To think I was in the right and everyone else in the wrong...?

[falulahthecat]

I had the strangest conversation on a genealogy website about a 10 year old girl being married to a 30-something miner in the hills of Kentucky in 1938 - so her parents could live in her new husbands house instead of the makeshift hillside cave home they were in - her mother had changed her age to 15 on the license for the purpose of tricking the vicar etc. They also had an older daughter. One person said "I would do it if it meant not living in a cave" - I politely suggested maybe she rethink the phrasing as the 10 year old did not exactly have a choice and was then attacked for 'judging' people of the past - "You don't know what it's like to live in a cave" etc.
I said I could never condone any behaviour like that for any reason at any time, especially with an older daughter 'available' - "She might not have been available she might have been married", ok, so there are 2 grown working men and they still can't cobble together rent for a wooden cabin without 'swapping' their 10 year old daughter/SIL?
I then said I know young brides were not unsual pre 18th C, a historical house I worked at had a 17thC countess twice widowed by 16 - but that was the 1670's, not the 1930's. This was met with "It was 1938, the year before the war (?????) and after the depression".
Then I was chastised for 'judging' again, and informed that the marriage would 'probably' "not have been consummated until her menstrual cycle started anyway" < well, my menstrual cycle started aged 10 - and I sure wasn't ready for married life, or pregnancy!

It was just so weird, all I did was suggest someone rethink "I would do it if it meant not living in a cave" when referring to giving their 10 year old daughter away in marriage and lying to say she was 15 (she was described as shy, 70lbs and 4ft 8, so sad!) and I got attacked by about 10 people for not empathising. One literally said "Whoa, are you judging them for this?"

Sorry, but my family lived in Croydon 18th-20th C, often 8 living in 1 rooms, with only one working man in the household, and this didn't happen?!
I've since left the group, because I couldn't get my head round it.
AIBU to think that they were all being a bit weird?

Weird. There may be an argument for not judging the original family (tho personally I would) but you can judge a person now who can say oh, I'd do it. WTF?

I think I would have signed into the workhouse before sending my child to a life like that.

That's just it, originally I wasn't 'judging' the original family (although the mothers actions were questionable..!) but just suggesting maybe that one person rethought "I'd do it if it meant not living in a cave".

The joke is the next census shows her family living somewhere else (in a house) without her, so it all seemed even more like it wasn't necessary'...

Then the menstrual cycle comment and the "It was 1938, the year before the war" really got me. Exactly, the year before - they had no idea it was coming :/

Unfortunately, families often sell their daughters one wy or another and it still happens now. Quite right to call it, tho!

If people were talking about this family in Kentucky, 1938 WASN'T the year before the war, was it? We didn't enter WWII until 1941.

But 1938 WAS in the midst of the Great Depression. I'm sure people did a lot of unspeakable things to survive. And Appalachia was particularly hard hit. But I don't think that selling your 10 yr old daughter into marriage would ever have been an acceptable thing to do. That family must have been particularly hardbitten to do such a thing

It was 3 years before, if you have a US perspective, and people had somw idea it might come to war, despite the Munich Agreement and so on.

Seems odd that people think it's okay. I'm pretty sure it would have been unusual behaviour for 1938, but even if you accept it happened then, it seems odd to condone it now. 1938 wasn't so long ago. My father was born 1939.

That was it, I didn't even mention that family, I just suggested saying you would do it now, was weird. And got flamed.
I'm glad it's not just me who finds this odd - I really thought I'd missed something, it was just how everyone suddenly jumped on and started saying I obviously 'had no idea' and 'couldn't empathise' when I'd not even mentioned the original family at that point.

Maybe the woman I was referring to was a particularly admired member of the fb group?

Of course I would never do such a thing, but then I would never leave my child on a doorstep, in a " hole in a wall" or to die of exposure becouase she was a girl and I wanted a boy. All done this centry.
My farther traveled the world in his youth and has told me story's of children mutalated by there parents so they can beg, my farther is 76.
Girls are mutalated every day in this country in the name of culture and tradition. I would get more upset by that.

bebanjo I do, in fact it's what goes on today that made me so upset that this woman said what she did.

People say things all the time that they don't mean.
Is this person anyone you know in real life?
What makes you believe she would do as she said?
Get off face book and get a real hobbie, and get some sleep.

A decade later but have you seen this photo and the story behind it? Children for sale

bebanjo Just - Wow! The thing that I found odd was that she insisted she was being reasonable in what she said and I was wrong for saying she should rethink it, then everyone else condoning swapping a 10 year old for a house.
It's a group I use regularly to help with my family tree and ones I do for friends and colleagues. It's pretty much the only thing I 'do' on facebook, thank you very much!
*hobby.
I get all the sleep I need. Thanks.

LanaStraightLeg I hadn't seen that before, so sad!
All I could think of was that poor 8 year old girl who died from internal injuries after her marriage to a 40 year old man last year. To even suggest you'd think of doing such a thing, for a house, is beyond me.

Not surprised it happens, after all there are always adults who treat children terribly unless the State intervenes. But shocked others thought that was acceptable.

In England, the age of consent had been set at 10 in the 16th century, and since then, English common law had traditionally set the age of consent within the range of 10 to 12, but in 1875 the age was raised to 13. After intense sensational media revelations about the scourge of under-age prostitution in London in the 1880s caused respectable middle-class outrage, the age of consent was raised to 16 in 1885. Early feminists of the Social Purity movement such as Josephine Butler and others, instrumental in securing the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, began to turn towards the problem of child prostitution by the end of the 1870s.

Also I think people get confused with the term marriage and betrothal. The two were interchangeable terms really.

You also need to factor in social attitudes in the USA en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent

""In traditional societies, the age of consent for a sexual union was a matter for the family to decide, or a tribal custom. In most cases, this coincided with signs of puberty, menstruation for a woman and pubic hair for a man""

You cannot judge yesteryear by todays standards, morals and laws

I don't know. People starved to death, froze to death, died of extremely minor illnesses etc. during the Depression and the Appalachia's were particularly hard hit. There are still people living as though the Depression is ongoing in Kentucky, some regions and some families just never bounced back. The choice between a proper house or a make-shift cave could have easily meant the difference between life or death at that time, a future for their daughter or watching her die from a cold or simply waste away. It wasn't like her family could just go get more work, if they had any form of work at all they were supremely lucky and were probably expecting to lose it at any given moment. Pretty much every type of work going in that region at that time was bloody dangerous, you couldn't count on being around to support your family. They probably thought they were doing a good thing for her. If her father or uncle or whomever was supporting her died she'd have nothing, if her husband died she'd have a house.

I think you're right OP. Not judging people of the past is a lame excuse.
People of the past kept slaves, yet everyone agrees that was a terrible and immoral thing to do. We accept the choices people have made in the past and we learn from the bad ones. I think it's OK to acknowledge the bad choices as long as you also acknowledge the context of the time which might have led to those horrible acts.

I think they must have been pretty desperate to do that, although you mentioned they had an older daughter so it makes you wonder why they didn't marry off the elder one.

DarlingGrace
kmc1111
I think you've missed my point a little - I KNOW this sort of thing went on when people were desperate, and I'm very familiar with marital law through history as it was an area I researched in my history degree, what my issue was, was the woman who was saying she would do it NOW. Then stood by that statement, and those agreeing it wasn't so bad - yes it was so bad - they must have been awfully desperate and her mother lied about her age BECAUSE it was so bad.

Then again, it now transpires that on the later census, the family are off in another house, the husband is now listed as 'divorced' which suggests the newspaper report that suggested the husband was unaware she was only 10 may have been correct, and no one can find Rose anywhere.

Poor girl.

GuybrushThreepwoodMP
I know, it's just seeing ancestors through 'rose tinted' glasses that I think I find historically inaccurate if nothing else lol. The fact it was in the papers meant it was obviously something unusual at the time, like the link shared above with the photo of the woman selling her children, it wouldn't have been such a big deal if it had been considered 'the norm'.

Btw GuybrushThreepwoodMP Monkey Island = amazing! Haven't played in years.

YANBU.

I always find it ironic when people accuse people in posts of being judgemental as they being judgemental to do so! It's usually used when the poster really means " I don't want to hear that I'm wrong."

It's necessary to be judgemental of our contempories, we couldn't deem certain actions to be crimes otherwise.

You see this my point exactly,I was trying to be nice, stop worrying, get some sleep and you have taken it as some kind of slure.
It was not ment in that way at all.

bebanjo I see you conveniently left out the "Get off facebook and get a real hobbie" part of your 'nice' post.

You are reading intentions that were not, are not there.
Get off face book, meaning do somthing different, take your mind off it, think of somthing else, stop worrying about what some random stranger has said.
Get a real hobbie, sorry if it sounded mean, just ment find somthing to do that does not invoke such a reaction.
You really are taking this competly out of context.