Marriage age
The marriage age is the age at which the marriage takes place. The time of the first marriage is decisive for this. In addition to formal marriages, in some societies there are forms of informal, marriage-like cohabitation that cannot always be recorded in statistical determinations of the age of marriage. In principle, the average age at marriage for women varies between 15 and 50 years, depending on society and historical context. Factors that seem to influence the age at marriage include: B. Expectations of neo-locality (setting up new households upon marriage) that are placed on the married couple. The age at which marriages can be concluded is mostly the subject of national legislation; In many societies, marriages under a certain age limit are taboo. See also marriage .
The age of marriage, which traditionally legitimizes sexual relations and procreation , represents a main function in all ethnic groups in the world. In resource and capital-oriented societies, it takes time after sexual maturity for individuals to have the resources and skills in order to start a competitive household. In contrast, in labor-dependent societies, the labor productivity of women and children is decisive for early marriages due to the dependence on life and reproductive opportunities. In particular, the valuation of virginity in patriarchal societies lead - in addition to the degree of polygyny and the competition for dowries - to a culture-specific lowering of the age of marriage up to and including child marriage .
Historical context in Europe
Marriage and family formation are highly culturally dependent; there is accordingly no “normal” age at marriage. For the time since there have been statistical surveys on marriages (from approx. 1700–1900), John Hajnal determined differences in the age of marriage between Eastern and Western Europe, which he associated with household formation as “European marriage patterns”. Where there was a low marriage age in Eastern Europe (Ø 20–22), beyond the so-called Hajnal line in Western Europe there was a significantly higher first marriage age of Ø> 30 years. In this case, older age is associated with neo-local household formation, which was widespread in Western Europe at marriage. In addition to this cross-cultural perspective, there are also temporal fluctuations in the age of marriage.
Table: Age at first marriage for three villages 1700–1899 in Upper Bavaria and Swabia
Anhausen (Gde. Diedorf, district of Augsburg), Gabelbach (district of Zusmarshausen, district of Augsburg) and Kreuth (district of Miesbach), 1700–1899.
| period | Men | Women |
| 1700-1749 | 28.4 | 27.7 |
| 1750-1799 | 30.5 | 28.9 |
| 1800-1824 | 30.3 | 29.3 |
| 1825-1849 | 33.7 | 30.9 |
| 1850-1874 | 33.3 | 30.4 |
| 1875-1899 | 32.1 | 28.1 |
This table makes it clear that an early marriage age before the 20th century was not a “natural” status quo, not even for a rural-agricultural population, but that there were considerable differences depending on the historical-cultural context.
The marriage age in Germany
In societies with free choice of partner, the following applied until the 1970s: the higher the social status of a man, the greater the average age gap between the two partners in first-time marriages (i.e. the relatively younger the woman is). Since the 1970s, women have been investing more and more time in their education. Well-educated men today usually marry well-educated women who are a little older by then.
Before 1900, half of all male academics married women who were over 30 years of age around the age of 20. In the rural population of Saxony , the age difference was 5 years or 3 years for the cottagers and the mean age at marriage for men 27 years. There have always been isolated cases of men who only married when they were 50 and women who married for the first time when they were 40 and still had children. For men, marriages under the age of 18 were extremely rare; however, z. For example, in Saxony in the 18th century around 2% of all farm daughters were married at 14 and 15 years of age. The assumption that people used to marry before the age of 18 is therefore simply wrong. The practice of marriage between young people is largely limited to politically motivated marriages in aristocratic circles.
In the case of second and multiple marriages due to widowhood , and recently also after divorce , very large age differences between the partners are not uncommon.
In many cases the man's economic independence was the prerequisite for marriage. In farming families, there is often a direct connection between the takeover of an estate or the inheritance purchase entered in the court register and the marriage a few weeks before or after. In order to achieve this economic independence, also in the non-peasant population, inheritance obligations on the part of the bride and father-in-law were important.
For practical genealogy , a basic knowledge of the probable age at marriage and its statistical distributions is essential. Ancestral lists are an excellent source for determining statistical distributions of the age of marriage.
Since the mid-1970s, the average age at marriage for singles in Central Europe has risen sharply for both sexes. In Germany in 2009 it was 33.1 years (men) and 30.2 years (women). Between 2006 and 2009, the marriage age increased by 5 to 16 weeks per year.
The marriage age in other countries
Austria
In 2017, women married an average of 30.4 years, men at 32.7 years.
Switzerland
In 2014, women married an average of 29.6 years, men at 31.8 years.
United States
In the United States , the age at marriage reached its lowest point between 1950 and 1970: women married at an average of 20.3 years and men at 22.8 years (first marriage). The age at marriage has risen continuously since then. In 2007, American women first married when the average was 26 years old and Americans when they were 27.7 years old.
Sweden
The average age at first wedding in Sweden in 2010 was 32.9 years for women and 35.5 years for men. For both sexes, the marriage age was 0.4 years higher than in the previous year. The trend that Swedes marry later and later has existed for several years.
literature
- Adelheid von Nell: The development of the generative structures of bourgeois and peasant families from 1750 to the present . Bochum 1974.
Individual evidence
- ^ Nave-Herz, Rosemarie (2003). Introduction to family sociology.
- ^ Coale / Watkins (1977): Decline of Fertility.
- ↑ U. Mueller, B. Nauck, Andreas Diekmann: Handbook of Demography 1: Models and Methods , p. 401; Springer-Verlag 2013; online in google books
- ↑ [1]
- ↑ ibid.
- ↑ ibid.
- ^ John Knodel, Demographic transitions in German villages, in: Coale / Wakins, Decline of fertility, 352
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from January 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Marriages since 2007 according to selected characteristics Statistics Austria. Retrieved July 25, 2018.
- ↑ Population movement - indicators. Marriage and marriage frequency ( memento of the original from October 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Federal Office for statistics. Retrieved January 1, 2016.
- ^ Median Age at First Marriage, 1890-2007
- ↑ PDF at www.scb.se
