Re: Why were age of consent laws created?

However, Stead was the one thanks to whom children's sovereignty on sexual matters passed from parents to state. It is the fundamental change from an AOC as a crime against the parents to an AOC as a crime against the state.

Nah, that's still way too simplistic. Early age of consent laws evolved largely out of religious proscriptions and controls on sex in general, and let's remember that at the time the first age of consent laws came about (Renaissance, if not earlier) church and state were still very intricately entwined in Europe . . . and still are in many cultures. Moreover, the Stead articles resulted in a huge panic throughout society, not just at the governmental level.

There are biological factors involved as well, and those are certainly as old as any age of consent laws. This is evident in the fact that even many tribal cultures have limitations on children engaging in sex. Yes, many of those taboos were inherited from the Europeans who invaded them, and there are far fewer restrictions in tribal cultures generally, but it is absurd to ignore the fact that humans have evolved in such a way that we are generally infertile up to a certain point. Millions of years of evolution has weeded out children below a certain age being able to conceive because of the fact that giving birth would be fatal to mother and/or child far too often, and even when they are in the early stages of puberty. Remember, up until the era of modern medicine, pregnancy was risky even for fully adult women, so it is not mind-boggling that many cultures would've developed taboos concerning their young engaging in sex.