I got married at 20. Thirty-five years later, my wife is still putting up with me.
Married at 20. It’s been 36 years so far.
My two uncles on my mother’s side both married at 16. Marriages lasted decades, both ending only when a spouse died. (I agree this is too young.) This is of course unusual because such very young marriages are much more common for girls.
Anecdotal evidence, no doubt, but still evidence.
I beg to differ from the unexamined assumption that five or ten years of promiscuity is the proper preparation for a lasting marriage commitment.
Wow, Steven’s really moving up!
Did you guys know that Steven was one of the voices of The Brain on Arthur?
Thinking about starting my Crowder ping list back up. He makes the FUNNIEST videos!
Perhaps people shouldn’t be allowed to marry for the 2nd time before they are 25. Then again whose business is it how people live their lives? Right now I have a 17yr old who doesn’t see the point of attending high school Sr. year because it is such a waste of time. Part of me agrees so I am looking for alternatives just to be sure the kid has a diploma and can continue on to college if the ambition ever strikes. And I am reading they want to make it illegal for kids to stop going to school before age 18, even with parental consent. This seems like a form of incarceration to me, punish the student for not seeing the point of worn out, dated subjects. This is the last one in school and I am coming to the conclusion that schools have become an industry where they want to turn out all the same model with out consideration to the individual. Whose business is it if a kid drops out, if it is being done thoughtfully and not just as truancy? It seems when God is eliminated from everyday life, their are elites and narcissists who think it is their, hmmm, haha, “God/god given right” (<Capitalize or not capitalize?) to play god with other peoples’ lives. I believe that God wanted us to feed his sheep with the Word of God, not food. Once the Word of God is instilled in people then they can produce their own food, they can live sanely in an “evolving” world. (Evolving like land-line telephones to cellphones, that kind of evolving, not theoretical evolution such as amphibians to monkeys to humans. Hahahaha. Then again there are places in the world where I wonder if this isn’t true. Vicious lizards to humans. LOL.)
Every once in a while, you just have to take a step back, and just look in shock at how the liberals have devolved over the years. The party that thought that marriage was an unreasonable shackle upon the free love of two people is wanting it more regulated. Not only do they want to force the gays into the institution, but they want to force young (presumably only heterosexual) people out of it.
The only one who should be forced out of it should be the government itself. Man, how much could have changed if Romney had stood up and replied to the Massachusetts Supreme Court - Fine, every marriage in the state is unconstitutional and we’re no longer going to issue marriage licenses. Churches can have their ceremony back.
But I know this is just part of their master plan to extend education for all by 7 years, to give their system of indoctrination more time to work over young minds, and program away the conservative viewpoint.
The protesters of the system become the system. Wonder if our young people will have the guts soon to tell the system to take a hike.
Let’s see you can’t get married until you’re 25 and you HAVE to use those “free” contraceptives.
This is absolute hypocrisy on the part of liberals. If a girl can have sex at 15 and a baby at 16, she should be able to get married at 18.
But I ran into this sentiment when married at 22, right after college graduation. I was asked it we were really ready. I said after a 3 1/2 year engagement, we’d lasted longer than people I knew who’d met, married, had a kid and divorced - so yes, we were old enough to get married.
We're all in our mid-50s. More than a few have been married 30 years or more. Some are becoming grandparents.
Our prep school was on a college campus and we got to see the hippies of the 1970s in action. Their fervor for social causes always seemed to peak the week before finals. We decided they were frauds and we should just work hard and see what happens. Turned out OK for most of us.
Get real, folks.
The proposed regulation isn’t about improving marriage.
The proposed regulation is about BANNING MARRIAGE.
And of course these hipsters are the very ones who always did, and continue to, say there should be no limits on live, and that anyone (or anything) can marry anyone (or anything) at any time... just not straight people and/or traditional marriages.
All these chick articles on marriage can basically be condensed to one sentence: “I waited too long and now the good guys are all gone. Boo Hoo.”
bttt
I got married at 38.
When you read all the statistics about how half of all marriages last forever... That’s frightening!
Forever is a long time.
From the very same people who are pushing homosexual “marriage”.
COMMUNIST GOALS (1963 Congressional Record)
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths. (This includes marriage vows - they are not loyalty to the state, but to each other)
...
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights. (Must promote same-sex marriages)
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22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. (Current hipster/emo/goth subcultures)
...
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a “religious crutch.”
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis. (Replace it with Executive Orders and rulings from judicial activists)
...
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
...
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
Practically speaking, it should be a cultural imperative that heterosexual young people be married between the ages of 18-25, and that they not only be able to support themselves, but several children as well, *at that age*.
This takes several axiomatic changes to our society, however.
1) Boy and girl children need extensive chaperoned cross-gender socialization growing up. Today, they get almost none, and it leaves them socially isolated and unable to communicate or cooperate with the other gender when they are adults. Yet they are expected to magically find a mate and marry them, at where? Bars?
2) Society used to recognize the essential importance of marriage and procreation, and how it needs special encouragement in the law, especially favorable tax and housing law. Children are inherently expensive. Government needs to provide greater support, but it must also discriminate against those who are not married and have no children at the same time.
A good way of doing this is to provide tax incentives to businesses in hiring married young people, and even more incentives if they have children, resulting in higher pay and benefits than would be typical for entry level jobs.
3) There is also a strong need to create cultural alternatives to those who should not or decide to not have children. Comparatively, in old China, respectable women whose families could not afford dowry, or who otherwise didn’t marry, could become ‘Amah’, adopted by other families to provide some light services in exchange for a stipend, but as respectable women, not servants or prostitutes.
This is a very alien idea to the US, but is essential to keep such people “out of the way” of married, breeding couples. It is a socially acceptable alternative to marriage and children.
Instead of raising children to be eternal children, maybe we should raise them with rules that are actually rational. Maybe we should help them acquire the skills they need to make it on their own as young as possible, so they can reasonably marry young if they choose to do so.
The older you are when you get married, the harder it is to discard your childish, self-centered ways.
Where the f--k do they think we are, Communist China? What's next, a "One Child Only" Policy?
My parents were 17 and 19 when they married. They are still married sixty-some-odd years later.
I was married at 23, my bride was 22. We have been married over a quarter of a century so far.
My siblings were all older than 25 when they married. They have ALL been married more than once.
Anecdotal evidence to be sure, but I see what I see.