Why Marrying Young is Good for Society
1. Drifting Through One’s Twenties Can Waste a Key
Decade
When people expect that they’ll marry at thirty (the
average age for first marriages is now at around 27
for women), then they tend to see their twenties as
their time to explore, not their time to settle down.
Everything gets delayed. You can spend a few years
experimenting with different careers (or lack thereof),
or traveling with no purpose, or hopping from
relationship to relationship. As I talked about last
week, though, your twenties are an important decade
financially. If you can start saving then, you really
set yourself up well for life.
And the earlier people start saving and maturing, the
better off and more productive society is.
2. Having Babies Younger is Better for Society
Physically, the best years to have babies is in your
early twenties. Yet few people are married or ready
today at that point, largely because we have
extended adolescence so far. While most people had
babies young fifty years ago, today having one’s first
baby after age 30 is the norm in many circles.
Yet while socially we’ve changed, physically we
haven’t. And as fertility rates drop, perhaps it would
be better for society to prioritize maturing younger
rather than prolonging the years when you “find
yourself”, especially since those years really are so
valuable.
Why Marrying Young Can Be Good For
You
3. You “Grow Up” Together
When you marry at 20 or 21, you haven’t always
figured out what you want in a house, or how you
want to organize a kitchen, or how you want to pay
your bills. You don’t know what you want in a
church or where you want to live. But you can grow
up and make those decisions together, and it’s kinda
fun!
When Keith and I married at 21 we had no idea about
how we wanted to spend vacations or what kind of
house we wanted, let alone how we wanted to do
housework. We just figured it out ourselves. And
because we hadn’t had our own routines for so many
of these things, it wasn’t hard to merge.
4. It’s Easier to Merge Two Homes when There’s Not
Much To Them
Imagine you’ve been doing your finances on Quicken
on the computer for ten years, and then you marry
someone who keeps all receipts in shoe boxes.
That’s tough to find a new way of doing it, when
you’re both so set in your ways.
Imagine you’ve had ten years since you moved out of
your parents place to set your own traditions for
Christmas and Thanksgiving. Now you have to do it
all over again, when you’re emotionally wedded to
the things you’ve already done.
It’s just tricky to merge two households. It’s easier
to start off together.
5. You Can Be a Younger Parent
I remember being 27 years old and having one
toddler on my back and one baby on my front and
getting on the Toronto subway for 45 minutes, with 2
transfers, to get to the zoo, where I spent 6 hours
with the kids, only to reverse the whole process.
There is no way I would have had the same energy to
do that if I were 37 instead.
And here’s the thing: so many people say, “I want to
travel before I settle down! I want to see the world!”
But my youngest will be leaving home next year
when I’m just 45. (I’m still tearing up at that a little,
by the way). Keith and I are going to do some major
traveling! We’re going to buy an RV and start seeing
the world, little bits at a time. We’re heading to
Australia for a conference. It’ll be wonderful (and
hopefully take my mind off of my kids being gone).
We’re still young, we’re still energetic, but best of
all, we have some money now. We didn’t have any in
our twenties. We can travel way more now than we
could have then.
6. You Can Be a Younger Grandparent
I think a lot of people forget this one: my mom
became a grandma at 51. She was so energetic with
my girls. She’s 71 now, and she’s still active, but the
girls have such strong memories of her being much
younger. They remember when she was still a career
woman. They remember her doing really fun trips
with them. They will always have very clear
memories of her.
On the other hand, my grandparents were 62 when I
was born. While I have great memories of one of my
grandparents, my maternal grandfather had a massive
stroke at 64. He was a really strong, active man, yet I
only remember him in a wheelchair with impaired
judgment. My maternal grandmother, apparently, was
just like me. She was opinionated, extroverted, and
great at public speaking. Yet most of my memories of
her are post-dementia.
My mom has many friends her age who are just
becoming grandparents now. I actually hope my girls
have kids young, because I’m looking forward to
piling grandchildren in our RV and taking them
around North America.
7. You Resist Temptation
If you’re with a guy you totally love when you’re 21,
and your parents say, “you have to wait until you’re
25 and that graduate degree is finished before you
marry”, how in the world are you supposed to resist
the temptation to have sex? Sure it’s possible, but
it’s awfully hard.
When you love someone and feel close, you’re going
to want to make love . It’s natural. Physiologically for
men especially, the sex drive is highest from 18-25.
It’s really, really hard to wait, and when I hear
Christian parents saying, “I hope my son doesn’t
marry until he’s done med school and residency
when he’s 27″, I wonder what they’re thinking,
frankly. Walking down the aisle to meet the only one
you will ever make love to is such a beautiful thing
and a gift. But if we start telling hormonally charged
teens that they have to wait 15 years post-puberty to
get married–fewer will wait for marriage for sex.
8. You Avoid a Lot of Heartache
If people married young, perhaps we’d have fewer
“exes” and fewer regrets. So much of the problem in
marriages is caused by past baggage. If we put the
expectation on kids that “it’s fine to get married at
21″ rather than “you had better not get married until
you finish your degree and you have a good job”,
then people would treat relationships at 20 more
seriously. They wouldn’t think, “this can’t go
anywhere, so let’s just have fun!” Often that “fun”
ends up causing a lot of tears.
9. You Can Focus Your Goals Earlier
Once you’re married, you can start making real plans.
Where do we want to be in 5 years? In 10 years?
When do we want to buy a house? What education do
we need? Where do we want to live? Certainly you
can do those things when you’re single, but it’s
often tricky since you don’t know where life is going
to take you. Once you’re married, you can nail these
things down. And if you do marry at 22, then you will
start thinking about buying a house. If you don’t
marry until 28, you’re often not worried about buying
a home at all, and so you rent for years.
Researchers have found that
marriage boosts one’s income and
one’s net worth, all on its own,
even controlling for class, race,
and education. Being married
makes people hunker down and
treat life more seriously. And that’s
good, because it means that
ultimately you’ll be financially
better off.
10. You Have Decades and Decades Together
I am so looking forward to growing old with my
husband, but I am also looking forward to years and
years of having fun together before we do get old. He
is my best friend. He is my lover. He is my favourite
person in the world. I am so blessed to be able to be
with him, and I am so blessed that we do have all
these years together. Why would you not want as
many years as you could with the man that you
choose?
Again, I know that not everyone will meet their
marriage partner young, and that’s okay. There’s
nothing inherently wrong with marrying later.
My problem is that we’ve started to see marrying
young as inherently wrong, and I think young
marriage actually has a lot of benefits–probably
even more than later marriages.
My dream would be a society that focused on helping
teens mature faster so that they would be ready to
marry younger again. I personally think that would be
a healthier society overall.
So I’d encourage all of us who are parents to stop
hoping our children marry later, and start preparing
them to launch into life younger. It’s okay to marry in
college. It’s okay to marry in your early twenties–as
long as you’re sure of your faith, you’re sure of
yourself, and you’re sure of your relationship.
What do you think? I’d love to hear!

Ok

poor editing. stop copying Yankee life style for 9ja ppl. our ways are different.

So mtcheeeew u tried sha

Rubbish!!!!! Works of copy and plaster.....

Bring the Holy Cane!

This is very educating. I will marry next year. Thanks.

Great Article : a dude should marry @ 25 while lady @ 22 !!

With Nigerian Factor .. Average dude is 30+ while lady is 27+ !