Posted on 09/04/2008 8:23:56 AM PDT by reaganaut1
[I]t is teenage marriage today, not teenage pregnancy, that is the rarity. And, statistics show, teenage marriages tend not to endure.
...
The median marrying age for women in the late 1950s was about 19, according to David Popenoe, co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University and an emeritus professor of sociology there. But a marriage between 19-year-olds — or even 17- or 18-year-olds — then would not have been described as a “teenage marriage,” he said. It was too routine to be given a special label.
There is no way to know how many of those unions were prompted by a pregnancy — a phenomenon that has decreased sharply in the population in recent decades as the marriage rate itself has declined, sociologists say.
Studies show that today teenage marriages are two to three times more likely to end in divorce than are marriages between people 25 years of age and older. The most comprehensive study on marriage and age that sociologists cite was published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2001, from 1995 data, and it found that 48 percent of those who marry before 18 are likely to divorce within 10 years, compared with 24 percent of those who marry after age 25.
“Most young women don’t fare very well when it comes to raising a family as a teenager, and those precious few who get married, the marriages are very short-lived,” said Bill Albert, chief program officer for the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “I know and respect a lot of 17-year-olds, but I don’t think any of them are ready to be married and begin the lifelong task of raising a child.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
In a discussion at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2072436/posts about discouraging out-of-wedlock birth *and* abortion, several Freepers suggested that people ought to be getting married younger. But it seems that marriages of the young (late teens, early 20s) are less stable than they used to be. I think it would be good if relatively early and lasting marriages once again became the norm, but the question is how to bring that about.
Delayed marriage is not a problem for the government to "solve", although it could play a role by ensuring that a high school diploma meant something and enabled most people to get on with their lives without spending another 4-6 years or more in school.
Same Sex marriages don’t last either...
Dems/MSM trying to make Bristol’s pregnancy and impending marriage a campaign issue. It isn’t.
Admitting, but not directly, that the result of the availability of abortion and consequence-free sexual activity among unmarried people has led to fewer marriages and families.
Communist Goal for America
#40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
By making divorce taboo again. By making it more important to put family first over the whims of the feelings of an individual. Today an individual's feeling is more important that havok a divorce causes to the children and spouse. That is the downfall of our families.
Let’s talk about this after someone gets the stats for teenage marriages in Alaska. They are different up there. Thank God for that!
Oh, and I guess my marriage wasn’t supposed to last, either. Wow, someone should have told us that 33 years ago!
The secret to a long marriage? Marry for love, marry for life. Simple.
“C’est la vie”, say the old folks, just goes to show you never can tell.
Wikipedia? Are you going to quote the daily Kos as well?
I find that in my “small town” community, many marriages came from high school relationships and they’re still going strong, many of them 40+ years later. The NYTimes just doesn’t have a clue about our small communities.
Good points. Also, there are many plusses in having children while young, simply from a physical point of view. Many of our “young” people who get married at 30 nowadays are having trouble conceiving, simply because the body has already passed its child-bearing peak.
But aside from that, as far as high school goes, I think that whole system has got to be dumped anyway. Kids should emerge from formal education by age 16 with all they need to go into a trade or apprenticeship program, go into college if that’s what their career path requires, or get a decent job. The extended childhood is what has undermined marriage as well as education and employment for young people.
That guy STILL puts on a great concert.
The Wikipedia source is the United States Census Bureau.
My wife and I married when I was 21 and she was 19. Actually it was three days after her 19th birthday. (We put it off for six months because her parents were uncomfortable with her marrying at 18.)
We are still married, have three kids, the youngest turns 18 next month.
Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
Wikipedia has become a fairly reliable source.
“NYT doesnt have a clue”
The happiest couple I know have been together since age 14. Today, they are in their 70’s and still very much in love. The difference is values. I took my vows before God, for better or worse.
I married at 17 right out of High school. I had 7 children and retuned to school to get a degree.
We will celebrate or 48th wedding anniversary in Feb .
In todays culture we just would have moved in together to try it out..
No it has not.
It is partisan controlled and has proved vulnerable for use in scams to manipulate niche markets short term. People who don’t want to take time to do credible research wish it was reliable, and make Jason Blair bravado assertions about it’s non existent fact checking.
Have the admitted their partisan re-edit in the George Allen scandal, and made amends yet?
When that happens you may feel free to hawk your claims about Wiki’s reliability. Until then that egg on your face might be better with pepper.
Sadly, not all the old folks wish them well.
There aren't many teens in divorce court. Notice the today qualifier, as in it's not true for people married 20 years.
Why leftists might be interested in early marriage: most swingers got married young and tolerate the cheating. Most people that get married older would not tolerate that for a second.
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