I find this intriguing and frustrating at the same time. The stuff about the declining age of puberty is, I think, vital to our understanding of culture and the rearing of kids.

Kids, by which I mean anyone under the age of 33, are caught in a biological and cultural pincer: they are becoming sexually aware at a younger age while, at the same time, being expected to postpone marriage for economic reasons. Now, if we disabuse ourselves of our eyewash (yes!) about the past, the way society dealt with it was turning a blind hypocritical eye to male sexuality, i.e., prostitutes and other "fallen women." The double standard meant that only one of the parties had to wait. (Average marriage age for men has gone up and down since the late eighteenth century, mostly driven by economic considerations.) That will no longer hold up. We never gave much thought to what made previous mores possible -- we told ourselves that people "back then" were somehow better/more moral than us. Bwahaha! NO THEY WEREN'T!