Today I'm starting a series of 3 articles
that explain some very serious issues with our
culture which encourages young people to
delay marriage instead of teaching them the skills
of how to have a successful marriage. Today's
article is based on the thoughts of Pastor
Mark Gungor, creator of
Laugh
Your Way To A Better
Marriage.
The Case for
Young Marriage, Part 1 of
3
by Mark
Gungor
The current trend of
delaying marriage until ages in the late 20's or
early 30's is going to have a very serious impact
on our country in just one or two
generations.
"A great civilization is
not conquered from without until it has destroyed
itself from within." - Ariel
Durant
Our current culture has
decried that marriages of young adults in late
teens or early 20's as a terrible idea since the
couple is "too young". But it wasn't long ago that
such a marriage would not have been thought of as
unusual at all. It was the norm.
"The traditional markers
of manhood - leaving home, getting an education,
starting a family and starting work - have moved
downfield as the passage from adolescence to
adulthood has evolved," says Michael Kimmel,
author of Guyland. For instance, in 1960, almost
70 percent of men had reached these milestones by
the age of 30; today, less than a third of males
can say the same.
Some of the most
successful marriages in the world started with two
teenagers. Indeed, it is difficult to reach 75
years of marriage if one waits until he is 30 to
say "I do" - you're pretty much dead by
then.
Even biology challenges
us to rethink this idea of delaying marriage.
According to U.S. researchers who analyzed census
data and information from genealogical records,
children born when their mothers were under 25
were almost twice as likely to live to their 100th
birthday and beyond.
The University of Chicago husband and wife
team Dr Leonid Gavrilov and Dr Natalia Gavrilova
have shown that firstborn children live longer
than their younger siblings. It appears the two
are linked, with older children living longer
because their mothers are younger when they have
them.
Studies have also shown
that it takes longer for older men to conceive.
Starting in their 20's, men face steadily
increasing chances of infertility, fathering an
unsuccessful pregnancy, and passing on to their
children a genetic mutation that causes dwarfism.
"We [now] know the probability for certain types
of DNA damage goes up with age, and we can give
you a mathematical probability," said Andrew
Wyrobek, a researcher at the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory in Livermore,
California.
Not only is it bad to our
children's health to delay marriage and child
birth, this delay is also resulting in
increasingly lower birth rates which may be bad
for the longevity of Western culture. According to
Mark Steyn, the low birth rates already at play in
Europe are a prescription for the end of Western
civilization.
Seventeen European
nations are now at what demographers call
"lowest-low" fertility - 1.3 births per woman, the
point at which you're so far down the death spiral
you can't pull out. In theory, those countries
will find their population halving every 35 years
or so. In practice, it will be quicker than that,
as the savvier youngsters figure there's no point
sticking around a country that's turned into an
undertaker's waiting room. So large parts of the
western world are literally dying - and, in
Europe, the successor population to those aging
French and Dutch and Belgians is already in
place.
Indeed, those who marry
younger and produce more children will be the ones
who will dominate the US culture in the
not-too-distant future. Dr. Arthur Brooks of
Syracuse University writes:
Simply put, liberals have
a big baby problem: They're not having enough of
them. They haven't for a long time. And their
pool of potential new voters is suffering as a
result. According to the 2004 General Social
Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically
liberal adults at random, you would find that they
had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100
conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a
'fertility gap' of 41%... A state that was split
50-50 between left and right in 2004 will tilt
right by 2012, 54% to 46%. By 2020, it will be
certifiably right-wing, 59% to 41%. A state that
is currently 55-45 in favor of liberals (like
California) will be 54-46 in favor of
conservatives by 2020-and all for no other reason
than babies.
We know that sexual
activity before marriage increases the likelihood
of a divorce. We also know that couples who live
together also have an even higher rate of divorce.
But then we tell young people today that they
should wait until they are almost 30 to marry -
an age that will most likely guarantee they
will have been already sexually active or even
living with someone.
Even in the Christian
community (a group who should know better) we push
and encourage delayed marriage. Christian parents
even threaten their young people with negative
consequences if they marry young. "We won't pay
for your education!" "You'll have to pay for your
own wedding!" "We'll disown you!" We pull all
financial and emotional support from the young
couple and then when they fail, we rush back to
them with "I told you so..."
Mormons bring an
interesting perspective to marriage. Only 6% of
those who follow the demands surrounding a temple
marriage end up in divorce. Six percent! But it's
not just a question of getting married in a
certain place. Leaders claim it's that the
church requires the candidates for marriage to
be people of character-people who stick to
their commitments of love and of asking for help,
if they need it. What is so striking is that many
of these marriages happen between couples still in
their teens!
No matter what
the statisticians say, marriages do not fail
because of age, money or education - many
of the underlying arguments for delaying marriage.
Such thinking is utter nonsense. Marriages fail
for one reason and one reason only: one or both
people become selfish.
To imply that young, poor, or
high-school graduates are incapable of real
commitment is an insult. I find it curious that we
have young, poor, high-school graduates fighting
for our interests overseas with great commitment -
some giving the very last measure of commitment by
sacrificing their very lives for their fellow
soldiers. Their amazing
skills with multi-million dollar equipment will
astound you. Do we seriously think they can't
handle marriage if they are taught how to do it?
Someday historians will write of
the end of Western civilization. I am sure that
our propensity for selfishness and narcissistic
behaviors is what they will point to as the reason
for our demise.
Advocating for delayed
marriage will be just one more reason we will
succeed in destroying ourselves from
within.
_____________________________________________________
God bless
your marriage and family.
Jim
Stephens
