People in ancient China got married very early and gave birth to more children. The average age of marriage for the ancients was only 14 or 5. The phenomenon of grandfathers in their thirties was very common in the past.
Regarding the age of marriage, there are relevant regulations in the codes of each dynasty. In the "Zhou Li", it is recorded that the woman's marriage age is 20 years old. It can be seen that as early as the Zhou Dynasty several thousand years ago, the woman's marriage age was relatively late. The engagement ages for men and women are 20 and 15 years old, and the latest marriage is 30 years old for men and 20 years old for women. Offenders will be punished.
However, in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, countries began to force women to marry and give birth early. For example, the overlord of Yue Wang Goujian in the late Spring and Autumn Period stipulated that the age of marriage for women was fifteen. The King of Yue Goujian stipulated that if a woman does not marry when she reaches the legal age for marriage, she must be punished. If a woman does not marry when she reaches the age of seventeen, then their parents are also guilty, that is, even sitting.
In the Warring States Period, some countries were reduced to fourteen years old. Among them, Qin State even stipulated that women must be married if they were up to 1.3 meters tall.
In the Han Dynasty, early marriage was encouraged. "Women from 15 to 30 who do not marry are counted as five", which pays five times more head tax than the average person. That is, if a woman is over fifteen and has not married, she must be fined 600 yuan.
During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the marriage age was more stringent. It stipulated that the age of marriage was "below 20 in female years and over 14 years old". If you don’t get married, the government will come forward to marry her. Even the parents of "unmarried concealers" were sentenced to death.
Tang Taizong also stipulated that if a woman over the age of fifteen is not married, then the local officials will marry her home. In the Tang Dynasty, "Anyone who is over 15 years old and over 13 years old must be married in France"
The legal age of marriage in the Song Dynasty followed the Tang system, and Sima Guang raised the age of marriage for both men and women by one year in "Shu Yiyi", Zhu Xi "Family Ceremony" also adopts the saying of "Shuyi", so the age for marriage negotiation in the ritual system is "16 to 30 for men and 14 to 20 for women", and according to the laws of the Song Dynasty, they must be married within three years, so Child bridesmaids began to appear. Due to family circumstances and in order to obtain imperial examinations, the age of marriage for men in the Song Dynasty was mostly over 20.The average age at marriage is 24 for men and 18 for women.
In ancient my country, for the purpose of reproducing the population, it was based on early marriage and early childbirth, and encouragement of fertility. It was not until the Republic of China that it was clearly stipulated that men under the age of 18 and women under the age of 16 were not allowed to marry. In ancient times, if a woman reaches a certain age if she doesn’t get married, she will suffer from prison. The key is not that you suffer the crime alone, but the whole family suffers with you. This invisibly created pressure on the parents. Before the set age, I quickly married my daughter, and the whole family in the province went to jail.
.
