Shotgun weddings in the 1950s and before often led to child abuse

Especially when the mothers and fathers forced to get married were 12 to 14 years of age. This wasn't unusual all over the country then but was more about financial liability than anything else especially in poorer people all over the country then.

So, even at 16 (which is the youngest age I ever knew anyone to actually get married I remember meeting friends by accident (a boy and a girl) from High School and them introducing me to their baby and the fact that they were married at age 16. They also had a look of a Doe in the headlights and seemed sort of living in shock from the whole thing too when they tried to convince me it was what they both wanted. 

However, I was trying to be polite but trying hard not to scream, run or throw up because I was 16 at the time too and just starting driving my 1956 Ford Stationwagon that I had bought with money I had earned working part time for 800 dollars then in 1964.

I could not imagine something like this happening to me nor did I want it to.

I really wasn't ready to get married until I was 26 years old 10 years later when my live in girlfriend and i got married to raise our son together. So, I was just barely ready even then to make it work. And even then I was a single Dad by age 29 raising my son alone because she was 21 when she got pregnant.

So, a lot has changed in the world obviously since all that happened to me and to everyone else. 

What was more common than this is girls 13 to 15 years old then in the 1950s shacking up with men in their late 30s and 40s. My Foreman and his wife for example at an Electronics company I worked for in San Marcos California around 1973 and 1974,  had been science teacher and student when they got together at age 15 and he lost his job as a teacher in order for them to stay together. However, they seemed pretty happy to be together because her home life with her parents was atrocious.

So, before AIDS life was completely different in almost every way than it is now here in 2026. The incidents I'm talking about are from the 1950s through the 1970s, for example. 

But after AIDS killed about 30 million people worldwide all this changed a lot for obvious reasons. 

AIDS didn't hit until the 1980s early on and killed millions of people around the world starting with Gay people here in the U.S. Unfortunatly, many of these Gay men were also Bi-Sexual and married with Children so often whole families of people died too when this happened. So, the secretive life of a bi-sexual then often killed many people because of the necessity to maintain secrecy so they wouldn't be killed or maimed by homophobic people worldwide. 

I saw a lot of cigarette burns on children's arms from parents or the mother forced to have a child when she was too young so it ruined her whole life. So, often women like this tortured their children for ruining their lives.

I personally think Abortion is likely a better solution than the criminals that were created by all the abuse of young mothers not ready to have kids or get married or anything then. I suppose this still goes on today where children are tortured into becoming criminals still all over the world (even in the U.S.).