*as long as there is an R after the name.
Its in the Bible!
Ahem. First of all, fourteen may be, indeed generally is, emotionally immature. But “little?” Not so much - that’s when *many* girls attain their adult size (or at least, the size they as adults in later life wish they could get back to). Give them a pair of glasses and the right wardrobe, and they can pass for older.There is a cultural shift that has taken place over the past century; in times past women were kept out of most professions - they even had to fight to create the nursing profession, and otherwise teaching school was about it. The upshot being, that girls were expected to be homemakers, and they could reasonably expect to learn that craft from experienced mentors - their own mothers.
Boys, likewise, were almost exclusively expected to grow up to be farmers, and had their fathers for mentors. In America but not everywhere else, boys could obtain land and be situated to be able to support a family (always allowing for the fact that children were expected to provide real help in that endeavor).
In the Old World, boys could not go to the frontier and homestead on land - none was available for the taking. I remember specifically reading about Ireland. There, a boy didn’t have the ability to support a family until he inherited his father’s farm - thus, was effectively an adolescent until his father’s death. In consequence marriage would routinely be between a mature man and, very possibly nay likely, a teenaged girl. If you watch the movie, “The Quiet Man,” you will note that when John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara (wasn’t it her?) have the bans read, she is referred to as, “spinster.”
The girl who was raised doing chores around the house, notably including cooking could, if motivated to learn, be quite prepared to function as a homemaker as a young teen. And, if properly nourished, would attract male attention quite readily. The age of marriage for a girl would depend on parental consent, and hopefully parental wisdom - but girls typically didn’t reach the age of 20 single. As recently as 1955 nearly every girl in a high school class I knew was married within a year of high school graduation. The boys, not so much. Note that I did not say “men.” Those girls were not all marrying classmates, and they certainly weren’t marrying younger boys.
The upshot is that while 30 marrying 14 would seem a stretch today, it would have been scarcely remarkable in earlier times. One of my grandmothers married at 14 or 16 (can’t remember which) - and both my grandmothers married widowers, each with a son who survived his mother. Today, girls are expected to have careers outside the home, and don’t always marry until college graduation, if then. It is, as I say, a cultural shift - the planted axiom of which is that adulthood begins not when a girl can maintain a household but when the couple both have qualified for professions. Qualified by higher education, and for professions, not merely “careers.”
As to the title of this thread, I associate myself with those who notice “may” and wonder if there is any “there" at all, there. I mean, the hit on Moore obviously was shaky without any allegations of questionable behavior more recent than 1978, so obviously they needed to go there - but “may?” Really?
The only difference i see is, back in farming days in Iowa etc, it was pretty common for people to marry very young... but it wasn’t the age gap. ie 30 yr to 15 or 16.
My aunt and uncle married when he was 16 she was 15. They are still married today.. 70 yrs.