The etymology of the word “infant” is only a source for the use of that particular word in English.

Not your fault, it’s all over the internet, but I don’t think this etymology makes sense, as a wide range of ages is found in any kind of effective military unit. I’ve read other derivations which you can also find online from “infanta” or “infante” referring to the soldiers under nominal command of a Portuguese or Spanish prince or princess (Infante or Infanta is the title, which of course derives from “infant” but doesn’t mean “infant”). I think this would make more sense as the word doesn’t appear in English before 1570 and the Spanish were making quite a figure in the world then (the Eighty Years’ War started in 1568).

Foot soldiers have been around a long time, and can be of any age, but the word in English only dates to the 1570s, seems odd that that if we were going to call them “children” based on what kind of people they were we wouldn’t use the word already in our language for that. (English seems to have had “infantry” before “infant” which dates to 1580.)

Also odd that the Romans didn’t use a word meaning “children”, nor the Greeks, both cultures being renowned for their foot soldiers.

The idea that infantry were troops too inexperienced for cavalry seems bogus to me too. In ancient up to early modern times you provided your own arms and horse, so cavalry were higher social status because they could afford horses, it wasn’t that they were older or better at war, it was that they came from richer families. I never heard of a system where you started out in the infantry and got promoted to cavalry once you’d learned enough (though of course I can’t say I know every military organization that ever existed). Everybody started young, as most people were young, especially soldiers, most of whom died in camp of dysentery and whatnot.

Well, plenty of genuine etymologies don’t make much sense having started as a joke or a metaphor. Something about this one doesn’t smell right to me though.

In a fictional book about the 19th century navy, our hero Horatio Hornblower, when he enlisted as a midshipman, was told (paraphrased from memory), if you haven’t started on a ship before the age of 10, you’ll never make a good sailor.

And there are all those very young boys who carried flags & served in the supply wagons.

https://dictionarywebster.com/dictionary/infantry#note-1

The most complete is
https://www.etymonline.com/word/infantry
from which I liked this archaism we ought to resurrect:
A Middle English (c. 1200) word for “foot-soldiers” was going-folc, literally “going-folk.”

From the trenches –
https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/origins-of-the-word-infantry/

In the context of “war” in general https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infantry#Etymology_and_terminology

Or maybe we just got in the weeds and lost sight of where we were. Sorry for contributing to that. And I confess I found it was not as common as I had thought, somewhere between “lefthandedness” and “gayness”. Do bear in mind that I am honestly trying to figure out what is true, and am willing to put in work to find it, and transparent about what I have found…

It is well known that marriage generally takes place later now.

Yes it is. And is that because we’re more right than our forebears about such things or is it because we unnecessarily infantilize teenagers? Let’s go back to can 15-year-olds consent? We all know that under our current laws the answer is legally “no” but that’s rather boring, it’s just definitions. The more interesting question is can they “really” give consent? That was the only reason I brought up marriage at 15. I gave other examples, like commanding armies in the field, where there was an expectation that in some circumstances 15-year-olds were expected to be “adults”. Marriage was until recently identified closely with adulthood; never-married, not-young adults were thought to be odd in some way and it was odder as they got older. (In literature the “spinster” or the “confirmed bachelor” always have some other eccentricity besides their unmarried state, or they have some deep trauma in their past, or something. They never just ARE, they have to be EXPLAINED.)

If you’ve ever applied for student aid between 1990 and 2000, you know that you had to give your parents’ financial information unless you were a veteran, or married, or checked some other boxes I disremember. In the times when marriage age and age of consent were lower than today, the age of majority was generally higher than today, usually 21, and how do you reconcile those two facts in terms of the capabilities of teenagers?

In the wilds of Canada, their barbarous laws said 15 year olds COULD consent back in 2008 but in 2009 the laws said they couldn’t. I know Canadians are a strange and exotic people. But did anything essential change in the nature of 15 year olds in that year? I think few of us would say so. Rather they would say the laws were badly out of date and are now more correct. Yet they differ from ours by a big chunk considering the ages involved. We can’t both be right. So how would we judge whether our laws are based in reality?

You miss the point about the 18-year-olds.

Of course in some and even many places the age of sexual consent can be and is lower. The point is that virtually everywhere, now as well as then, 18-year-olds have reached the age of consent. So 18-year-olds were never the issue and how many of them were married then vs. now is irrelevant to the question of how commonly marriage and childbirth occurred in 15-year-olds during the 18th and 19th centuries in this country. It is well known that marriage generally takes place later now.

Plus, I have no trouble with the idea that marriages of 15-year-olds were more common in the 19th Century than they are now. In fact, I assume it. But I have seen nothing that indicates they were common.

Like I said, won’t argue about the adjectives, since it’s more important we all agree that the number in 1900 was something like 5% and 20% for those under 18. And I did rather more work to establish those percentages than anyone disputing my characterization did, and I do think I’ve showed it was not as rare as you thought, though less common than I thought.

Eighteen-year-olds can give consent.

In 1900 in many states so could 14 year olds. In Canada 16 year olds can today, it was 14 in 2008…

@Art Deco: Thanks for the Census median age at first marriage link but I’d already found that and quoted it to you. As well as showing you from the figures you provided that of that 50% under 20, about 8% of them were 15 or under. There are many ways to get to a median age of 20 and we need more than one descriptor to understand the distribution. Which now we all do.

Obviously, by your own figures, marriage at 15 was not at all “common” even back then.

Something can be relatively rare – and certainly “uncommon” – and yet many people can know at least one person who has that rare or uncommon thing.

Not only that, but even today there’s a small percentage of people of that age who get married – a smaller group than before, to be sure, but not only was this group small then and now, but the decline probably reflects the decline in demand by parents for shotgun weddings for young pregnant teens.

You were trying to make some point about such marriages having been “common” in the past but not now, and you have certainly failed to prove anything of the sort.

And no, we’re not talking about marriage at 18. That used to be noticeably more common, as I recall – even in MY youth. But that’s a different thing, particularly in terms of the issue of consent, which is what began the entire discussion. Eighteen-year-olds can give consent.

https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/visualizations/time-series/demo/families-and-households/ms-2.pdf

It’s not necessary to impute motives. The data is what it is. It’s just not easy to find.

It’s not that difficult to figure out what the implications are.

No, not so hard as I expected, but you have to use math and not words. I used your data set (for which I thank you) and made a couple of simplifying assumptions:

1: The snapshot would have looked the same in 1899 – 1895. (Probably close enough.)
2: None of the women aged 14 – 20 in that time period divorced or died. (Again, probably close enough.)

According to US Census for 1900, median age at first marriage was 20, so the women who first marry between 14 and 20 represent 50%, so we can use that to help simplify by looking at just 14-20.

So looking at your 1885 cohort and applying the assumptions, of that 6,968 women:

4,215 had married at 14
2,753 had married at 15
6,968 total

For the 1884 cohort:
4,215 had married at 14
2,753 had married at 15
14,802 had married at 16
21,770 total

Carrying forward, you find that for the women in 1900 aged 20 and under:

29,505 were first married at 14 (5.3%)
16,518 were first married at 15 (3.0%)
74,010 were first married at 16 (13.3%)
97,396 were first married at 17 (17.5%)
157,464 were first married at 18 (28.3%)
89,790 were first married at 18 (16.2%)
91,176 were first married at 20 (16.4%)
555,859 total

Since the 20-and-unders are 50%, you can cut these percentages in half, and if we review the bidding we see that in 1900:

About 2.7% were first married at 14
About 1.5% were first married at 15
About 6.7% were first married at 16
About 8.8% were first married at 17
About 14.2% were first married at 18
About 8.1% were first married at 19
About 8.2% were first married at 20
About 50% were first married older than 20

Ok, so was marriage at 15 “common”? Here we may be arguing about adjectives, but marriage at 15 and under was about 4% which is not the usual thing, obviously, but it’s not exactly rare in that most people in 1900 would known at least one person who had been married at 15 or younger.

Marriage at 16 and under was about as common as being left-handed. You might not describe left-handedness as “common” but it’s hardly rare.

And the mode of the distribution, the most likely age at which women first married, was 18 which is under the median age of 20, typical for a distribution that skews young. Almost 20% of married women had married under the age of 18. That’s getting near “common” and quite different from today.

You have 27 cohorts which have a mean of 300,000 married women. The cohort of 15 year olds has 7,000 married women in it. It’s not that difficult to figure out what the implications are.

Median age says nothing about standard deviation.

It doesn’t occur to you that the population to the right of the median occupies very few age cohorts. This is what you’re struggling to deny.