ABSTRACT
Understanding the age bases of family decision-making dynamics is essential when entering the discussion of the rhetorical emphasis on the autonomy of children in choosing asceticism, forms of family authority, and the gendered expectations towards teenage boys and girls in Late Antiquity. Indeed, one may plausibly propose that discussions concerning asceticism took place in families at the same time as they would in any case have been discussing the future of the offspring, that is, just before a decision about marriage was to take place. The material on the choice of asceticism suggests that at least among the elites, the age for a first marriage for girls had remained much the same. If sons had time to wait for the final decision about asceticism, daughters did not have the same opportunity. For young, marriageable girls in their early teens, the question concerned the immediate choice between marriage and celibacy.
