I don’t know anywhere in the world where 16 year olds were sent or even able to live on their own. Maybe military or boarding school, or even some type of college, but it wasn’t really on their own.
And outside of a few decades post WW2 USA, I don’t know of 18 to 22 year olds buying their own land/house either. Around the world, multigenerational households have been the norm for eons.
My mom moved out of her parents' house and got by with odd jobs in Chico and renting with students when she was 16 in the 70's. Though to be fair she might be omitting some details. Apparently she decided she'd had enough of living with her parents. Life was different when everything was cash.
I really think we do our offspring a disservice by raising them like they're babies until they're 20.
My great-grandparents got married at 14 and 18 and supported themselves. This would have been the 1920s, but nothing was apparently scandalous about their ages. The only scandal was that she was Scotch-Irish and he was Italian!
traditionally, nowadays it seems more like a nice opportunity to get gifts. but a barmitvah used to be when a boy was considered old enough to marry and settle down. last i check, jewish boys have it at 13.
> Recalling the day of their marriage, he once said, "As we didn't know much about marriage, for us it meant only wearing new clothes, eating sweets and playing with relatives." As was the prevailing tradition, the adolescent bride was to spend much time at her parents' house, and away from her husband.[31]
> nowadays it seems more like a nice opportunity to get gifts.
People forget that it has extensive legal ramifications that protect people when things go wrong.
The decline of marriage in the UK has lead to a lot of problems with things like inheritance, responsibility of children, the financial interests of the less affluent partner etc.
It's not really 'silent', just pronounced differently to English (and a modifier to the 'd' rather than its own letter). gāñdhī is the transliteration of गांधी (correct name) vs. gāñdī looks like गांदी, and द is not pronounced like ध (which is is kind of a softer, more aspirated 'd').
(The ā, ñ, ī and similar 'accents' more often dropped in transliteration than the aspirative 'h' - I added them above just for accuracy, to talk purely of the d/dh, using the IAST standard for transliteration. But 'nobody' uses this for texting Hindi on qwerty. (And as someone learning the language the resulting ambiguity and variation is frustrating!))
I assume the vast, vast majority of people did not go west by themselves or even as a couple at age 16. A family unit spanning various ages was probably moving together.
Lots of people did. You have to understand they were the children of people who went on a boat to move halfway across the planet, early America had a selection bias for the adventurous. It used to be a proper country.
Sorry, I am not buying it. I assume even the earliest settlers had some form of tribal relationship to each other, either via family or friend or even business networks.
The picture being painted above is one of lone wolves (at the age of 16) securing and developing an already populated land (meaning waging war) into a new country is ludicrous.
> In 1681, King Charles II granted a large piece of his North American land holdings along the North Atlantic Ocean coast to Penn to offset debts he owed Penn's father, the admiral and politician Sir William Penn. The land included the present-day states of Pennsylvania and Delaware.
And outside of a few decades post WW2 USA, I don’t know of 18 to 22 year olds buying their own land/house either. Around the world, multigenerational households have been the norm for eons.