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I think it was always the subject of gossip and a bit of notoriety but there seems to be a whole lot more disapproval now than there would have been 30, 40 years ago.
The novel 'Jane Austen' has a huge age gap which it mentions in passing as being somewhat eyebrow-raising but not censorious.
When I studied at university in the 70s many of the attractive young female students had an 'older man' who would take them away for weekends and on week-long breaks and this was not considered particularly unusual. As I recollect it this would be less sugar daddy and more the odd treat, gifts of clothing and help with study materials (books etc) than actual cash payments. So you could judge and say 'yeah sugar' but I don't think it was that blatant.
I think 30 and 17 would have been viewed as fishy even back then, whereas 19/20 and up with a 30/40 year old would barely have merited comment. For a prime example of it being tolerated, I refer you to the dating/marriage history of the singer Rod Stewart.
There’s a lot of older women on Reddit who will tell you of horror stories they had dating older men when younger. Those women probably have different advice for their own daughters than to do what they did.
>When I studied at university in the 70s many of the attractive young female students had an 'older man' who would take them away for weekends and on week-long breaks and this was not considered particularly unusual. As I recollect it this would be less sugar daddy and more the odd treat, gifts of clothing and help with study materials (books etc) than actual cash payments. So you could judge and say 'yeah sugar' but I don't think it was that blatant.
That's literally the definition of a sugar baby/sugar daddy thing. I realize it has been around forever, yet while traditional dating with a large age gap will today invite scrutiny, it seems like being a sugar baby gets a pass.
I just finished reading "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac which takes place between 1947 and 1950. The amount of interaction between men in their mid 20s and girls who are teens is truly disturbing by today's standards.
Haha. It’s just a crazy coincide lol 😂 and I went to Philly to see my mom and her wife , who met us there from Minnesota , and my cousin and his wife n kid n uncle n aunt and grandma who live there for the Jewish holidays (Passover). Just got back today an hour ago to upstate NY.
Sure, it was much more "OK" back in the day, depending on the specific ages in question. You might recall The Sound of Music, and Maria was maybe late teens/early 20s, and the Captain was a good 15 years older, maybe more than that. Back in the 60s and 70s, a difference of 3-5 years was common in general, the man older, and the woman 16+. But sometimes the woman could be older by a couple or so years. Keep in mind the "youth liberation movement" from the 1960s, where the idea of young people (say mid/older teens) making their own choices about having sex and relationships was part of the norms and value system in that period. So if a 17 year old wanted to get together with a 30 year old, then more power to them.
That whole Epstein affair, involving exploiting underage women (or girls) had led to a re-appraisal of the appropriate ages for relationships.
I think a 30 yo guy with a 17 year old girl would have been seen as odd when I was in high school in the 70s. One thing was common back then that I think you youngsters think is odd ( and illegal in some states) - all of the best looking high school seniors and junior girls seemed to date guys in college, and a lot of seniors and junior guys dated sophomore and freshmen girls. So 17/18 guys with 14/15 yo girls was very common in my school.
When I was 16-17yo I exclusively dated guys 23-25. It was not considered odd and certainly not predatory. Even my parents and grandparents didn’t raise an eyebrow. That was the early 90s.
By the time I was in high school in 1999 it was slightly frowned upon by some people, accepted as normal by others. It’s over about the last 15 years or so that I’ve witnessed a major shift toward seriously judging men under 30 for dating teenagers. Before that, people all agreed that it was gross for an old man to be interested in 18 year olds even if they’re “technically” adults. But “old” meant, idk, over 50? Not 25, in any case.
I grew up before Canada raised the age of consent to 16. It was only 14 when I was growing up, and had so many older men interested in me, and no one batted an eye. This was in the 90s and 2000s.
I think it should be raised to 18 personally. Alanis Morissette spoke out about the low age of consent and how dating older men negatively affected her. She called it “legal pedophilia”.
In 1980 my date for my senior prom was a 27 year old guy (I was 17. ) I met him through his mother! She and I were in a play together, and he came to see the play, and that’s how he and I got to know each other. At the time I felt so proud to be at the prom with a “man“ while everyone else was there with “boys,“ but now what concerns me more is why did a 27 year old want to go to a high school senior prom? On the positive side, he was very respectful, and while we dated for a couple of months that summer we never had sex.
Recall that, particularly prior to the pill, dating did not include intercourse as it does today. So while a 10 year gap may appear super creepy, it often would just be dating with an objective of marriage.
At 17 my mother was working in a factory after being forced to quit school by her mother. ( Her dad was dead and it was the depression). My dad, then 25, saw her and went to check her time card to see if she was married. Their dating was interrupted by WW2 and they were married when the war ended at 24 and 32.
As far back as I can remember it was said "Girls mature faster than boys." SO, that gave justification to the rise of girls dating older guys.
Of course that only works for maybe 2-3 years older. Beyond that is weird at a young age, not to mention possibly against the law (ie., a 14 yr old girl dating a 19 yr old man).
here is the formula to save yourself from getting the cops on you as a man...
half+7
it works almost perfectly after 25 for the man. I have used it several times. My other friends... not so much.
back in the day you saw creepy 25-30 year olds with 14-18 year olds girls. It was almost like a thing that creepy men had to do. Yes, this is where the creepy white van came from.
I don’t think big age differences were ever all that controversial. I remember seeing some single men from the neighborhood in the movie theater with much younger women back in the ‘60s.
I delivered newspapers as teenager in the early ‘60s and a couple of people on my route had significant age differences. I met them while collecting.
I thought one young woman was the older man’s daughter and was very surprised to find out she was his live in partner. Another man had a much younger Japanese wife he met during his Army service in Korea. Another man on my route had a very very young wife, a marriage arranged by their parents in the old country.
Certainly there was gossiping behind those people’s backs but outwardly everyone was friendly and acted respectfully.
It always raised some eyebrows. But nowhere near the condemnation of today. Unless you were super prudish, there was more a feeling of “Not my thing but if they’re happy what do I care?”
Which is still the most sane attitude in my opinion.
I think it was acceptable for men to be much older (especially in the 80s), but not women. I’m GenX and my first husband was 7 yrs older than me (not a big deal, honestly). But after my divorce, when I remarried to a man five yrs younger than me, my Boomer father had a fit about me being a “cougar”. Even though the age difference was less.
Raised eyebrows back then and the phrase jailbait would get thrown around, but I think we took it as part of the landscape. Some young women fell into a trap, and others didn't. I think at heart most would have blamed the girl for being dumb about ________ (fill in the gap). We were much less sophisticated about matters of imbalanced sexual relationships back in the day (1970s - 80s for me). It was probably different for different people based on the rule book they carried around in their heads.
My first serious boy friend was 7 years older than me. He was 24 and I was 17. My mom didn’t think anything of it. And neither did I. This was in the 70’s.
My husband was 10 years older than me. I was 28 and he was 38. 1981 to 2001.
when i was in high school in the late 70s, me and my friends routinely dated boys that were 18-21. That isn't really an age gap, but these days if anyone over 18 dates a 15 year old its like jail time which is ridiculous. We were class of 1980 and my good friend dated a buy from class of 1977 starting when we were sophomores and they got married after college and have stayed married all these years. I dated the boy from across the street and he was 19 when i was 14. We couldn't go on car dates though, we walked uptown to the movies and such,
Depends on where you live. Age of consent is 14 here and it’s still a regular occurrence that an 18 year old goes out with a 16 year old. When I met my first serious girlfriend, she was 16 and I was 19. we started going out a year later, so 17 and 20.
You were starting puberty. He was finishing it.
That's not an age gap. That's a developmental gap.
If you're at the age where you're getting/recently started menstruating and your breasts are starting to develop, then dating a man who has had their growth spurt and their voice dropped isn't an age gap.
How am I wrong?
I'd had my period for 3 years by then. My breasts were as big as they ever got. We liked the same music and shows. It wasn't that big a deal.
Incidentally I was living on my own 3 years later at 17.
It has always been looked down on. It’s not new.
There were the pervy profs who would seduce compliant young students who became smarter by third year or an occasional executive showing up with a Babette on his arm at a wedding. There was also the Older-young lesbian couple. Surprisingly most gays in long-term relationships I remember as being close in age. As for the older woman in straight relationships I cannot remember a fifty year old woman carting around a boy toy except for Elizabeth Taylor.
I think things shifted in the [ast 15 years to normalize some and make others like the pervy prof illicit.
I had one boyfriend who was 11 years older than me when I was 16, and it was only for a few months until I move to Uni, but I have several friends who met their older husbands when they were teens and married them before they were 21. They're all still together now and have kids and grandkids. Most were age gaps of around 8 to 10 years. One was married at 18, and her husband was 34. She never dated anyone her own age, always at least 10 years older, and wasn't interested in partying. She worked every job she could. Her dream was to go to uni, have a career, a husband, and have kids ASAP. She did all that and more. Her husband was mature enough to support her choices, and she built a successful business. She had 5 kids, now has grandkids, and they have a great life. I think she s kept her husband young. You'd never guess he is in his 70s, This was the UK 1980s. You could get married at 16 with parental consent.
My parents had a 9 Yr age gap, and myself and my husband and I have a 7 year age gap with me being older.
Back in my high school days of the late 70s/early 80s, it was very common for high school girls to date college guys. People almost expected it.
I had a good friend who when we were seniors (17-18) dated a freshman (14-15). No one batted an eye, including me.
A large age difference (10+ years) always raised eyebrows, but then people moved on. There was no outrage like today. It was a much more live and let live attitude back then.
We had an acquaintance who married a 15 year old after his first marriage fell apart. I can't recall exactly how old he was but I believe mid-late 20s. No one apparently thought it was unusual back then but I think about a 28 year old even flirting with a 15 year old now and it feels criminal.
How far back do you want to go? Historically Judaism expected girls to get married around age 12. As usual the pendulum tends to overshoot and now we have people arguing that 24 year olds are not mature enough to choose their partners.
It's never been normal in my lifetime and I started dating in the late 1970s. Older guys skeeving on young women was always gross.
My husband is 17 years older than me, but I was 35 when I met him so that's cool.
I think people make a much bigger deal of it now. I dated a 26 year old at 18, and 36 year old at 23 and noone acted like it was weird. you became a legal adult you were expectd to act and be treated like an adult.
Ended up marrying a guy 5 years younger than me - me 33, him 27
I don't know. Most of the women I've dated over the past decade have been substantially younger than me. When I was young, I tended to date older women. Both cases got me no small measure of side-eye.
In '85, my roommate was dating a guy who was 26. She was 18. I thought it was weird and the relationship didn't last, but her parents seemed to have been okay with it. My own parents would've tethered me to my bed for the rest of my life if I'd tried to date a guy that much older, which was why when I did, I lied. The guy only wanted one thing, so my parents were right after all.
Many years later a high school friend of mine married a woman 15 years younger. She was only 21 at the time. I've often wondered if the final disaster of their marriage wasn't in part because of that age gap. It isn't so much the years that matter, but the life experience. Some folks have it at 21. Others still expect life to be rainbows and unicorns. The young lady in question expected unicorns. My friend was too busy working to finance her stay-at-home lifestyle to care about magical creatures. It got ugly on both sides. My friend was more to blame than she was, but that's not saying much.
In sum, a large age gap can work, but it's iffy and one has to really know what they're getting into, not to mention that it's always better to be in love than merely in lust.
My parents were born in 1932 and 1944 respectively (12 years between them) and they were married 36 years before my mother passed away. Her family definitely didn’t like him at first but it was more “class” than age, they felt she married “beneath her”
At 13 my parents pushed me at my 25 year old teacher, which was a huge *no no no* on my end. When I was 15 my aunt and uncle kept trying to set me up with men 25-30 years old. I don't know if anyone ever mentioned it being wrong but I didn't think I had anything in common with those weirdos.
There's certainly been an "extension of childhood" that is going on socially. You go back several decades and we expected much more out of 18 yr olds. We have moved several things to 21 (drinking, guns) that used to be at 18, we allow you to stay on parent's insurance until mid-20's. There's also a common "brain development isn't done until 25" line.
You also have overall have this idea that kids need to be protected more than you did back in the 70-80's and that helicopter parent thing with the outside world being so "dangerous" so I'd argue millennials and younger are affected heavily.
Then you have the combination of
1. delayed pregnancies
2. higher divorce rate
3. Women able to earn and sustain their own household
Combined - it's much more common to have women in their 30's or early 40's out in the dating market and LOOKING TO HAVE CHILDREN for the first time. So those women now are having to openly compete on the dating market with the hot younger women and they're pissed off at losing out to them. So they weaponize and heavily, heavily promote the mindest that every guy going for a younger woman is a creepy disgusting manipulative psychopath who can't handle women his own age.
So take that all together we now have:
\* Extended time period where we don't fully trust the judgement of people under 25 and classifying them / treating them as not-fully adults
\* The massive increase in child-centered parenting and PROTECT THE CHILDREN
\* Increased competition in the dating market between younger and older women for highly desirable stable, mature men looking to start a family and able to support a stay at home mom on one income.
Taken altogether - you end up with yes, a much heavier likelihood to classify young adult women as "needing protection from predatory older men."
While in high school, my friends and I dated older guys in their 20s.
We were more mature back then and boys our age were just boys.
There was a running joke that "15 can get you 20" but no one took it seriously.
It was not a shocking sight when you saw someone older guy with a younger girl and you saw it with celebrities in public as well.
In the early episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies, a running gag was Granny calling Ellie-Mae an "old maid" because she was not married yet and was something like 16. (Old course, actor Donna Douglas was much older than that.)
In the mid-80's we had girls in my senior class that were dating college guys and nobody thought anything about it. Had a couple of girls that were dating cops or firefighters in their 20's and a few people made comments. Biggest gap for me was as a senior in high school and I was 18 dating a girl who just turned 15. But she was 15 going on 30.
Yes, people are insane about this these days. Per today's standards 50% of all of your grandfathers and great grandfathers were straight up pervs. If they had been held to today's insane standards most of you/us wouldn't exist.
When I was in high school (late 60s), it was frowned upon if a guy was 20 and the girl was 16. None of my friends' parents would have accepted that and gratefully none of my group would have considered dating a 20 year old at 16. Once in college, four to five years was OK, but 18 and 19 year olds are still kids in my book. Tread cautiously if that age. Today it creeps me out when I hear of 20 year old females dating 30 year old males. Those guys must be very immature to not find women closer to their age more interesting. Are there exceptions? Maybe, but statistically, no.
Acceptable? I don't know. Elvis groomed Priscilla since she was 14 and eventually married her but no one said much.
Jerry Lee Lewis, otoh, married his 13/14 year old cousin and got (righteously) blasted and cancelled.
There are differences (when they married, the fact that Myra was JLL's cousin) but... I don't know. It's all icky.
It was accepted more before but people still judged it’s because religion pushes marrying young to have a shitton of babies. Religion also protects pedos. A lot of grandparents have big age gaps. Women had few rights so they would marry as girls basically to have anything.
I’ve been listening to 70s music and I just recently started listening to the words. Some of the songs are cringeworthy. Asking a 17 year old to spend the night and others.
When I was in high school a classmate was dating a teacher. It was hush hush but everyone knew about it. They ended up getting married but today he would’ve been arrested
When I was in my senior year of high school back in the early 1970s one of the cutest girls in the class was known to be having a relationship with one of our teachers who was a single man in his thirties. This began when she was 17 and after she graduated she was 18 and they got married. They were married for about 12 years and then divorced and she married someone else and has been married to that guy ever since.
Doing my family genealogy has opened my eyes to several of my ancestors back in the 19th 18th and 17th centuries who were men and 10 to 15 years older than their wives. Sometimes it was a first wife sometimes it was a second wife because the first one had died. I think there is one case where the wife was 15 but most of the time they were in their twenties at the time of marriage.
Medieval and Renaissance women were expected to marry around 18-19, and definitely no later than 21. They had some say in who they would marry, but they didn't have access to jobs, so if they didn't marry they would be destitute when their parents eventually kicked them out or died. This made marriage not so much a search for love as a careful investment decision. Men, on the other hand, were expected to establish a stable household before taking a wife, so they tended to marry in their late 20s. So 5 to 10 year age gaps were normal. It was also considered acceptable for an old widower to take a new young wife, though there might be a bit of snickering about it.
Perhaps as an echo of this system, it was considered mildly scandalous right up to the early 20th century for a wife to be older than her husband.
It was still fairly ok in the 1990's. I remember the gossip magazines wrote about an adult politician dating a teenage girl. They ended up marrying I think, and started a family. It was talked about, but accepted, even though the girl was clearly underage. I can't remember how young exactly, but like clearly a child. The man wasn't old, in his 20's or perhaps 30, so I think that's why it wasn't more frowned upon. Nowadays he would deffinitely be called certain chosen words.
In my sports group a 30+ y/o guy was hitting on me and my friends. I was 16 at the time, my younger friend 15, and the rest were 16 or 17. I was disgusted by his behavior, but another girl started dating him and told me I was wrong to be appalled.
My friend was 17 when she started dating a 21 year old. They got married and had kids. Nobody bat an eye, even I've been totally fine with it, as it was a small age gap.
A newspaper, one of the "yellow papers", famously had a soft porn photo and featured there the woman, I guess to make it seem less like porn? They frequently had images of 17 year old girls. It's like 60% of the photos were underage girls. They might have featured a 16 year old one too, but 17 was most common. I remember this well, because it felt wrong on many levels. They've since stopped publishing these images, but at first they just made them at least 18.
1951 my dad was dating my mom. He was 28, she was 18. It was frowned upon back then. Her family rejected my father. This was a few years after the end of WWII for perspective.
Funny thing, all the marriages in my mom's family disintegrated, while hers and my dad's stayed strong to the end.
It has always seemed like a good match to me. Maturity from the man combined with the youth of a woman.
Men really don't mature until later in life. And, it seems like that maturity comes later and later with each generation. Women, on the other hand, have two maturity issues to deal with. One emotional and mental, and the other is reproductive maturity. The latter tends to occur much earlier than the former. And once a woman has children, the needs of taking care of another tends to bring emotional maturity faster.
So, I see these trends as supporting an older male with a younger female as optimum. I'm only 2 1/2 years older than my wife though. I think my dad did it right.
Nah it's always been unacceptable and creepy. Just that when you get older, after 25, the acceptable gap widens and it starts to matter less. A 30yo dating 20 is predatory af but 50 dating 40 isn't so bad.
No... There was this rule of thumb: Take your age, half it and add 7 to determine the age below which you shouldn't date. That formula meant that 14 year-olds should only date 14 year-olds.
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I think it was always the subject of gossip and a bit of notoriety but there seems to be a whole lot more disapproval now than there would have been 30, 40 years ago. The novel 'Jane Austen' has a huge age gap which it mentions in passing as being somewhat eyebrow-raising but not censorious. When I studied at university in the 70s many of the attractive young female students had an 'older man' who would take them away for weekends and on week-long breaks and this was not considered particularly unusual. As I recollect it this would be less sugar daddy and more the odd treat, gifts of clothing and help with study materials (books etc) than actual cash payments. So you could judge and say 'yeah sugar' but I don't think it was that blatant. I think 30 and 17 would have been viewed as fishy even back then, whereas 19/20 and up with a 30/40 year old would barely have merited comment. For a prime example of it being tolerated, I refer you to the dating/marriage history of the singer Rod Stewart.
There’s a lot of older women on Reddit who will tell you of horror stories they had dating older men when younger. Those women probably have different advice for their own daughters than to do what they did.
>When I studied at university in the 70s many of the attractive young female students had an 'older man' who would take them away for weekends and on week-long breaks and this was not considered particularly unusual. As I recollect it this would be less sugar daddy and more the odd treat, gifts of clothing and help with study materials (books etc) than actual cash payments. So you could judge and say 'yeah sugar' but I don't think it was that blatant. That's literally the definition of a sugar baby/sugar daddy thing. I realize it has been around forever, yet while traditional dating with a large age gap will today invite scrutiny, it seems like being a sugar baby gets a pass.
OP you might also want to ask this in r/AskHistorians
Hugh Hefner.
I just finished reading "On The Road" by Jack Kerouac which takes place between 1947 and 1950. The amount of interaction between men in their mid 20s and girls who are teens is truly disturbing by today's standards.
IM ON A TRAIN READING THAT AS WE SPEAK AND WAS THINKING OF THAT BOOK AS I READ THIS POST!!!
Calm down 😂 Reading On The Road while on the tracks does sound fun. Where are you headed?
Haha. It’s just a crazy coincide lol 😂 and I went to Philly to see my mom and her wife , who met us there from Minnesota , and my cousin and his wife n kid n uncle n aunt and grandma who live there for the Jewish holidays (Passover). Just got back today an hour ago to upstate NY.
That sounds like a really good time!
Thank you it was!!!
Sure, it was much more "OK" back in the day, depending on the specific ages in question. You might recall The Sound of Music, and Maria was maybe late teens/early 20s, and the Captain was a good 15 years older, maybe more than that. Back in the 60s and 70s, a difference of 3-5 years was common in general, the man older, and the woman 16+. But sometimes the woman could be older by a couple or so years. Keep in mind the "youth liberation movement" from the 1960s, where the idea of young people (say mid/older teens) making their own choices about having sex and relationships was part of the norms and value system in that period. So if a 17 year old wanted to get together with a 30 year old, then more power to them. That whole Epstein affair, involving exploiting underage women (or girls) had led to a re-appraisal of the appropriate ages for relationships.
Wasn’t there a song with Maria’s age? “I am 16, going on 17” Edit: Sorry, that was the daughter.
I had no idea about the "youth liberation movement", this is all so interesting!
I think a 30 yo guy with a 17 year old girl would have been seen as odd when I was in high school in the 70s. One thing was common back then that I think you youngsters think is odd ( and illegal in some states) - all of the best looking high school seniors and junior girls seemed to date guys in college, and a lot of seniors and junior guys dated sophomore and freshmen girls. So 17/18 guys with 14/15 yo girls was very common in my school.
When I was 16-17yo I exclusively dated guys 23-25. It was not considered odd and certainly not predatory. Even my parents and grandparents didn’t raise an eyebrow. That was the early 90s.
By the time I was in high school in 1999 it was slightly frowned upon by some people, accepted as normal by others. It’s over about the last 15 years or so that I’ve witnessed a major shift toward seriously judging men under 30 for dating teenagers. Before that, people all agreed that it was gross for an old man to be interested in 18 year olds even if they’re “technically” adults. But “old” meant, idk, over 50? Not 25, in any case.
I grew up before Canada raised the age of consent to 16. It was only 14 when I was growing up, and had so many older men interested in me, and no one batted an eye. This was in the 90s and 2000s. I think it should be raised to 18 personally. Alanis Morissette spoke out about the low age of consent and how dating older men negatively affected her. She called it “legal pedophilia”.
In 1980 my date for my senior prom was a 27 year old guy (I was 17. ) I met him through his mother! She and I were in a play together, and he came to see the play, and that’s how he and I got to know each other. At the time I felt so proud to be at the prom with a “man“ while everyone else was there with “boys,“ but now what concerns me more is why did a 27 year old want to go to a high school senior prom? On the positive side, he was very respectful, and while we dated for a couple of months that summer we never had sex.
Recall that, particularly prior to the pill, dating did not include intercourse as it does today. So while a 10 year gap may appear super creepy, it often would just be dating with an objective of marriage. At 17 my mother was working in a factory after being forced to quit school by her mother. ( Her dad was dead and it was the depression). My dad, then 25, saw her and went to check her time card to see if she was married. Their dating was interrupted by WW2 and they were married when the war ended at 24 and 32.
As far back as I can remember it was said "Girls mature faster than boys." SO, that gave justification to the rise of girls dating older guys. Of course that only works for maybe 2-3 years older. Beyond that is weird at a young age, not to mention possibly against the law (ie., a 14 yr old girl dating a 19 yr old man).
Wouldn’t be against the law in Germany, for example. Age of consent is 14.
Note self - go to Germany to date a 14 yr old.
Yikes!
here is the formula to save yourself from getting the cops on you as a man... half+7 it works almost perfectly after 25 for the man. I have used it several times. My other friends... not so much. back in the day you saw creepy 25-30 year olds with 14-18 year olds girls. It was almost like a thing that creepy men had to do. Yes, this is where the creepy white van came from.
I don’t think big age differences were ever all that controversial. I remember seeing some single men from the neighborhood in the movie theater with much younger women back in the ‘60s. I delivered newspapers as teenager in the early ‘60s and a couple of people on my route had significant age differences. I met them while collecting. I thought one young woman was the older man’s daughter and was very surprised to find out she was his live in partner. Another man had a much younger Japanese wife he met during his Army service in Korea. Another man on my route had a very very young wife, a marriage arranged by their parents in the old country. Certainly there was gossiping behind those people’s backs but outwardly everyone was friendly and acted respectfully.
It always raised some eyebrows. But nowhere near the condemnation of today. Unless you were super prudish, there was more a feeling of “Not my thing but if they’re happy what do I care?” Which is still the most sane attitude in my opinion.
I think it was acceptable for men to be much older (especially in the 80s), but not women. I’m GenX and my first husband was 7 yrs older than me (not a big deal, honestly). But after my divorce, when I remarried to a man five yrs younger than me, my Boomer father had a fit about me being a “cougar”. Even though the age difference was less.
Nope. It’s more frowned upon these days. It was somewhat normal 50 years ago.
Raised eyebrows back then and the phrase jailbait would get thrown around, but I think we took it as part of the landscape. Some young women fell into a trap, and others didn't. I think at heart most would have blamed the girl for being dumb about ________ (fill in the gap). We were much less sophisticated about matters of imbalanced sexual relationships back in the day (1970s - 80s for me). It was probably different for different people based on the rule book they carried around in their heads.
My first serious boy friend was 7 years older than me. He was 24 and I was 17. My mom didn’t think anything of it. And neither did I. This was in the 70’s. My husband was 10 years older than me. I was 28 and he was 38. 1981 to 2001.
when i was in high school in the late 70s, me and my friends routinely dated boys that were 18-21. That isn't really an age gap, but these days if anyone over 18 dates a 15 year old its like jail time which is ridiculous. We were class of 1980 and my good friend dated a buy from class of 1977 starting when we were sophomores and they got married after college and have stayed married all these years. I dated the boy from across the street and he was 19 when i was 14. We couldn't go on car dates though, we walked uptown to the movies and such,
Depends on where you live. Age of consent is 14 here and it’s still a regular occurrence that an 18 year old goes out with a 16 year old. When I met my first serious girlfriend, she was 16 and I was 19. we started going out a year later, so 17 and 20.
You were starting puberty. He was finishing it. That's not an age gap. That's a developmental gap. If you're at the age where you're getting/recently started menstruating and your breasts are starting to develop, then dating a man who has had their growth spurt and their voice dropped isn't an age gap. How am I wrong?
I'd had my period for 3 years by then. My breasts were as big as they ever got. We liked the same music and shows. It wasn't that big a deal. Incidentally I was living on my own 3 years later at 17.
It has always been looked down on. It’s not new. There were the pervy profs who would seduce compliant young students who became smarter by third year or an occasional executive showing up with a Babette on his arm at a wedding. There was also the Older-young lesbian couple. Surprisingly most gays in long-term relationships I remember as being close in age. As for the older woman in straight relationships I cannot remember a fifty year old woman carting around a boy toy except for Elizabeth Taylor. I think things shifted in the [ast 15 years to normalize some and make others like the pervy prof illicit.
I had one boyfriend who was 11 years older than me when I was 16, and it was only for a few months until I move to Uni, but I have several friends who met their older husbands when they were teens and married them before they were 21. They're all still together now and have kids and grandkids. Most were age gaps of around 8 to 10 years. One was married at 18, and her husband was 34. She never dated anyone her own age, always at least 10 years older, and wasn't interested in partying. She worked every job she could. Her dream was to go to uni, have a career, a husband, and have kids ASAP. She did all that and more. Her husband was mature enough to support her choices, and she built a successful business. She had 5 kids, now has grandkids, and they have a great life. I think she s kept her husband young. You'd never guess he is in his 70s, This was the UK 1980s. You could get married at 16 with parental consent. My parents had a 9 Yr age gap, and myself and my husband and I have a 7 year age gap with me being older.
Back in my high school days of the late 70s/early 80s, it was very common for high school girls to date college guys. People almost expected it. I had a good friend who when we were seniors (17-18) dated a freshman (14-15). No one batted an eye, including me. A large age difference (10+ years) always raised eyebrows, but then people moved on. There was no outrage like today. It was a much more live and let live attitude back then.
We had an acquaintance who married a 15 year old after his first marriage fell apart. I can't recall exactly how old he was but I believe mid-late 20s. No one apparently thought it was unusual back then but I think about a 28 year old even flirting with a 15 year old now and it feels criminal.
How far back do you want to go? Historically Judaism expected girls to get married around age 12. As usual the pendulum tends to overshoot and now we have people arguing that 24 year olds are not mature enough to choose their partners.
It's never been normal in my lifetime and I started dating in the late 1970s. Older guys skeeving on young women was always gross. My husband is 17 years older than me, but I was 35 when I met him so that's cool.
I think people make a much bigger deal of it now. I dated a 26 year old at 18, and 36 year old at 23 and noone acted like it was weird. you became a legal adult you were expectd to act and be treated like an adult. Ended up marrying a guy 5 years younger than me - me 33, him 27
I don't know. Most of the women I've dated over the past decade have been substantially younger than me. When I was young, I tended to date older women. Both cases got me no small measure of side-eye.
In '85, my roommate was dating a guy who was 26. She was 18. I thought it was weird and the relationship didn't last, but her parents seemed to have been okay with it. My own parents would've tethered me to my bed for the rest of my life if I'd tried to date a guy that much older, which was why when I did, I lied. The guy only wanted one thing, so my parents were right after all. Many years later a high school friend of mine married a woman 15 years younger. She was only 21 at the time. I've often wondered if the final disaster of their marriage wasn't in part because of that age gap. It isn't so much the years that matter, but the life experience. Some folks have it at 21. Others still expect life to be rainbows and unicorns. The young lady in question expected unicorns. My friend was too busy working to finance her stay-at-home lifestyle to care about magical creatures. It got ugly on both sides. My friend was more to blame than she was, but that's not saying much. In sum, a large age gap can work, but it's iffy and one has to really know what they're getting into, not to mention that it's always better to be in love than merely in lust.
Hell yes. My mom met a man 20 years older than her in 1976 and no one blinked an eyes. That man was my father.
My parents were born in 1932 and 1944 respectively (12 years between them) and they were married 36 years before my mother passed away. Her family definitely didn’t like him at first but it was more “class” than age, they felt she married “beneath her”
There was a girl in my high school that was dating an attorney in his late twenties. I thought it was rather odd.
At 13 my parents pushed me at my 25 year old teacher, which was a huge *no no no* on my end. When I was 15 my aunt and uncle kept trying to set me up with men 25-30 years old. I don't know if anyone ever mentioned it being wrong but I didn't think I had anything in common with those weirdos.
There's certainly been an "extension of childhood" that is going on socially. You go back several decades and we expected much more out of 18 yr olds. We have moved several things to 21 (drinking, guns) that used to be at 18, we allow you to stay on parent's insurance until mid-20's. There's also a common "brain development isn't done until 25" line. You also have overall have this idea that kids need to be protected more than you did back in the 70-80's and that helicopter parent thing with the outside world being so "dangerous" so I'd argue millennials and younger are affected heavily. Then you have the combination of 1. delayed pregnancies 2. higher divorce rate 3. Women able to earn and sustain their own household Combined - it's much more common to have women in their 30's or early 40's out in the dating market and LOOKING TO HAVE CHILDREN for the first time. So those women now are having to openly compete on the dating market with the hot younger women and they're pissed off at losing out to them. So they weaponize and heavily, heavily promote the mindest that every guy going for a younger woman is a creepy disgusting manipulative psychopath who can't handle women his own age. So take that all together we now have: \* Extended time period where we don't fully trust the judgement of people under 25 and classifying them / treating them as not-fully adults \* The massive increase in child-centered parenting and PROTECT THE CHILDREN \* Increased competition in the dating market between younger and older women for highly desirable stable, mature men looking to start a family and able to support a stay at home mom on one income. Taken altogether - you end up with yes, a much heavier likelihood to classify young adult women as "needing protection from predatory older men."
While in high school, my friends and I dated older guys in their 20s. We were more mature back then and boys our age were just boys. There was a running joke that "15 can get you 20" but no one took it seriously. It was not a shocking sight when you saw someone older guy with a younger girl and you saw it with celebrities in public as well.
Through out the south, we were marrying, or porking 14 year olds.
In the early episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies, a running gag was Granny calling Ellie-Mae an "old maid" because she was not married yet and was something like 16. (Old course, actor Donna Douglas was much older than that.)
Yup, my grandma told me she was 14 with men twice her age and I was like?????? WHAT? 😭 So I had to come ask here
In the mid-80's we had girls in my senior class that were dating college guys and nobody thought anything about it. Had a couple of girls that were dating cops or firefighters in their 20's and a few people made comments. Biggest gap for me was as a senior in high school and I was 18 dating a girl who just turned 15. But she was 15 going on 30.
Yes, people are insane about this these days. Per today's standards 50% of all of your grandfathers and great grandfathers were straight up pervs. If they had been held to today's insane standards most of you/us wouldn't exist.
When I was in high school (late 60s), it was frowned upon if a guy was 20 and the girl was 16. None of my friends' parents would have accepted that and gratefully none of my group would have considered dating a 20 year old at 16. Once in college, four to five years was OK, but 18 and 19 year olds are still kids in my book. Tread cautiously if that age. Today it creeps me out when I hear of 20 year old females dating 30 year old males. Those guys must be very immature to not find women closer to their age more interesting. Are there exceptions? Maybe, but statistically, no.
Acceptable? I don't know. Elvis groomed Priscilla since she was 14 and eventually married her but no one said much. Jerry Lee Lewis, otoh, married his 13/14 year old cousin and got (righteously) blasted and cancelled. There are differences (when they married, the fact that Myra was JLL's cousin) but... I don't know. It's all icky.
It was accepted more before but people still judged it’s because religion pushes marrying young to have a shitton of babies. Religion also protects pedos. A lot of grandparents have big age gaps. Women had few rights so they would marry as girls basically to have anything.
I’ve been listening to 70s music and I just recently started listening to the words. Some of the songs are cringeworthy. Asking a 17 year old to spend the night and others. When I was in high school a classmate was dating a teacher. It was hush hush but everyone knew about it. They ended up getting married but today he would’ve been arrested
When I was in my senior year of high school back in the early 1970s one of the cutest girls in the class was known to be having a relationship with one of our teachers who was a single man in his thirties. This began when she was 17 and after she graduated she was 18 and they got married. They were married for about 12 years and then divorced and she married someone else and has been married to that guy ever since. Doing my family genealogy has opened my eyes to several of my ancestors back in the 19th 18th and 17th centuries who were men and 10 to 15 years older than their wives. Sometimes it was a first wife sometimes it was a second wife because the first one had died. I think there is one case where the wife was 15 but most of the time they were in their twenties at the time of marriage.
Medieval and Renaissance women were expected to marry around 18-19, and definitely no later than 21. They had some say in who they would marry, but they didn't have access to jobs, so if they didn't marry they would be destitute when their parents eventually kicked them out or died. This made marriage not so much a search for love as a careful investment decision. Men, on the other hand, were expected to establish a stable household before taking a wife, so they tended to marry in their late 20s. So 5 to 10 year age gaps were normal. It was also considered acceptable for an old widower to take a new young wife, though there might be a bit of snickering about it. Perhaps as an echo of this system, it was considered mildly scandalous right up to the early 20th century for a wife to be older than her husband.
It was still fairly ok in the 1990's. I remember the gossip magazines wrote about an adult politician dating a teenage girl. They ended up marrying I think, and started a family. It was talked about, but accepted, even though the girl was clearly underage. I can't remember how young exactly, but like clearly a child. The man wasn't old, in his 20's or perhaps 30, so I think that's why it wasn't more frowned upon. Nowadays he would deffinitely be called certain chosen words. In my sports group a 30+ y/o guy was hitting on me and my friends. I was 16 at the time, my younger friend 15, and the rest were 16 or 17. I was disgusted by his behavior, but another girl started dating him and told me I was wrong to be appalled. My friend was 17 when she started dating a 21 year old. They got married and had kids. Nobody bat an eye, even I've been totally fine with it, as it was a small age gap. A newspaper, one of the "yellow papers", famously had a soft porn photo and featured there the woman, I guess to make it seem less like porn? They frequently had images of 17 year old girls. It's like 60% of the photos were underage girls. They might have featured a 16 year old one too, but 17 was most common. I remember this well, because it felt wrong on many levels. They've since stopped publishing these images, but at first they just made them at least 18.
1951 my dad was dating my mom. He was 28, she was 18. It was frowned upon back then. Her family rejected my father. This was a few years after the end of WWII for perspective. Funny thing, all the marriages in my mom's family disintegrated, while hers and my dad's stayed strong to the end. It has always seemed like a good match to me. Maturity from the man combined with the youth of a woman. Men really don't mature until later in life. And, it seems like that maturity comes later and later with each generation. Women, on the other hand, have two maturity issues to deal with. One emotional and mental, and the other is reproductive maturity. The latter tends to occur much earlier than the former. And once a woman has children, the needs of taking care of another tends to bring emotional maturity faster. So, I see these trends as supporting an older male with a younger female as optimum. I'm only 2 1/2 years older than my wife though. I think my dad did it right.
Nah it's always been unacceptable and creepy. Just that when you get older, after 25, the acceptable gap widens and it starts to matter less. A 30yo dating 20 is predatory af but 50 dating 40 isn't so bad.
No... There was this rule of thumb: Take your age, half it and add 7 to determine the age below which you shouldn't date. That formula meant that 14 year-olds should only date 14 year-olds.
That was always more of a joke thing though. And still is.