Paul1405, "I would say it has something to do with the fact that girls mature faster than boys. Traditionally a 21 year old male would be seen as being at the same level of maturity as an 18 year old female"

Girls have smaller brains too. So what?

As if those sexual variations noted in MRIs and by crude observation have anything but the slightest effect and probably unnoticeable in practical terms.

'Scientific' deduction of the tabloids who are prone to making the news would have it differently. They would find significance where the scientists are long on the rather obvious limitations of the findings. The tabloids feed the old fishwives' and other dullard's myths and expectations, through confirming negative and positive stereotyping of the sexes.

Almost as reliable as the pop psychology paperbacks seen in airline terminal newsagents.

Most research findings reported as news by the media are simply 'interesting' and are only worthwhile as possibilities (often unlikely) for further research.

Paul1405, "The need for large families was also a factor, no good having your first child at 30 if you intend to have 8 of them"

It was Roman Catholic edicts aimed at increasing their flock to dominate Australian politics and unavailability of reliable contraception that increased Australian families. Both negative effects on women are reduced markedly by (1) freedom of speech, (2) removing oppressive censorship and (3) free access to improved contraception (and abortion). Hence the freedom of speech (anti-censorship) movement of the Sixties. Also the immediate take-up of The Pill, which the cynical, bullying Catholic Church fought against tooth and claw.

Of course some lobbyists and political parties would negate that desirable self-limitation of population growth and sustainability by throwing open Australia's doors to the irresponsible ferals from Third World countries whose personal mission is to dominate and knock up every female they come across.

I've done a bit of Googling and was quite surprised to
find quite a list of famous people - older women
who have married younger men. I'll list just a few of them:

5 years older -
Princess Anne - Timothy Lawrence
Goldie Hawn - Kurt Russell

10 years older -
Madonna - Guy Ritchie
Priscilla Presley - Marco Garibaldi

12 years older -
Susan Sarandon - Tim Robbins

13 years older -
Deborra-Lee Furness - Hugh Jackman

16 years older -
Ruth Gordon - Garson Kanin

18 years older -
Mary Tyler Moore- S. Robert Levine

20 years older -
Dinah Shore - Burt Reynolds
Elizabeth Taylor - Larry Forensky

23 years older -
Ivana Trump - Roesano Rubicon

31 years older -
Ellen Barkin - Sam Levinson

32 Years older -
Joan Collins - Percy Gibson

And there's heaps more on the web.

I guess one size does not fit all - when it comes to age and
love.

Some tribal people favour marriages with a disparity of age in both directions. Young men marry much older women, and young women marry much older men. That results in most people having at least two marriages during their life time and a lower birth rate as fertility of one of the partners is usually limited.

An example is the Tiwi in the northern Territory.

Perhaps it should be encouraged worldwide as a means of curbing the population increase.

Cub or sea cow, eh? Fortunately there are laws.

Feminist guru Germaine Greer held that she should decide age of consent, not the law. She published a book, The Beautiful Boy that she described as, "full of pictures of 'ravishing' pre-adult boys with hairless chests, wide-apart legs and slim waists".

Germs had more to say, but best left alone.

On the other hand, Greer tried to suggest that a goodnight kiss from daddy is sexualization,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWq-avEfgdc

Dear David,

In modern industrialised societies, we generally
assume that married partners should be adults of
much the same age, although certain exceptions are
made for an older man and a younger woman
However, some societies offer strikingly contrasting
patterns. I've done some research and it seems that
the Kadara of Nigeria marry infants to one another.
The Chuckchee of Siberia, believing that parental care
is the best way of cementing the marriage bond, allow
adult women to marry males of only two or three years
of age; the new wives then look after the boys until
they are old enough to assume their hudbandly duties.

And as you've pointed out - the Tiwi of Australia, adult
males marry females even before they are conceived, annulling
the marriage if the newborn turns out to be the wrong sex.

//Rightly or wrongly, seeing a younger man with a noticeably older woman looks like he's with his mother, which inturn generates suspicion about his intentions; and her's also.//

Rightly or wrongly, seeing a younger woman with a noticeably older man look's like she's with her father, which in turn generates suspicion about his intentions; and his' also.

//I don't really care who dates or marries who, of any sex, but any pairing of people I see in public that looks unnatural to me, looks just that - unnatural and therefore odd.//

Is that which is 'odd' is and 'unnatural' necessarily contemptible?

My biggest hero of all time is Henry Cavendish. By contemporary accounts, he was a very odd man. So odd that he didn't publish most of his work. He discovered Ampere's Law and Coulomb's Law before they were named by other people but he never sought to publish.

So odd that he always took the same route at the same time for his evening walk, walking in the middle of the road to avoid confrontation. Until he realised the townsfolk had figured out his routine and were gathering to stare at the 'unnatural' freak, and changed his schedule to walk under the cover of darkness.

So odd that he would leave written instructions for his housekeeper to avoid having to talk to her; when she surprised him on the stairs one night he forked out to have a second staircase installed so that it might never happen again.

He was one of the best chemists of his age, and probably the best experimental physicist who has ever lived.

But he was quite weird, and so we should shun him accordingly, right?

That is how it works, yeah? Weird people and their weird ideas never have the potential to advance society, and so we should shun them and their un-traditional ideas.