And the maxiskirt/peasant-blouse/no-makeup fundamentalist hippies wiggle their way up outa the woodwork at World magazine every once in a while, hayna? Or no?
“marrying later seems to work better”
It certainly does if you’re in the military. Almost without exception, military service members who get hitched before or during their first enlistment and are under 24 WILL get divorced. Even for those couples who “stick together” their youth causes innumerable problems. Soldiers are stationed thousands of miles from home and are on deployment. Thus the spouse, oftentimes a naive 18 year old woman, find themselves all alone without any support system. Recipe for trouble right there. When these young couples fight, which they WILL do, the soldier’s ability to function in the unit is severely tarnished. And then there is the sensitive but tragic statistic of child neglect from overwhelmed under the age of 24 spouses.
Bottom line - the military should go back to the policy of outlawing marriages for the troops till their second enlistment. Once the solider has put some time in the service and has a better understanding of how a family will be affected (along with the maturity that comes from serving your country for four years) will such issues be reduced.
I married young and I remembered some of my classmates did too.
At our reunion - those of us who were “never going to make it” were still together.
It wasn’t perfect - we were immature and hotheaded. We had children - which snapped us out of it.
We grew up together -matured together.
When I look at people my age who never married, and are still looking - they seem to have a long list of requirements they want in the perfect mate. A list which no one is going satisfy.
What’s the problem, she’s out of school and has shown good decision making or they wouldn’t have considered it. I was married at 15, it’s worked out well and I am glad I had my children at an early age. I cannot stomache these 40+ women with new borns.
I got married at 21 to the man I knew since I was 5 years old. We dated other people in high school and college and found our way back together. We’ll be married 29 years in October.
Was it easy, NO. Was it fun, YES. We look back on those times as some of the best. We struggled to pay off student loans and other bills, find careers and jobs that fit, started saving for future, and had a great time building our lives together.
The caveat in our marriage is that we didn’t have a child until we were married 10 years. We had ten years to travel, play, work, and grow before welcoming a child into our lives. I think that made us better spouses and better parents.
Personally, I think a successful, early marriage has to do with the people rather than an age. For example, I married at 26 and that could be considered “old” to some. However, I can honestly say that at 18, I wasn’t ready. I was still a very young “child” at heart. Even at 21, I was a significantly different person than my mid 20’s. Also, the guys I dated in my late teens and early adulthood WERE NOT the “one” for me. Love comes when it is ready, I guess. Just a thought.
I don’t see any difference in making a mistake in judgement when you’re old or young. I was a the last one of my graduating class to marry and the first to get a divorce. I had a career, my independence for five years, and a relationship with my future husband for three years. It didn’t mean my judgement was more mature. It just made me more the spoiled princess my Daddy had raised.
I still didn’t have the judgement to understand I had a relationship all on the surface. I had a relationship with a good old boy that looked like Rock Hudson and was the envy of all my friends. I never checked him for a heart or brains. Or realized that he was a 26 year old momma’s boy who had never functioned on his own. He remained dependent on his mom and dad for everything for going on eleven more years before I woke up and realized I was raising three children instead of just the two I brought in the world in the meantime. Raising an adult child is much more exhuating and drains the heart as the love goes out but never gets replenished.
And yes, even though my Dad gave me wise counsel before the wedding, I already had too much invested in the relationship to let it go. Perhaps I was one of the stupid ones that thought I could ‘change’ a 26 year old man.
Counsel your children well all their lives in the art of good judgement so when they sail their ship their eyes are open to see the bed they are about to make and sleep in.
And that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it! lol
One size does not fit all. After graduating from college, serving in the military, going back to college and getting my career on track, I wasn’t ready to get married until I was 31. And here is a rather interesting article on the subject:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-11-09-delayed-marriage_N.htm
The “problem” of early marriage is the misuse of statistics: there are a few studies of post-college marriage, and also studies of underage marriage. Predictably, post-college marriages are more stable than teen marriages that, more often than not, are a result of teen pregnancy. This has absolutely no bearing on whether marriages right out of high school, or “early marriages,” are stable, because there are no studies of that marriages in that age group. None. “Early marriage is doomed” is simply not factual; it is an urban legend.
My wife and I married while still in college, and are still together. We were one of those “they’ll never make it” couples, too. Early marriage is only a problem for those who don’t believe in commitment - but marriage at any age is a problem for such people.
We need to encourage marriage, period. Claiming that there is a “wrong age” to get married is just an excuse to accept “starter marriages.”
I don’t know... when you get married early you rely on each other in building lives, careers, kids, etc...
Sometimes fearing what life will be like on your own can cause you to hang in there longer than if you know you’ll just go back to how it was before. And sometimes that hanging in there through the rough times is what you need.
I'm sorry, haven't had coffee yet so maybe I'm thud-headed, but I don't understand your comment. I don't even understand all the words in it. Hayna?
Could you explain where, or if, you derived "starter marriage" from an article that never mentioned divorce? And as for myself, I'm back from church but still in the below-the-knee skirt, and not a speck of make-up.
I missed the part about wiggling out of the woodwork.
Still need that coffee.
In conclusion, to summarize: Wha?
It is a simple argument. Younger marriage for more children with more active parents. Older marriage with the *hope*, no guarantees, of more economic stability. However, if you vie for older marriage, there is an increasing chance that you won’t have *any* children, or even marriage. At all.
This sets up an ugly situation that people who are trying to be *more* responsible have fewer children, and have less energy to raise them with.
Thus the best situation would be for younger people to be subsidized in marriage and raising of their children, likely by *their* parents. This goes against the grain, however, for several reasons.
To start with, while many older parents and grandparents today started out with *nothing* when they entered the work force, this is still a LOT better than today’s young people, who start out deeply in debt, and have to spend years paying off their debts before they can even proudly say that they are broke.
Today’s workforce is also fully flushed out, so with the exception of some jobs, like nursing, deeply indebted young people cannot assume they can get the jobs they were trained for.
The bottom line forces many people who would have loved to marry young to put off marriage, and those who don’t care to have children in their stead. This means a lot of unwed mothers and lots of social problems.
So again, the answer is probably for young people to not accrue debt in the first place, by not going to college, and to have their livelihood provided, and children paid for, by their parents.
Will they be irresponsible because of this? Probably not. Though they would have enjoyed a more “honorable” life, like that of their parents and grandparents, times have changed, and they must make due.
Instead focus on having and raising healthy and happy children, so that maybe the next generation can have things better off.
It seems that the marriage age is moving back to what it used to be, in recent times the average marrying age had been dropping.
we adopted one child and then had one after 14 years...we have forgotten which one we adopted...they were and are great kids both well educated one still single one married with no kids!!! so we have never become ‘gram and pap’ but that is OK with us...considering today climate of young folks...both are professionals with happy lives...we've been BLESSED...
Hubby is still my best friend, we are retired and living quiet happy lives in the country...I miss the city he doesn't so that is OK.
Tell your kid...to LOVE passionately, work together and stay friends...you'll too be Blessed.
have a great Sunday everyone.