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[wierd]

No, Reelya, that is wrong.

https://lisdemo.libguides.com/c.php?g=425586&p=2907018

Background Information

    The issue that we now refer to as "teenage pregnancy" did not always exist in our culture.  Throughout much of human history, including the history of the United States, young childbearing was common, with girls getting married as as young as 13 and 14 years old. 
    During the late 19th century, with the rise of the reform movement, the key concerns of the reformers shifted to avoiding illegitimacy among young pregnant girls, particularly those who lived in growing urban areas.  This period also saw an increase of maternity homes, orphanages, and "wayward girls'" homes, run by charitable and/or religious organizations. 
    The concept of the "teenager" and their emerging youth culture was birthed during the late 1940s/early 1950s.  Teenage pregnancy began to hold a more visible role in American popular culture, including films and literature.  Young girls having children began to be viewed as a serious moral problem that indicated a supposed lack of self-control, and the feelings of shame and social isolation inflicted upon teenage mothers was encouraged in order to promote marriage.  During this time, many (white) unmarried teen mothers had their babies placed for adoption.
    Also starting in the 1950s, and continuing into the present day, was the idea that a certain type of girl was more likely to engage in premarital sex and fall pregnant; one who generally came from a lower socioeconomic background, was promiscuous, and was from a racial/ethnic minority.  These assumptions, along with the stereotypes that accompany them, are inaccurate and can be hurtful. 
    The rights/responsibilities of teenage fathers is an issue that has fluctuated throughout time.  Prior to the 1970s, teen fathers were strongly encouraged to marry the girls whom they impregnated.  The 1980s saw the rise of the "deadbeat dad" trope in popular culture.  From the late 1990s onward, more serious attention has been paid to the involvement of teen fathers' in their babies' lives, as, like teen motherhood, it is a complex issue.

Reference

Luker, K.  (1997).  Dubious conceptions: The politics of teenage pregnancy.  Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Additionally

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/r/renaissance-childbirth/

In 15th-century Florence, girls usually married between the ages of 15 and 19, and their childbearing peaked between the ages of 20 and 24. Because of the common practice of sending children out to wet-nurses, time between pregnancies was brief, so that average number of children born to one mother was between 5 and 7. If she lived to around the age of 45, then that figure could rise to 10 children, but the dangers of pregnancy were such that this was uncommon.

Also, NO- NOT shifting the goal post. I said "Human history".  That implies WORLD. Human history is much bigger than just Europe, as I pointed out. It is also bigger than the past 300 or so years, (Recorded human history being nearly 10 times that span of time) Also, I said, SEX, not marriage. Your statistics are for marriage, not sex. Childbirths are a better indicator of sexual activity than marriage stats.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You know, when I wrote the words "Teenage Sex", a faction of my mind thought: "You should just omit that one. You know how these people are. They'll inevitably get caught up in a continuously degenerating argument about the commonality of teenage sex, or even worse, whether or not child rape is an endemic quality of human civilization."

But I thought no, you're just the paranoid part of my mind. That won't really happen. We can get some good conversation from this list and have an original AmeriPol discussion for the first time in like a year. It'll be great!

Hubris. Always hubris.

[wierd]

Naw, it is just the unfortunate focus of yet another go-around of "Person says "X used to be common throughout history.", next person says "NU UH! Modern data does not match that trend!" OP then says "No, that is modern data, historic data, like stated, says otherwise." -- "No, that is moving the goal post!", "No it is not, because--"

ad nauseum

This tends to be more frequent with politically charged features, such as the one under consideration.  It is unpopular to consider that people used to routinely bang and pop out the kids at what is not considered absurdly young ages, despite all the problems that doing so has associated with it.

That moralizing baggage is completely orthogonal to the factuality of it having happened historically, and it having once been the common status quo.

[Neonivek]

And then you get into "People only lived until their 30s"

>_> no, that wasn't true. That is a misinterpretation of the data.

[wierd]

That's just an artifact of a high infant mortality rate throwing the mean into a nosedive. When adjusted so it counts only those that survive past age 5, it levels out much better at around late 50s to mid 60s.

[Reelya]

@wierd: St John's is a religious college, which I sort of suspected to be the case for some unsourced quackery that contradicts all the actual data-based sources. And they have a "religion saved the day" narrative that they're selling on that page.

Their claim is sort of contradicted by people who actually look at the data. St john's unsourced assertion should be taken with a grain of salt, especially since their "teen pregancy was rife" argument is contradicted by the fact that  the average age of the first period was 16-17 in the 19th century, as is established by basically every source available:

http://www.faqs.org/childhood/So-Th/Teen-Pregnancy.html

Poor diet and common childhood illnesses delayed physical maturity for many. The majority of girls did not reach menarche (and their ability to have children) until sixteen or seventeen years of age. Many boys assumed strenuous jobs early in their ADOLESCENCE, but few could earn enough to support a family until their early to mid-twenties. This combination of biological, social, and economic factors limited pregnancy and parenthood for most teens.

By 1900, things began to change. The move to an industrial economy had radically changed everyday life for many Americans. Improved health conditions and better economic opportunities for young males in the Progressive Era encouraged a growing number of couples to marry and become parents at younger ages, in their teens and early twenties.

Note however that the real drop in the puberty age only happened after about 1920, so it was connected with automation of agriculture leading to big food surpluses.

Also, we have pretty good records on births, deaths, marriages. We know that the average marriage ages were actually higher in the 19th century than the mid 20th century. Anyone telling you otherwise is full of BS, or just heavily misleading. Also, while the medieval minimum marriage age was 12, all available data suggests that it was exceedingly rare that this would happen:
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2014/02/teen-girls-stop-commonly-getting-married/

Emerging evidence is eroding the stereotype . . . with work on low- and lower-middle-status women showing that . . . a large proportion of the sample married between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, and . . . showing that urban girls in Yorkshire tended to marry in their early to mid-twenties and rural girls . . . in their late teens to early twenties.

[wierd]

Reelya, I know that you are able to read just fine.

The data you keep citing is from at the oldest, mid 1700s. 

Human history, the thing I mentioned, is vastly older than that.  I have mentioned this to you at least 4 times now. 1900s data is "very new" data. It does not contradict the statement I made. Please stop citing it, thinking it contradicts the statement I made? Because it doesn't. If I said that such pregnancies and marriages were common in the past 3 centuries, your citations would be very valid. That is NOT hat I said, and is NOT a movement of the goalpost.  The movement of the goalpost is yours, by trying to flog me with very modern data.

Can you stop doing that please?

Additionally, the data you keep trying to beat me with comes from europe and early america. Again, WORLD is the scope. Not early modern era europe, not america.

[Reelya]

Data back to the middle ages says the same thing, however. There's basically no data source for excessively young childbearing being a common thing at any point in the last 1000 years in the West.

The only medieval sources that support the young-marriage thing are political unions between ruling families. Data from church records for average people all has marriage ages around 18-22.

[Neonivek]

Data back to the middle ages says the same thing, however. There's basically no data source for excessively young childbearing being a common thing at any point in the last 1000 years in the West.

Not to mention that given complications in Childbirth there are fairly substantive reasons why it wouldn't be common.

[wierd]

Oh, it was common all right. So was high maternal mortality.

Neon, you presume that just because it was a really REALLY bad idea, people did not do it anyway, and commonly. That is a mistake.

[Neonivek]

Oh, it was common all right. So was high maternal mortality.

Neon, you presume that just because it was a really REALLY bad idea, people did not do it anyway, and commonly. That is a mistake.

How far back are we going here? Are we going back to Neolithic or just back to say... the BCs?

Also remember High Maternal Mortality is common in places with poor access to healthcare regardless of the age of the mother. Births don't go smoothly just because you are a certain age. ANYHOW...

[wierd]

"human history" covers everything after the first fossil record of the first early modern humans. ;P  They were not humans before that. That is closer to about 60k years or so. Needless to say, modern medicine is a vastly VASTLY new occurrence on that scene.

A more stringent definition would be pedantic about "history", which only exists in written form for about the last 3000ish years.  That is why I mentioned that the scope of what I addressed, is at least 10 times the scope of the rebuttle period being cited.

[scriver]

And how far back does the historic data you have go?

[Reelya]

Research actually suggests that puberty became delayed when agriculture was developed, around 5000 BC or so then, as settling down allowed populations to increase faster than food production capacity (the need for mobility previously limited population growth). Then it fell again about 150 years ago due to advances in agricultural production.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/12/051201022811.htm
So, when talking about delayed onset it's basically all of recorded history here.

[Neonivek]

"human history" covers everything after the first fossil record of the first early modern humans. ;P  They were not humans before that. That is closer to about 60k years or so. Needless to say, modern medicine is a vastly VASTLY new occurrence on that scene.

Yes but I am mostly dismissing that 11-14 year old pregnant girls being the norm isn't the "Standard for all human history" or at least not a trend that very recent modernity bucked.

Well ok, I am mostly saying that I cannot take it at face value because... well... The myths involving the ancient world are extremely extensive (30 year lifespan, rule of thumb, Native Americans in general).

I did find a site that suggested that women tended to get pregnant in Ancient Egypt starting at the age of 11-13 though. Not sure where it got that information from... Then again another site says that the Egyptians didn't keep much in terms of medical records for pregnancy and couldn't even get the numbers on failed pregnancies... Soo yeah could be pulling it out of their butt.