Fox News guest: Seducing 14-year-olds may not have been that unusual 40 years ago

[customerserviceguy]

17. Maybe forty years ago

it was already creepy, but if you go back much further, it was common for older men to marry younger women.

I do a lot of genealogy work, and it involves my French-Canadian ancestors. I routinely see situations where a man has lost his wife while she was giving birth, and then he marries the next widow in the village. He needs a caretaker for his children, she needs an income for hers.

I even came across a case where a 70 year old man married a 35 year old woman, and she had his child about a year later. He died at age 75, but still, it was not against the norms of the society at the time. I would imagine that it stayed that way in rural communities that were not sending their children for higher education (this could include high school) and watching those children get jobs in a city.

Remember, cousin marriage (both second cousin, and first cousin, in the one-half of the states that allow it!) is/was more popular in small rural communities, too. The automobile made it icky to marry someone with the same surname, it wasn't the Bible.