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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026

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And what happened thereafter to the marriage rates, marriage age, and birth rate?

and the average age for which was almost certainly older than you expect. E

Uh no it was about 21 for men during the USA baby boom, what are you talking about? In antiquity is was also around 21. Do you think 22 year old men are middle aged?

it began with protests by male college students against being banned from female dorms

On X they're calling this capeshit history. That means it's storybook fantasy. A neat, little, visual, graspable event « kicked off » everything. Oh boy! It's like a little modern Homeric myth! When the reality is what happened is some esoteric cohort effects caused peoples' instincts to shift and so on.

Yes, male age at marriage reached a temporary minimum in between the two sexual revolutions. But we actually have male age at marriage data about as well as could ever be expected, and historical male ages at marriage tended to be late twenties or early thirties. Moralists just before the first sexual revolution recommended 25+, Romans talked about 30 as ideal and normative- and what data exists suggest these were, broadly, reflecting general norms.

Marriage rates declined with the second sexual revolution. That's bad. But the norms in between the two sexual revolutions were not durable or sustainable.

Yes, male age at marriage reached a temporary minimum in between the two sexual revolutions. But we actually have male age at marriage data about as well as could ever be expected, and historical male ages at marriage tended to be late twenties or early thirties. Moralists just before the first sexual revolution recommended 25+, Romans talked about 30 as ideal and normative- and what data exists suggest these were, broadly, reflecting general norms.

You are way off, sorry. None of this is true.

Marriage rates declined with the second sexual revolution. That's bad. But the norms in between the two sexual revolutions were not durable or sustainable.

You're just making that up.

Shame on him for not pre-emptively sourcing you, but greater shame on you for replying with "nuh uh". @hydroacetylene is in fact correct.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-demographic-economics/article/marriage-age-ushape/F94BC91AFF2CF4A9B5031C52476B06D9

(U shaped marriage age)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_marriage_pattern

(Late age of marriage for bothe men and women in europe)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_and_Days

(Late Recommended age of marriage for men)

Lead a wife to your house when you are in good season, neither falling very many years short of thirty nor having added very many: this is a marriage in good season for you. The woman should have reached puberty four years earlier, and in the fifth she should marry.

...

Argue a priori, argue a posteriori, or ask for sources. Don't "nuh uh."

Age of first marriage for men until recently didn't get much above 25, with about a 4 year age gap. Now it's over 30 with a 2 year age gap. The current situation is much more different from the historical norm than the 1950s nadir at about 22 with a slightly over 2 year age gap.

no but you see this is good because young men expecting to have sex with young women (to say nothing of the opposite) even in the confines of a marriage is bad

imagine having sex with women that are actually young, couldn't be me, i hagmax like Ben Franklin

if we could we'd push age of marriage up to 40, 50, 60 because they'd be more mature then and more cognizant of the risks, that would be good

especially because most of us are already unhappily married and we want to help our kids avoid that, but we have no idea how to do that so we just tell them to delay it and they trust us, dumb fucks

imagine marriage was an important part of living life, and imagine that you'd ever want to maximize the amount of fulfilling life time you (or others) will get