Delayed Marriage May Doom Our Civilization

By Mark Gungor

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.

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.

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." - Ariel Durant

"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 till he is 30 to say "I do" - you're pretty much dead by then.

Even biology challenges us to rethink delayed 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 and 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 20s, 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.

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 till 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.

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!

Then there is a threat that almost no one seems to consider: the elimination of grandparents. The culture of divorce that has been ripping and tearing at our national family structure has, so far, failed to destroy us. Though the documentation of the damage divorce does to people and particularly their children is sufficiently solid, American homes (though patched and sown together) have been able to hold together to some degree. This has been in large part due to the presence of grandparents. Those wonderful people who love their grandchildren unconditionally and whose age, wisdom and financial resources have played a key role - in some cases the key role - as stabilizers in those children's lives. Those who delay marriage (and subsequently child rearing) are denying themselves one of the greatest joys men and women have cherished for millennia: to participate in the lives of their grandchildren.

For centuries, men and women became grandparents when they were in their late 40's and early 50's - allowing them plenty of time to enjoy and participate in their grandchildren's lives. Then in their 70's and 80's they witnessed the arrival of their great-grandchildren. People who delay marriage and family today, however, do not realize how greatly they are cheating themselves by making it virtually impossible to experience their grandchildren. And for what? An extended adolescence? To drink more beer or to experiment with more sexual partners? To focus on their careers and a chance to make money more quickly than their parents did?

But by delaying marriage and children today, we are participating in the foolish and systematic removal of grandparents altogether. When the kids of the next generation are 7, 10, or 12 years of age there won't be many grandparents to speak of. The final blow to the American family will be complete.

Sadly, many pastors and marriage proponents themselves are participating in the destruction of the very institution they seek to save by joining in this foolish call for delayed matrimony.