I took this graph from vox.com — Eliza Barclay interviewing Moira Weigel, author of Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating.
Was surprised the avg. marriage age for women was at least 20 all the way through (I'd guessed that 100 years ago it was about 19), but also that the youngest age was relatively recent, in the 1950s. I suspect affluence was pushing the age down then (you could afford to start a household early) even as greater freedom and women's independence was working in the other direction; and my guess would be, looking at this, that prior to the 1950s needing money to marry was pushing the marriage age higher, even while the pressure on women to marry and settle down (and be supported by a husband) was making it not so high — but then I'd have expected lower marriage ages in the relatively well-off 1920s than in the Great Depression 1930s, which wasn't really the case (it's only slightly lower in the 1920s, and higher for men). So basically I don't know how to interpret what I'm seeing. (U.S. Data; I don't know Melanie's official nationality, but I'm guessing that she's more part of the U.S. overseas community than part of Korea, though I may be all wrong about that.)
Re: Tierless Tinkerbell's wedding bells
Was surprised the avg. marriage age for women was at least 20 all the way through (I'd guessed that 100 years ago it was about 19), but also that the youngest age was relatively recent, in the 1950s. I suspect affluence was pushing the age down then (you could afford to start a household early) even as greater freedom and women's independence was working in the other direction; and my guess would be, looking at this, that prior to the 1950s needing money to marry was pushing the marriage age higher, even while the pressure on women to marry and settle down (and be supported by a husband) was making it not so high — but then I'd have expected lower marriage ages in the relatively well-off 1920s than in the Great Depression 1930s, which wasn't really the case (it's only slightly lower in the 1920s, and higher for men). So basically I don't know how to interpret what I'm seeing. (U.S. Data; I don't know Melanie's official nationality, but I'm guessing that she's more part of the U.S. overseas community than part of Korea, though I may be all wrong about that.)