Warning: this may cause you to pit out.
This Sunday’s Washington Post featured an article that challenged — among other things on the topic of marrying young — Gen X’s frequently held presumption that the earlier you marry, the less likely it will last.
The writer’s thesis statement is simple: marrying young isn’t inherently wrong or inherently risky. Waiting well into your twenties (and beyond), on the other hand, is definitively risky and not actually all that “good for you” in the traditional senses (those being saves you money, makes you happy).
Apparently the average age men marry is now 28 — up 5 years from what it was in 1970 (right, 23). It used to be that women still married young but now the gap is closing and women are marrying just as old as men. So men are marrying older and therefore so are women because — for the most part — women marry men.
Fine — but why? Why is everyone marrying older? And what does our generation have against marrying young?
According to the author — this:
- Since we were young, our generation has been advised by parents, teachers, and after-school specials to focus on ourselves, our careers and our independence. Says this writer — someone around the age of our parents — “[Parents] caution that depending on another person is weak and fragile. We don’t want them to rush into a relationship. We won’t help you with college tuition anymore, we threaten. Don’t repeat our mistakes, we warn.” As a result we de-value marriage and instead view independence, maturity, & existing on our own two feet as the goal.
- Then we spread this thought base on our peers. Again: “In my research on young adults’ romantic relationships, many women report feeling peer pressure to avoid giving serious thought to marriage until they’re at least in their late 20s. If you’re seeking a mate in college, you’re considered a pariah, someone after her “MRS degree.” Actively considering marriage when you’re 20 or 21 seems so sappy, so unsexy, so anachronistic. Those who do fear to admit it — it’s that scandalous.” So getting married young becomes taboo and waiting to marry is socialized as normal, respectable, and the smart decision.
- And finally — we approach the idea of a life-long mate from place of logic and math. We are well acquainted with the divorce rate — some of us intimately so — and we don’t want to be us. So “well-educated people are convinced that there actually is a recipe for guaranteed marital success that goes something like this: Add a postgraduate education to a college degree, toss in a visible amount of career success and a healthy helping of wealth, let simmer in a pan of sexual variety for several years, allow to cool and settle, then serve. Presto: a marriage with math on its side.”
I’ll give it to the guy. Those are real reasons. Some of them are my own reasons, in fact. And while I would never end a healthy, stable, adult relationship because I felt it was a. taboo and b. preventing me from real career success — I’ll admit I’m not predisposed to search for one because I both have other priorities in line and do believe waiting until I’ve grown more will prevent me from doing so much growing inside a relationship that I eventually grow out.
In my mind that’s not wrong or counterproductive or harmful to my eventual self — it’s just my 25-year-old stage.
According to that article the benefits of waiting to marry are not rooted on fact, not entirely productive, and actually very harmful to both my current and future self.
Why:
- First there’s this: “According to social psychologists women’s “market value” declines steadily as they age, while men’s tends to rise in step with their growing resources (that is, money and maturation)….Meanwhile, women’s fertility is more or less fixed, yet they largely suppress it during their 20s — their most fertile years — only to have to beg, pray, borrow and pay to reclaim it in their 30s and 40s.” Read: women have a worse chance of getting married the older they get because they’re less appealing and have a harder time conceiving children at that age because they’re less fertile. So the longer you wait the longer you’ll likely have to.
- And then: “The best evaluations of early marriage note that the age-divorce link is most prominent among teenagers (those who marry before age 20). Marriages that begin at age 20, 21 or 22 are not nearly so likely to end in divorce as many presume.” So it’s not actually true that the younger you get married the more likely you’ll get divorced.
- And finally: “Marriage is an unbelievably efficient arrangement and the best wealth-creating institution there is. Married people earn more, save more and build more wealth compared with people who are single or cohabiting. (Say what you will about the benefits of cohabitation, it’s a categorically less stable arrangement, far more prone to division than marriage.) We can combine incomes while reducing expenses such as food, child care, electricity, gas and water usage.” Meaning marrying young is actually very beneficial to your ultimate money, savings, and therefore stability.
I was with the guy at that point. With him meaning I’ll agree that marrying young isn’t all that bad and can work for people who are ready. I agreed that we over-value independence and undervalue commitment. I can certainly see how marrying young doesn’t mean it will fail and how being marriad can actually make you more successful and stable. So fine — I was thinking. Marriage isn’t to be avoided. If the time is right, the time is right.
But theeeeen the article ended like this:
“So while many young Americans mark their days in the usual ways — by hitting the clubs, incessantly checking Facebook, Twittering their latest love interest and obsessing about their poor job prospects or how to get into graduate school — my applause goes out to those among them who’ve figured out that the proverb was right. One of those is Jennifer, a 23-year-old former student of mine. She’s getting married this fall. It wasn’t religion that made her do it. It wasn’t fear of being alone. It was simply affection. She met Jake while still in college and decided that there was no point in barhopping through her 20s. Her friends balked. She stood firm. Now they’re bridesmaids.”
And with that it switched from an article about how marriage shouldn’t be feared to an article about how girls who don’t focus on it early will find themselves alone and wishing they’d spent less time in bars and more time on the old MRS. degree.
That’s a different conversation — one we’ll have tomorrow.
Send comments and thoughts (20Nothings@gmail.com) for me to include.
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That fellow is all optimism and no facts! For those among us who *have* spent their college years going after the MRS degree (ahem!) I’ll have you know that it’s totally pointless if the guys (or girls) you’re interested in being with (sooner than later) are not equally inclined (that’s assuming they are interested in you in the first place). Flat out, I’ve become a cynic on this point. If you spend you college years whiling away after a pipe-dream in a culture that says you’re an idiot for hoping you’re never going to see success. Never.
Spend your life how you want to. Have fun. Unless you’ve got more luck than (insert someone who’s very lucky) there’s no place in our culture for people who what to get married young (except in very religious circles and the south). You’re better off delaying the disappointment.
One thing he may not have hit on… marriage takes a certain amount of blind faith and suspended reason. You know the statistics, you know the risks, you know the pitfalls. And yet, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, you dive in, turning a blind eye and adopting the “it won’t happen to me” attitude. I think when we hit a certain age (I’m going with 23 for no good reason), this starts getting harder and harder to stomach. Its kind of like how teenagers think they’re immortal. Evntually you wake up and realize, hey, something really bad could actually happen to me. right around then, I think our ability to believe in marriage starts to fade. making it harder and harder (and harder) to get to a place where walking down the aisle makes sense. So part of me believes you have to be young and a little stupid (in a good way?) to even get married. Making early marriage the best bet (if marriage is on your to do list). Just my 28-year-old 2 cents.
sounds like Lost in Brooklyn is gonna be single until he realizes that one doesn’t have to be “young and stupid” to get married. Grow up and realize that there are actually people out there who don’t focus on the negative possibilities and actually get married because they love and are committed to the person they are with. We’re old enough and wise enough to know that it takes work, but want to put in that effort.
Curious as to how many married friends Lost in Brooklyn knows?
It had been drilled into me from an early age that I would be married, or at least with the person I would marry, by the time I graduated college. My parents were, my older siblings were, and the pattern held true outside my immediate family as well. The signs were all there. I had been dating someone for the majority of my college years and even imagined what it would be like to get engaged after graduation. Had that happened, now I would surely be a 26 year-old divorcee trying to start his life over.
Marrying young is not a bad thing, IF YOU’RE READY FOR IT. But marrying young because a.) you want a baby before you’re 30 b.) because you’ve been dating someone for a long time and it just seems the natural progression and is easier than breaking up c.) to be able to afford a house or as part of an investment portfolio d.) in order to reduce your carbon footprint, or e.) because you were pressured into it by family/culture and all other options are excruciatingly frightening are not good reasons.
Marriage is about being able to commit to someone when life is shitty and when life is good. It’s about not always getting your way and having another voice in the conversation that is just as important as yours. It can be about raising a family too, if that’s what you decide as a couple. But, contrary to this guy’s article, the two choices are not “get married and live happily ever after”, or “bar hop your way through the better part of your child-bearing years and regret it for the rest of your life.”
I’m happy with my choices and am not willing to compromise enough to be able to check that box on my tax form that says “married.” Marriage can be scary because of all the work it takes. And tell me that at 18 years-old, or even 21, couples getting married really know what that means. If they do, they are ready; if not, then maybe it’s not as good of an investment as this guy thinks. It’s not a goal to wait until 30 to be espoused, but realistically, it seems like it could happen. And if I’m ready before then, so be it.
And to combat that whole biological negatives thing, mabye I’ll just freeze some sperm, get someone with awesome genes to donate a couple eggs and call it a day. Problem solved. Stock rising. And ladies might do well to remember, cougars are in nowadays.
I totally agree with what you are saying!!
Now 30… Re-reading my comment, I can see why you are a little miffed. In my defense, I wasn’t intending to say that people who get married are stupid. Not in the slightest. My folks have been married for 35 years and are super happy (they did get married at the ripe old age of 22, but…). All I was saying is that as you get older, it becomes harder to accept marriage as an intellectual proposition. And the older you get, the more you learn about relationships and marriage, the more you actually understand about that whole “marriage is work” thing. “work” is not a euphemism in that statement. It takes a little bit of faith to make that leap, and faith tends to wane the longer we’re here. (I just broke off a three year relationship in part because he wanted to get married, and i couldn’t commit. So I give massive credit to those that do!)
As for married friends, I have quite a few. sadly two couples I love, each of whom married within the last year and a half (all of them over 30), are now in the process of divorcing. So the coin flips both ways.
Speaking as someone who was in a serious relationship in college that could have led to marriage, I’m very glad it didn’t. While one may technically be an adult in college, your life is very different once you leave the dorm. Between being 20 and 25 your priorities and goals change such that you may not be the person you were at age 20 anymore. This is supposed to happen. It would be very easy for “the one” to suddenly be less perfect for you after only a couple years.
I’m not saying people should all wait until they’re over 30 to consider marriage, but they certainly shouldn’t when they’re 20-22.
At the end of the day, when you get married depends on your own situation and environment. I was raised in a liberal environment by parents who encouraged me to be my own woman and strive to excel in school and my career. My family and I are very close (an attribute of the millennial generation), which I think in many ways has prevented me from becoming independent enough to be fully invested in being a bride in her early twenties. I have the career focus/working my personal maturity on the one hand and a level of dependence on my family/childhood connections on the other. Millennials are a very driven group but also very coddled by their parents. If we are still offered the security of our family and have the option to date people but not marry, why opt for the institution? I’m not saying I believe this, but I think that’s the current state affairs, at least for the millennials I know. My hope would be to meet the right guy and marry in my late twenties (I am currently 24) after I have established a solid career that I am proud of and that will allow me to help support my spouse and eventually, my kids. Maybe this is too idealistic, but I don’t think it hurts to have an idea of what you want in life and set out to make it a reality, despite the statistics.
I have mixed feelings about marrying at a young age. I currently have many friends who are in their young 20s and engaged. By the time they’re married, they will be 23 or 24. While this was around the age my own parents were married, I feel like we’re in a completely different time now and getting married at 23 or 24 is just too young. Despite being in a relationship from 18 to 22 or 23, I feel that your 20s are so turbulent that couples should see what their relationship is like by 25 before getting married. My sentiments are that some people get so caught up in the actual wedding that they don’t really think about all of the years that come after. I don’t ever want to get divorced and I can’t imagine others will too. But, truthfully, we live in a culture that has a short-attention span and I fear many of my peers are getting caught up in what’s next but a few years from now, they may be ready to move onto something else. I’m happy for my friends and I truly believe some of them will end up just fine but overall, I don’t understand the rush.
I personally would feel uncomfortable getting married before i was 25 or so, only because before then you’re going through so many rapid personality changes.
Lost in Brooklyn: agree with you 100%, it does take a massive leap of faith to get married.
Dorothy Parker Was Here: I’m pretty much exactly in the same position as you.
I’m european, from Spain. Our situation about marriage is quite the same described above.
I’m involved with a russian girl.
Russians marry early. I don’t want. By any mean! I have to be like 35 to marry!
If you love someone and no doubts that you do, which most people nowadays are incapable of doing, then you sure as hell need to get married! Yeah!
My wife and I married when she was 19 and I was 22. I was finishing college and we really felt that getting married was the right move.
However, we’re different from most; we are both above average intelligence and have good business sense. We started the business we planned in college a few months before our wedding. Three years later, we fall in the top 10% income bracket.
We were definitely in love and still are, and we knew that we would be great strategic partners in life and in business.
Oh, and we have a 1 year old daughter who brings more happiness to our lives than we could have ever imagined!
If you are ready to get married and you know for certain that it will work in your favor…DO IT! Don’t let anyone stop you.
My wife and I married when she was 19 and I was 22. I was finishing college and we really felt that getting married was the right move.
However, we’re different from most; we are both above average intelligence and have good business sense. We started the business we planned in college a few months before our wedding. Three years later, we fall in the top 5% income bracket.
We were definitely in love and still are, and we knew that we would be great strategic partners in life and in business.
Oh, and we have a 1 year old daughter who brings more happiness to our lives than we could have ever imagined!
If you are ready to get married and you know for certain that it will work in your favor…DO IT! Don’t let anyone stop you.
To be honest I believe that getting married Is an obvious choice. I am currently a college student and a nanny as well. I see how these 35 + are so use to being alone and are simply to tired to deal with their children or their marriage.
Also to the (spaniard) who commented. My father is from spain and he married young and LOVED that (23 years and still strong) however his other classmates in Spain are now in their 45’s all divorced.
I totally agree with the thesis statement for this post. Marrying young isn’t a crime, so it is not actually a bad idea if you really want to get married at a young age. I think the content really help with thesis statement to stand its point. Anyway, I bet this would be pretty popular for people who want to marry young but are afraid to do so.
The post is written in very a good manner and it contains many useful information for me.
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