[LMB] Age at first marriage

[micki yamada]

This is one argument that shows the strengths and weaknesses of broad-based 
statistics. Broad-based statistics will show more accurately the ages of 
people getting married than anecdotes. However, there are *always* anecdotes 
to show that "figures lie."

In our own day and age, there was a girl who had to get married at 14 or 15 
in my school. Was she typical? No. No. A thousand times no! But she matured 
early, and fooled around with her boyfriend, and got pregnant. OTOH, I'm 
sure there are never-married women in my high school class (which would put 
them at around 40). The exceptions at both ends of the scale tend to get 
noticed.

What we need is statistics like: "Out of a sample of 10,000 women (or men, 
if we're talking about men), 50 were married at age 15, 75 at age 16, 300 at 
age 17, 2000 at age 18 (and so on and so forth)." Otherwise we're just 
telling each other stories about exceptions we've heard. (-: Which is 
entertaining, too, but doesn't prove any points.

Micki