The case for young marriage

[justTripn]

Don't even ask me how this article came to my attention, but since I saw it, I've been wanting to post it here and see what you guys think. It doesn't even relate to Trip and T'Pol, but it does relate to romance and we ARE romance writers, and it's science and we are nerds.

The article makes several good points about early marriage: your DNA is better when you are young. If you have your children young, your children have grandparents longer and possibly even great grandparents. And, I'm not sure this point is in there, but very often a first love is "imprinted" on you for the rest of your life. I think high school is in fact the biologically/emotionally perfect time to fall in love, before one gets old and cynical. Anyway . . . What do you think?

http://www.youngmarriages.com/articles/ ... g-marriage

[Distracted]

Younger people used to be more emotionally mature than our young people are today, IMO. In the middle ages a boy was apprenticed at 7, became a man at 14 and was supporting himself (by hard labor usually) by 16. A girl by puberty had been taught to run a household. They got married, had babies, and died before age fifty (if the girl didn't die sooner in childbirth). In the industrial age young men weren't emotionally ready until possibly their early 20's to settle down. For women it was a bit earlier but they died younger than men so it worked out. Nowadays I don't think the average college student is mature enough to make a commitment like marriage. The divorce rate for teen marriages is many times the divorce rate for older people because most kids haven't learned that love is a decision, not a feeling. Some of them never learn.

So, my opinion is that if a person is mature enough for committment then younger childbearing is biologically ideal, but if the kid isn't grown up yet between the ears young marriage is a recipe for disaster. That being said, I met my husband when I was 16, began dating him at 18 and married him at 20. We're still together, so I guess we were mature enough to deal with it.

[crystalswolf]

I have to agree with Distracted for the most part. Although I have to wonder if its a chicken/egg situation. We raise the age of maturity to ensure that children are mature at that age, but then the children feel that they do not need to mature until that time so they enjoy their "childhood" until then. Then we raise the age of maturity to compensate and the children adjust when they should mature accordingly.

Just noticed over the years how teens do not feel they need to take responsibility until that magic number 18 and some do not think they should until 21. When they start to work on their maturity level it takes a few years and then you end up with immature 20-somethings. At least this is my observation.

As for marrying young, there were quite a few things I could not agree with the author of that article but there were some points that made some sense if you also look at the study that says women are down to 10% of their eggs by age 30 and (I think) 3% by age 40. Combine that with the infertility and mutations of older men. We may be programmed to have children young but does that make it right?

Long ago I read about a Native American culture where young women would have children and their mothers would watch their children as they held their responsibilities and positions within the tribe. I wish I could remember where I read about that though.

[justTripn]

I think the "support of the community" part is crucial here. If parents were supportive of earlier marriages, and conveyed to the young married couple that they had high expectations/standards they and all married couples should live up to, maybe the young people would put in the work expected of them. The young people have more emotional and physical energy for the ups and downs that will be involved. What I fear about late marriage is that the moment when you are programed to believe your partner is the most wonderful person in the world and wouldn't it be great to get married and have a buch of kids-- WHOO HOO! --has passed. You could say that feeling is an illusion, but you could also say it is a self-fullfilling prophecy. My grandparents got married at a shockingly young age. One of my sisters and her husband got married during college. She says that they had no money and no food that first year, but oh well . . . ! Another sister after her first marriage, reunited with and married her high school sweetheart. I think that we ignore alot of evidence in favor of yourg marriage because of the conventional wisdom that you should wait until your late twenties. Having said that, there are alot of goofy teenagers who need to get that goofyness out of their system before they make any irreversable life altering decisions. I don't know . . .

[Alelou]

I think that biologically younger childbearing makes a lot of sense. So if you happen to meet the love of your life, why not? I do have one niece who married her high school sweetheart very young (after she got pregnant) and they have probably the most stable relationship of all the kids in that generation.

Didn't happen to me, though occasionally I wish it did.

Many of my slightly older female students at the community colleges are young parents. So far not one of them regrets having their kids, but they sure do regret the (failed) relationships those kids came out of.

[honeybee]

I'm going to have to be skeptical, only because my parents married and had kids young and it did not turn out so well. My brother, their first child, turned out mentally ill. My parents, who were 23 when he was born - were financially and emotionally ill-equipped to deal with my brother's illness. My mother has said over and over that had she had him ten years later, she would not have had the same worries she had when he started to present as ill. At 23-24, Mom and Dad worried more about other people thinking something was abnormal about my brother than finding him the right doctors and shrinks and schools. He really needed private school, but they couldn't afford it - and my brother's illness didn't qualify him for special ed because he always got good grades - (it probably would now). So, he was always getting in trouble. Mom and Dad went into deep denial about how serious my brother's mental illness was and both my parents have said this was due to their immaturity. Of course, at 5, I recognized that my brother wasn't like other kids, but that's a whole other can of worms.

I'm thinking young parents probably do do fine if their kids are normal or even above average - but throw a mental or physical curve ball in there - and it takes maturity and money and resources that people in their late teens and twenties just don't have.

[Alelou]

Does age really matter? I've seen a marriage between people much older fall apart over a child with Down's Syndrome. It's really a matter of maturity, not age, and some people just never mature.

Not that your parents might not be correct, but I don't know that ten years ever makes much difference for most people.

[honeybee]

I don't know either, really. I just know that both my parents have said "if we had been older" in regards to their mistakes with my brother. Especially in terms of finances, they think it would have mattered. I suppose things can throw you for a loop at any age.

[Aquarius]

Divorce rates seem to indicate that waiting a while is a good idea. I recently read statistics that said 50% of those who marry under 18 end up divorced, 40% of those who marry at 20 and younger get divorced, and the number sharply decreases to 24% at 25.

[Silverbullet]

I was 34 when married. we have been married for 40 years now. I do know it takes a lot of work to make a marriage once the first fires burn out and you set about becomking friends.

[panyasan]

I married my best friend. We were friends first. The fire is still burning, btw. I agree with the article, but in my own life I married at 30, I had my first child at 37 and my last when I was 40. Not that I planned it that way, I rather stayed single and wait to marry some one I knew was the right choice and I didn't get pregnant that easily. Having difficult pregnagies myself and knowing that it takes a lot more energy raising kids when you are younger then 40 plus, the arguments in the article make perfect sense to me. But the choice of getting married is not about age, but to put it simple it's about if you both want to make it work and are commited, I think.

[Asso]

... But the choice of getting married is not about age, but to put it simple it's about if you both want to make it work and are commited, I think.

Definitely.

[JadziaKathryn]

Can I just throw out that there's another level besides maturity? For me, at least, it's more about figuring out who you want to be. Of course, until I went to college I was painfully sheltered, and even then I was sort of sheltered until I graduated from undergrad. So I think in some ways I was mature enough, but not knowledgeable enough, by my early 20s. Now that I'm in my mid 20s I know more (and I know how much I don't know ) so it's been a case of a. not meeting anyone I really wanted to date and b. wanting to finish my MA before getting into a relationship anyway.

But I'm definitely in the marriage-and-childbearing prime time now, and rather alarmingly my mother has started taking a more proactive interest in finding a future son-in-law.

[Alelou]

If she has good taste, that might not be so awful...

[justTripn]

Can I just throw out that there's another level besides maturity? For me, at least, it's more about figuring out who you want to be. Of course, until I went to college I was painfully sheltered, and even then I was sort of sheltered until I graduated from undergrad. So I think in some ways I was mature enough, but not knowledgeable enough, by my early 20s. Now that I'm in my mid 20s I know more (and I know how much I don't know ) so it's been a case of a. not meeting anyone I really wanted to date and b. wanting to finish my MA before getting into a relationship anyway.

But I'm definitely in the marriage-and-childbearing prime time now, and rather alarmingly my mother has started taking a more proactive interest in finding a future son-in-law.

My actual position is it's about timing as much or even more than finding the soulmate. Two people have to be at the same point in life where they are ready to settle down and make a commitment. If this happens early on, OK . . . As to finding out who you are . . . people keep changing throughout life but you can continue to change after marriage. Not a disaster.