Mildly interesting
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@Axtremus said in Mildly interesting:
Reagan broke it.The birth control pill broke it.@LuFins-Dad said in Mildly interesting:
@Axtremus said in Mildly interesting:
Reagan broke it.The birth control pill broke it.Eisenstadt v. Baird was decided in 1972.
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And you expect the cultural ramifications to be immediate? The majority of the women of 32 years of age were already married in 1972… This would have had far greater impact on women younger than 30, with the results becoming noticeable ~ 1980. It also coincides with higher divorce rates, and more women entering the workplace, which completely shifted the economy for good and ill.
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@jon-nyc said in Mildly interesting:
That surprised me too. More spinsters as med died more frequently at a younger age?
I had a surprising number of maiden great aunts who were born in the 1890's, but I think that was probably due to WW1. The impact of that war would have been less noticeable in the US as a considerably smaller proportion of the male population died.
Did the US Civil War affect the 1900 figures?
@Doctor-Phibes said in Mildly interesting:
@jon-nyc said in Mildly interesting:
That surprised me too. More spinsters as med died more frequently at a younger age?
I had a surprising number of maiden great aunts who were born in the 1890's, but I think that was probably due to WW1. The impact of that war would have been less noticeable in the US as a considerably smaller proportion of the male population died.
Did the US Civil War affect the 1900 figures?
Me too. My great aunts raised my grandpa in MA. They were from Quebec and relocated to the U.S.. The way I heard it, it was due to the Spanish Flu .. grandpa’s parents died; he was left an orphan, but too young yet to work in factories there.
Here, in Alberta, I know ladies, being the last (youngest) sisters, who never marry. They stay in their family homes to care for their parents. Not uncommon. -
I asked @Horace’s buddy.
Great question. The relatively high percentage of 40-year-olds who had never married in the early 1900s—around 15–16%—can seem surprising, especially given the perception of earlier generations as marrying young and universally. Here are some key historical and social factors that likely contributed to that pattern:
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1. High Male Mortality (e.g., war, workplace)
• In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, workplace accidents, infectious diseases, and limited medical care disproportionately affected men.
• Some men also delayed or avoided marriage due to economic instability or itinerant work (railroads, mining, etc.).⸻
2. Economic Constraints
• The early 20th century included economic uncertainty and hardship for many, particularly in rural areas. For men, marriage was often viewed as a financial responsibility they shouldn’t take on unless they were established.
• For women, financial independence was limited, but familial obligations (like caring for aging parents) sometimes led them to remain single.⸻
3. Social Norms and Immigration Effects
• Large waves of immigrants in the late 1800s and early 1900s (especially from Southern and Eastern Europe) sometimes married later due to economic necessity, cultural adjustment, or unbalanced gender ratios in certain immigrant communities.⸻
4. Urbanization and Changing Lifestyles
• As cities grew, people began to leave traditional family structures. Some individuals delayed marriage while pursuing work or education, which was increasingly available—especially for men.⸻
5. Data Considerations
• Census enumeration methods and definitions of marriage status in the early 1900s may have been less consistent or inclusive (e.g., excluding common-law marriages or counting widowed/divorced differently), possibly inflating the “never married” category slightly compared to later surveys.⸻
Why It Dropped Afterward
• From the 1930s through the 1960s, marriage rates soared. This era emphasized early marriage as a social norm, especially post-WWII during the “baby boom” years. That explains the dip in never-married rates among 40-year-olds (as low as 6% by 1980).⸻
So, while it may seem counterintuitive, the early 20th-century U.S. had many social and economic pressures that either delayed or discouraged marriage for a notable minority of the population.
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@bachophile LOL. I thought for the first few seconds it was real.
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@jon-nyc That is base on longitude lines?
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I’ve always wanted to visit Murmansk and Longyearbyen.
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Five parrots at Lincolnshire Wildlife Park were separated after they began swearing at visitors and laughing together. 🦜
The parrots, named Billy, Elsie, Eric, Jade, and Tyson, were adopted by the park and initially quarantined together before joining the larger colony of 200 grey parrots.
They quickly learned to swear at visitors and encourage each other to do so, finding it humorous.
To prevent them from teaching this behavior to the other parrots and to avoid further issues with visitors, especially children, the five were separated and placed in different areas of the park.
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In contrast to his roughneck public persona, Moe was, in private life, a quiet, dedicated family man, whose hobbies included reading, playing bridge and making hooked rugs.
Moe was the business-minded one of the group. He knew that Curly liked to spend his money on partying and women, and Larry liked to spend his at the racetrack. So, he drew up an agreement where Larry and Curly turned over a certain percentage of their salaries to him. He, in turn, invested it for them. The result was that, while Larry and Curly were not as wealthy as Moe was (he invested far more of his own money and was quite well off), he ensured that their spendthrift habits did not result in their being broke when their careers ended.
His famous "bowl" haircut came by accident. As a child, his mother always wanted a girl, and with Moe being the youngest at the time, she would play dress-up with him, putting him in dresses and bologna curling his long hair. One day, after being picked on for months in school, he and some friends hid in the shed, and he chopped all of the hair off, using a bowl as a guide. After doing so, he was so afraid to face his mother, he hid for hours. Finally coming out, after seeing his hair, she cried out that she was so happy he did so, simply because she couldn't bring herself to. His hair stuck with him all his life.
Howard got the idea for the notorious Stooge gag of eye-gouging one day when, during a game of bridge, Shemp Howard leaned over and poked Larry Fine in the eyes for not playing well. The result: Larry cried, Shemp apologized, Moe laughed until he fell out of his chair and walked through a glass door. He considered the eye-gouge the funniest thing he'd ever seen and decided to use it in their act.When The Three Stooges shorts began to appear on local children's shows in the late 1950s, there was a wave of kids poking each other in the eyes. When Moe heard about this, it was the Stooges who came to the rescue. They went on many local television shows, as well as national television, and showed how the eye-pokes were done in a way that nobody got hurt. To the kids watching, it was like learning a magic trick. (IMDb)
Happy Birthday, Moe Howard!
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