Reply #80: Bar/Bat Mitzvah at 13--that was my culture's best guess at the average age of puberty. [View All]

[Raksha]

It's actually 12 1/2 years for girls and 13 for boys, if you want to get technical about it. For convenience, the ceremony is now done at age 13 for both sexes. But a child BECOMES Bar/Bat Mitzvah at that age whether any ceremony is performed or not. Having a Bat Mitzvah ceremony for girls is of course a fairly recent development in any branch of Judaism.

Among the Orthodox especially in the past parents really did marry off their children shortly after they reached Bar/Bat Mitzvah age. That was in the days of arranged marriages of course, and in those regressive Jewish backwaters where arranged marriages are still practiced. Not too many of them exist any more, but I can't say there's no precedent for it.

What I still don't get is why condoms (or sexual activity, for that matter) would be a factor in a child's life BEFORE puberty. Of course my cousin did have her first menstrual period at age 10, so I guess "average age of puberty" means just that.