Patriotic pedophilia?

Odd moment in the 1941 wartime romance The Very Thought of You, broadcast today on TCM. A soldier and his girlfriend go to Pasadena City Hall to get hitched before he ships out. Accompanying them: her sixteen-year-old sister. In the waiting room for the Justice of the Peace there are several other couples, including one that looks likes a couple of high schoolers. The young girl in that couple says she's sixteen and advises the sister to get married too.

Peacetime (or at least the cultural marginalization of war), the knowledge economy, the democratization of higher education, the advancement of women professionals and yes, birth control--these and other factors dramatically alter the incentives to get women married off at a young age.