[27] In Mary’s time marriageable age was 14 for boys and 12 for girls. (At that time they didn’t call 12 and 14 year olds ‘boys and girls,’ but ‘men and women.’ People had shorter life expectancy, and had to start early.)
Nowadays in most countries legal age of marriage varies from 16 to 21. Strangely, in most countries men are required to wait longer before they may marry. Only a handful of countries pose the same age barrier for both sexes.
These are Egypt (18), Kenya (16), Libya (20), Morocco (18), Senegal (20), Kyrgyzstan (18), Yemen (17), Cyprus (16), France (18), Iceland (18), Sweden (18), Switzerland (18), Scotland (16), Kansas (18) and the Palestinian National Authority (18), while in Brunei there’s no minimum age for marrying, boy or girl.
Does that make you shiver, or not?