Was Jane Jetson a Child Bride?

The Jetsons was an animated prime-time series that debuted in 1962, about a nuclear family living in the distant future where everything was high-tech. Despite the fact that the show is more than 50 years gone, people on the internet are arguing about the family's backstory. George Jetson was supposedly 40 years old, and Jane was 33. And they had a teenage daughter.

If we do the math on the admittedly fictional relationship between George and Jane—specifically, when their daughter Judy was born—then Jane was just a teenager when Judy was conceived. And the seven-year age difference between George and Jane doesn’t help matters. But marrying young was less abnormal when the show premiered in 1962. In fact, the median age for marriage was at its lowest in the 1950s.

Paleofuture goes through the evidence of each character's age in the show's premier season, particularly the conflicting evidence of Judy Jetson's age, and lays out the argument that George and Jane Jetson's marriage was not particularly odd in context. If the planned live-action remake of the show ever gets off the ground, the characters' ages will no doubt be different.


In a related scenario, I recall an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show in which Laura was worried that their marriage license wasn't valid because (she confessed to Rob for the first time) she lied about her age when they wed, and said she was 18. Rob says that's okay, honey, a lot of women lie about their age to seem younger. But no, she admitted that she had actually been only 16. Rob was shocked, but they'd already been married for years by then. If I recall correctly, they met when Laura was a dancer on a show Rob worked on.
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It's not necessary that Jane was a teenager when Judi was conceived. She could have conceived in the early months of her 20th year and given birth before she turned 21. In those days, however, it was common for people to get married just after high school. My mother was born in mid February and was 20 years old when I was born...in late February. That means she was 19 when I was conceived. My father was in the Air Force and my mother had been out of High School for almost two years.
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i live in a generally rural county in NC. i worked for a fella who was a great-grandfather at the age of 45. he had his first kid at the age of 15, his first kid did the same and then her kid. at least they weren't all cousins.
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