Diana's age at time of marriage.

[Peedoffo]

I'm in my 20s so I really don't remember Diana. I did more reading on the subject and I can't believe the establishment thought it was ok to marry a 19 year old off to a man 13 years older than her who had no interest in her. No wonder she struggled this was the 1980s as well not the Victorian times! Could anyone around then tell me , why did her family back/support the marriage? Was there any concerns from the public ? I would be horrified at the thought of marrying my DD off at 19 to a much older man who wasn't really interest.

Times have changed. In those days, people did marry younger, and people did date older people without comment. I had friends who dated people who were nearly thirty when in late teens.

Diana was 19 when Charles proposed to her.

@Riverlee Maybe you and your friends were naive and accepted this. But plenty of people did thing it was wrong.

Most of my female family were all married by the age of 18/19. The males sometimes also although generally by 26. They’d have met a few times before getting engaged. Most likely chaperoned as well. They weren’t foolish enough to think that they were in love!

if Diana thought she was in love after 13 meetings that points to her naïveté.

Also it’s for each family to protect their child. My parents looked after my interests & my inlaws dhs until there was agreement.

It was only ‘free’ university for those who qualified financially. I wasn’t able to take up my place as my parents, though separated, weren’t divorced and therefore I didn’t qualify for the grant. My parents were too busy fighting and refused to let me go.

If the student loan had been in place during the early 80s, I would have been able to go.

University in those days was more elite than it was today. I went to a secondary school in a good area and less than half the pupils attended sux form. 95% of these went to university or polytechnic. Grants were awarded depending on your parents income so it wan’t free for all. You didn’t have to pay fees though. Nowadays, university is open to all, almost regardless if you academic ability. In those days, it was only the academically able that went to university and it had more of a status to it.

I remember people thinking Charles' remark was odd, and out of place in what was just a smile and wave type of interview.

Oriunda A similar thing happened to one of my friends. He was offered a university place after achieving good A'Levels in the 1980s. However, his mum said she needed more money coming into the household, so he got a job instead.

He didn't like his job so he waited until he was 22, when he could qualify for a mature student's grant, and took up a university place then.

You could have got a full grant independently when you were 26 like I did.

So did in 1981. I also got a dependant's allowance for my baby daughter.

She possibly could, but by 26 many, perhaps most, working class women were tied down with children. The stucture was not in place to support that and university attandance.

It would depend where you lived. In Lewisham, as a single parent, I got a full grant and a subsidised nursery place.

I had a five year old. I got extra money for him.

Having been a tax payer for a minimum of 3 years in 1979, I received a full grant for living costs on turning 23 as a mature student.
The university tuition fees were paid by my local authority.
It was a good system, without which I wouldn't have gone to university.
Sorry to see that Starmer has u turned on the abolishment of student loans.

@Liorae I actually think it was easier then than it is now to go to university as an adult with dependants. I had nothing to pay back (as @Blossomtoes will agree). If I were in the same circumstances now I don't think I could do it. I am eternally grateful for the opportunity as it saved me from a life of dead end jobs or benefits. I wish it were still possible now.

Absolutely I agree. There’s no way I could do it now. Not only did it save us from a life time of dead end jobs but it benefited the Treasury. I was a higher rate tax payer for at least half my career. It liberated many women.

The real difference back then is that university was seen in most poor areas as only for better off people. Even my school did not encourage kids to think of university. Nearly everyone left school at 16 years old for full time work.

That may have been your experience but not everyone's. My younger sister failed her 11 plus and went to a Secondary Modern. She left at 15 but eventually went to university with a full grant. My father in law was a steel worker and DH went to a very rough comprehensive but both he and his brother went to university. A female friend of his was made, by her parents, to leave at 16 and I'm sure this was more common but it was due to parental expectations not that the system made it impossible.

Steel workers where very well paid. They were the aristocracy of the working class.
I did not claim no one working class went to university, of course they did. But hardly anyone did who came from a poor family and lived in a poor area.
The system did not make it impossible, but there was no access to the internet. Without help teenagers did not even know there were grants available to go to university.

Haha. He was in and out of work definitely not aristocracy. DH grew up on a rough council estate and taking a beating at school was a regular occurance. Unril he was 6 he lived with his parents in his grandmother's terraced house - outsude lav and tin bath. He would be astounded to learn how privileged he was. His parents wanted better for him, as did mine, that was the difference.

@CaptainMyCaptain I did not say he was privileged. Although back then most working class people did not have an inside bathroom. I said steel workers were well paid, which they were. That is why at the time they were nicknamed the aristocracy. Because their wages were higher than most other working class people.
And most parents want better for their kids. But back then before the internet and school programmes to get kids into university from poor backgrounds, many poor parents did not know how to get their kids into university. My gran was absolutely astounded when she found out later in life that it would be free for my nephew to go to university.
Most working class parents pushed their kids into apprenticeships and trades. They were encouraged into higher paying trades as a way of improving their life.

Experiences will vary according to individual schools and parents. My first post on this subject was a response to @Liorae who thought she wouldn't have been able to go to university in the 80s because there were no student loans. Full grants were available, and without parental contributions after 21, and many used the opportunity. Many , like myself, who went to university in the 60, 70s and 80s were the first in their families to do so. Many of those would not have done it knowing there would be debts hanging over them for years.

Not only that but if you were over 26 the grant was enhanced.

@AskMeMore, people were able to find things out before the internet, you know. We went to libraries, we browsed in bookshops, we read the papers, watched TV, listened to the radio, we asked authority figures who might know, e.g. teachers, librarians, we went to the Citizens' Advice Bureau, we picked up leaflets in public places. It really wasn't difficult to find out how the student financing system worked.

I'm sorry for those whose parents stood in their way or didn't encourage them. My parents were overjoyed that my brother and I could go to university and very generously made up our maintenance grants to the full amount (their combined earnings as a teacher and a retail manager, although not that high, were just high enough that we didn't get a full grant). They were both easily bright enough to have gone, but in their day the only people who went to university were those whose families could pay and a tiny handful of exceptionally able school leavers who won scholarships. My mother did make it to teacher training college, but only because the baby boom led to a huge shortage of teachers and financial incentives were put in place to get as many teachers trained as possible in short order.

I see from a brief scan of Wikipedia that Charles Spencer went to Eton and Oxford, but none of his sisters went to university, even though at least one had A levels. Odd. Diana was the same age as me. Maybe I was very lucky, but I knew nobody growing up who thought girls should not get the same educational opportunities as boys. Maybe it was different in the aristocracy.