skipping some
> So, why not have children before marriage? It proves you're fertile,
> making you more of a catch. It keeps your family happy, as they like
> having more children around the place. And, believe it or, not, sex is
> fun. Children often result.
As I learned in college Anthropology (surely an unimpeachable source :-), marriage is firstly the method by which society OKs childbearing, and only secondarily by which it regulates pair bonding. Therefore, I expect that childbirth by unmarried women is rare. Mind you, they may be just year-married, but they will be married. If they CAN'T find anyone willing to marry her for that long, she must be totally hopeless, or else a thrall.
OTOH, marriage before pregnancy, at least until the chieftain level (where dowries can become quite large, and politics becomes predominant), is just plain stupid; if your spouse and you are mutually infertile you are stuck, or at least have wasted time better spent finding a fertile union. Until about 150 years ago, shotgun marriages (or else premature first births :-) were almost the norm, not the exception. Only Victorianism and citification made premarital sex uncommon.
> Look, this whole idea of virginity somehow being seen as an asset
> depends on men thinking they "own" women in some way and have a
> right to say who they go to bed with.
More like it is a rare commodity. Even if the woman "owns" it, it can
only be granted once. Therefore, it is worth slightly more than most
other rolls in the hay. We will leave out the obvious ritual/magical
implications (similar to women's monthly flow).
> linked in with a hang-over from some early Christian ideas that sex of
> any sort is somehow "sinful". (Blame Augustine).
So I suppose that explains female circumcision being so common and
accepted among the patriarchal, patrilineal Europeans, and unknown in
matrilineal cultures like the Africans? <sarc mode off>
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