Duck dynasty patriarchs tells men to marry underage girls

[Cleopatra7]

Link not broken because it's the Daily Fail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... video.html

Frankly, I'm surprised that this clip hasn't come out earlier. Of course, the next thing we'll hear is how Phil can't help himself because the marrying age was so much younger in the past...

[Rachel333]

Okay, wtf. It does seem more like a sexist joke than serious advice, but I don't doubt that he really believes it also. I hope some of these other statements get attention. To hear people talk he's being persecuted for just standing up for his Christian faith and disagreeing with homosexuality, but he's actually really gross.

[Cleopatra7]

Okay, wtf. It does seem more like a sexist joke than serious advice, but I don't doubt that he really believes it also. I hope some of these other statements get attention. To hear people talk he's being persecuted for just standing up for his Christian faith and disagreeing with homosexuality, but he's actually really gross.

Since he married his own wife when she was 16, I doubt he was joking.

[doggie]

Since he married his own wife when she was 16, I doubt he was joking.

he started dating when she was 14 and he 20

[NotALoserLikeYou]

he started dating when she was 14 and he 20

They started dating when he was 18 and she was 14 and married at 20 and 16.

[Rachel333]

Yeah, I saw it as a gross "heh heh, do what I did and marry 'em when they're young" thing.

[micatite]

Yeah, I saw it as a gross "heh heh, do what I did and marry 'em when they're young" thing.

Before they're old enough and educated enough to know better.

You have to wonder about those so-called men who are so afraid of grown women that they must resort to shifting their attentions to half-grown girls instead. Maybe they know that if they were dealing with a grownup instead of a starry-eyed teen they wouldn't come off looking half so well.

[Cleopatra7]

Before they're old enough and educated enough to know better.

You have to wonder about those so-called men who are so afraid of grown women that they must resort to shifting their attentions to half-grown girls instead. Maybe they know that if they were dealing with a grownup instead of a starry-eyed teen they wouldn't come off looking half so well.

Between this and the call among some conservatives to marry young, I wonder if there's not something afoot to try to get girls married and pregnant so they don't assert themselves. Granted, being a teen bride is something that a lot of people look down upon in this country, but maybe if enough young girls from conservative backgrounds did become married, they could become a demographic for the GOP to court, like homeschoolers.

[louisa05]

This made the front page of yahoo today. Commenters are defending it either as a good idea or as merely being his opinion because he is "from a different time". What time exactly do they think the dumb ass is from? The median age for first marriage for women when he was 20 years old was nearly 21.

Reminds me of people explaining that Paula Deen grew up in the "Old South" and was too old and set in her ways to understand the Civil Rights movement. Never mind that she was 21 years old when King was assassinated.

[Jana814]

From what I have seen & heard about Phil Robertson this does not surprise me at all.

[NoneandDoneinCali]

Full disclosure, almost every word out of this man's mouth actively disgusts me.

Anyways, just what "old time" do people think he comes from? My gram is 92 years old. She is not a racist, nor a homophobe (in spite of being raised first Irish Catholic before becoming a Baptist after my gramps passed away), and she gets a pass on not using the current PC language. She's ninety-friggin'-TWO. If the word "negro" ever so rarely creeps into her conversations these days, I am not going to waste our precious time together lecturing her (not to mention her best friend at the senior home is African American). Gram remembers a time when "negro" was the PC alternative to the OTHER N word, and I have never heard her say that one. This, to me, is acceptable - people alive during the Depression really were alive in a different time.

However, Phil is in his late sixties. So are my parents. They were young adults and teens during the civil rights movement. WTF do you mean he's too "set in his ways?" We know he is (ostensibly, at least) educated. So that leaves willfully ignorant, manipulative, and/or hateful. He does NOT get a pass. Is he older? Yeah. Did he grow up under a rock, completely removed from that period of American history? Maybe we should remind him what good ol' boys did to long-haired hippies back then.

And lastly, I'm not a believer myself, but I do know card-carrying, church-attending people who support the LGBT community and actively oppose racism and sexism. There are amazing Christians out there who don't buy into this elitist, conformist Calvinistic bullshit. There are Christian queers and feminists. Fuck these hate-spewing conservative assholes. /endrant/

[louisa05]

Full disclosure, almost every word out of this man's mouth actively disgusts me.

Anyways, just what "old time" do people think he comes from? My gram is 92 years old. She is not a racist, nor a homophobe (in spite of being raised first Irish Catholic before becoming a Baptist after my gramps passed away), and she gets a pass on not using the current PC language. She's ninety-friggin'-TWO. If the word "negro" ever so rarely creeps into her conversations these days, I am not going to waste our precious time together lecturing her (not to mention her best friend at the senior home is African American). Gram remembers a time when "negro" was the PC alternative to the OTHER N word, and I have never heard her say that one. This, to me, is acceptable - people alive during the Depression really were alive in a different time.

However, Phil is in his late sixties. So are my parents. They were young adults and teens during the civil rights movement. WTF do you mean he's too "set in his ways?" We know he is (ostensibly, at least) educated. So that leaves willfully ignorant, manipulative, and/or hateful. He does NOT get a pass. Is he older? Yeah. Did he grow up under a rock, completely removed from that period of American history? Maybe we should remind him what good ol' boys did to long-haired hippies back then.

And lastly, I'm not a believer myself, but I do know card-carrying, church-attending people who support the LGBT community and actively oppose racism and sexism. There are amazing Christians out there who don't buy into this elitist, conformist Calvinistic bullshit. There are Christian queers and feminists. Fuck these hate-spewing conservative assholes. /endrant/

Yep. The moron is a Baby Boomer. To give it a bit of perspective, he was born (per google search) on April 24, 1946. That makes him just a few months older than Bill Clinton who was born August 19, 1946.

[JMarie]

people.com/people/article/0,,20771027,00.html

Robertson, 67, made similar remarks in his book Happy, Happy, Happy: My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander, published earlier this year. In that book, he revealed that he married his wife, Kay, when she was 15.

"Miss Kay was the perfect woman for me," he wrote. "I was sixteen and she was fifteen when we were married. Nowadays some people might frown on people getting married that young, but I knew that if you married a woman when she was fifteen, she would pluck your ducks. If you waited until she was twenty, she would only pick your pockets."

[Cleopatra7]

I have to question how prevalent teen marriage was in this country in the past. Sure, it happens and probably more often in the days of the shotgun marriage, but there's still a big difference between marrying at twenty and marrying at sixteen. Then as now, I think the phenomenon is something people associate with uneducated rural people who are to be used as cautionary tales, not role models. I worry that DD is making a lot of retrograde practices and beliefs appear mainstream.

[micatite]

Teen marriage may have been common (in certain places and times), but that didn't mean it was right or good. I have never forgotten a description in a college history text of a young teenage bride (14, I think) out on the frontier...forlornly playing with a rag doll. That girl (not WOMAN) may have been old enough to marry legally, but I'm thinking she was definitely not mature enough emotionally.

[louisa05]

I have to question how prevalent teen marriage was in this country in the past. Sure, it happens and probably more often in the days of the shotgun marriage, but there's still a big difference between marrying at twenty and marrying at sixteen. Then as now, I think the phenomenon is something people associate with uneducated rural people who are to be used as cautionary tales, not role models. I worry that DD is making a lot of retrograde practices and beliefs appear mainstream.

This lists median age of first marriage for men and women from 1890-2010 with stats for each year ending in zero. The median age is never below 20.3 for males or females. I am not a statistician by any means, but I would think that would indicate that marriages at 15/16 were never close to the norm for the period listed except perhaps in isolated pockets of the country.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005061.html

[Peas n carrots]

Just an anecdotal observation but it seems the older folks I know who married as teens eloped...meaning their parents likely weren't going to give their consent to marry.

Anyways the daughters were economic resources as well. If the girls weren't working and bringing home their paycheck to dad they were working the farm.

[ThatSnark]

Anecdotal here, too. I worked at a nursing home in rural Alabama in the early 1990s. Most of the residents were born between 1890-1915 and all but a handful had been married.

The men could not marry unless they were established and able to support a family. This was a mill town, so in most cases, they'd finish up grade school (8th for line worker, 12th for management track) and head to the mill. Even the boys who left at age 14 took a good five years to get independent enough to consider marriage, and the better-educated boys were so busy working that they didn't have a lot of time to court. In general, 21 was the "right age" to marry, and 25 wasn't bad.

I had a lot more women to talk to. The only ones who married really young "had to," (said in whisper behind the hand about one of our residents!) but otherwise, 18 was really the youngest a father would consider letting his daughter go. They were often helping raise younger siblings, working to help bring in money, or finishing school themselves. In that community, marrying younger than 18 more or less meant that you "had to," and in the Bible Belt, that wasn't such a good idea.

TL;DR: Phil has no idea what he's selling. The social norms of small towns are not that different now than they ever were in The South or anywhere else.

[micatite]

It's especially ridiculous these days. Fifteen year olds are still in high school (and likely will be for the next three years.)

In the distant past, at least, high school education was not a given the way it is now. My grandfather was one of those who left school after 8th grade to work the farm. He married an educated school teacher, though (who, incidentally, was several months older than he), and made darned sure his 6 daughters (and 2 sons) all graduated from high school before they married (one did marry just after graduation), and several of them went on through college before they wed.

[No Cure for Stupid]

There were no social norms of marrying at 15-16. My grandmother was born in 1938, and she was married when she was 19. Ten of her siblings married their late teens (18-19) and early twenties when they married as well. Only one of her sisters married at 15, and she eloped, went to Illinois to marry her husband because, even in rural Missouri, she had to have parental consent to marry so young. The rest of her family thought she was silly for marrying so young. This was in the 1950s, and these women were lucky to get past eighth grade.

I've been tracing family history back to the 1600s, and while it's not absolutely accurate, most of the women were at least 18 when they married.

[Cleopatra7]

Last month in the NYT magazine, there was an article about how difficult it was for Bach's old church in Germany to retain boy sopranos because their voices are breaking so early. It mentioned that Handel, who began his musical career as a chorister, could sing soprano well into his late teens, whereas the voices of modern boys are breaking at eleven and twelve. The point I'm trying to make is that children are going through puberty much earlier today than in the past. If boys' voices were not breaking until sixteen or seventeen in the 17th and 18th century, it is safe to assume that girls weren't mensturating before sixteen either. Thus, it wouldn't have made sense for teens to get married if the bride wasn't capable of producing children. Contrary to what Fundies say, pre-modern people did recognize the notion of adolescence, although they tended to refer to this stage as "youth." they certainly would have understood that there was a difference between a sixteen year old and a thirty year old, although they wouldn't have explained these differences in terms of brain development like we would today.

[nausicaa]

Last month in the NYT magazine, there was an article about how difficult it was for Bach's old church in Germany to retain boy sopranos because their voices are breaking so early. It mentioned that Handel, who began his musical career as a chorister, could sing soprano well into his late teens, whereas the voices of modern boys are breaking at eleven and twelve. The point I'm trying to make is that children are going through puberty much earlier today than in the past. If boys' voices were not breaking until sixteen or seventeen in the 17th and 18th century, it is safe to assume that girls weren't mensturating before sixteen either. Thus, it wouldn't have made sense for teens to get married if the bride wasn't capable of producing children. Contrary to what Fundies say, pre-modern people did recognize the notion of adolescence, although they tended to refer to this stage as "youth." they certainly would have understood that there was a difference between a sixteen year old and a thirty year old, although they wouldn't have explained these differences in terms of brain development like we would today.

That is so interesting. I had never heard about male voices, but I had read in several places about the age of menarche dropping globally in the past hundred years, and how researchers can't quite account for it (in developed countries there is the theory of hormones in milk and other processed food, but apparently the age is lower in places like sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia as well). I was really surprised to learn that in the Middle Ages, 16 or 17 was a completely normal age to begin menstruating. I'm guessing this was also considered the earliest a girl would be married (not just promised in marriage) since the point was to have children.

[nelliebelle1197]

My grandma married at 14 in 1924. She was an orphan who being abused by the uncle who was caring for her. Her brothers all ran for the military- even lying about their ages in some cases to escape. My grandma's only choices since she could join the military were to endure abuse or get married as quickly she could. Not exactly the "norm".

[alysee]

That is so interesting. I had never heard about male voices, but I had read in several places about the age of menarche dropping globally in the past hundred years, and how researchers can't quite account for it (in developed countries there is the theory of hormones in milk and other processed food, but apparently the age is lower in places like sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia as well). I was really surprised to learn that in the Middle Ages, 16 or 17 was a completely normal age to begin menstruating. I'm guessing this was also considered the earliest a girl would be married (not just promised in marriage) since the point was to have children.

Could it also just be better nutrition now than say 100 years ago? Or more food just in general.

[Cleopatra7]

Could it also just be better nutrition now than say 100 years ago? Or more food just in general.

I think nutrition definately plays a part. I took a class on the Middle Ages in college, and learned that medieval women probably had about four to six periods a year because their diets were rougher combined with the fact that peasant women did a lot of physical labor. Even the noblewomen would have had significant vitamin deficiencies, which would have impacted their fertility.