequate, sanitation, and antibiotics... plus the relatively novel development of universal emancipation including the right to vote, own property, and conduct business that social model is roughly as obsolete as continuing to build castles on the edges of towns to keep the Vikings at bay. :-) It worked then but despite the bit about old habits dying hard it's a *very* unnecessary intrusion today. Thanks, Nightfall. --fl]
Submitted by 2553 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-12-05 10:27.
Actually the tradition of girls marrying young is far from universal in agrarian societies. Throughout most of early modern Europe, for instance, women married as adults, not as children - sometimes well into adulthood, mid-twenties or later - and this helped guard against overpopulation. But this didn't necessarily imply high status for women, unfortunately.
[Agreed! I think in Western Europe some time after the 1500s women and men both married substantially later than at any time before or, until recently anyway, since. Not coincidentally that was also a period of fairly high financial contribution from both partners -- it was relatively expensive to buy a farm, house, or business. So definitely it's not universal and it's certainly not "innate." Thanks, Sungold! --fl]
Submitted by 2553 (not verified) on Fri, 2008-12-05 19:00.
I did not mean to imply that it was universal, only that it seemed to work well enough in societies with high death rates (plagues, wars, mass crop failures due to planting monocultures, etc.) Evolution doesn't care about "best", only "well enough", and evolution of societies are no different. And of course other societies probably found different answers.
In modern advanced societies, this sort of "solution" would cause a lot more problems than it would solve, which is probably why we don't do it that way anymore.
Submitted by 2553 (not verified) on Sat, 2008-12-06 17:18.
Oh yeah. The distinction is really between societies where the death rate threatened their continuity, and those where *over*population did the same thing. The European cases I'm most familiar were responses to threats of overpopulation - for instance, SW Germany, where landholdings were splintered due to inheritance laws (with the ultimate result that lots of those folks emigrated to the U.S.). I *don't* know anything about birthrates and marriage patterns in the wake of the Black Death, which you'd think would result in the marriage customs you mentioned.