Oh, I’m sure it was, partially, but mom claimed it was to prevent situations where people didn’t put off marriage indefinitely, because they got to comfortable just being engaged, or some such. I don’t think they meant, you know, to have a 2-month engagement, or anything like that. More like, don’t delay it for more than a year or so.
Sure. I even have a JSTOR account, too.
From Population Studies.
As for my argument that Rubstreak neither understands nor interprets statistics correctly, well, my post is my cite.
nightrabbit,
Don’t worry honey - someone will ask you someday.
The rant reminds me of young kids who huff and puff about how much they don’t want something because they don’t think they’re going to get it.
I’m 25, married for 2 years, irishfella is 26. We’ll have been together for 7 years in August.
His parents got married when they were 18 and 19 (together since they were 14 and 15), mine since they were 28 and 34 after a 16 month relationship and engagement. Our parents are all still happily married.
You know what?
I’ve done the wild teenage thing (you can pack a lot into 4 years if you try as hard as I did), we’ve done the LDR, we’ve done the living in the same city and different houses thing, we’ve done the living together thing and you know what?
Being married makes us both happiest.
I’m not saying it is for everyone, but it works for us.
I had no doubts on my wedding day and I wouldn’t change my life now.
I have what I’ve always wanted; a good job, a nice home, a loving and supportive spouse. It was earlier than I thought it would be, but that’s life.
Just because you’re not ready or willing to marry, doesn’t mean everybody else in the world who happens to be the same age as you should feel the same way. Grow up and stop judging other people using your own emotional maturity as a benchmark.
Here let me edit this a bit for you
Because you love someone and want to spend the rest of your life with someone is a great reason! But, jesus, be sane about it. If NightRabbit doesn’t know someone THAT well but is still convinced that they’re the one for NightRabbit, allow NightRabbit the time of a longer engagement to actually GET TO KNOW the person. Beyond the idea that NightRabbit can’t really love someone NightRabbit doesn’t know. NightRabbit doesn’t “know” someone intimately after only a month, or a handful of months. Just because NightRabbit don’t marry someone immediately doesn’t mean NightRabbit doesn’t love them, or NightRabbit doesn’t feel strongly.
See you just keep thinking that everyone else feels things the same way that you do.
True , it might be impossible for you to know that the person you are with is the one, but that has absolutly no bearing on if someone else is capable of feeling that way.
Thank you for offering an opposing cite. I’m not sure how that makes my cite wrong, just not agreeing with yours.
The links in my post #157 apparently aren’t working correctly. Here’s one that says that “a very young age at marriage is one of the best predictors of divorce.” Do you dispute that? Are you saying that marrying very young does NOT serve as a good predictor for divorce?
Another cite is from the Urban Institute, which considered why early marriages fail, and if it was correlated with early pregnancy. Other factors were considered:
So, if you could explain hpw you have drawn the conclusion that I “neither understand nor interpret statistics correctly,” or that I’m wrong about this notion that early marriage is a good predictor of marital dissolution, using really small words, because apparently you think you need to, I’d appreciate it. If I’m wrong, I’ll be happy to admit it. Otherwise, I have to think you’re just being nasty because you disagree with me. Not very good rhetoric.
Your cites are abstracts. It is impossible to dig in to the actual studies themselves to evaluate them. Ordinarily, I would trust that in peer-reviewed journals, this fact-checking is already done so I could accept a conclusion from an abstract. As it turns out, neither of your cites are in actual peer-reviewed journals. Wrong or not, I cannot accept them as authoritative nor do I have access to their details.
I explained this above. There are only two outcomes for marriage: divorce and death. Suppose there is an underlying probability of dissolution by divorce every year. Every year the couple rolls a pair of dice, and if they come up snakes, the marriage is over. Suppose there is a further underlying probability of one partner dying every year.
Suppose human lifespan is 70 years. Suppose two couples, one gets married at 18, the other at 38. The likelihood of the 18 year olds dying is low, and as you move forward in time, that likelihood only increases slightly. They have a good 40 years before they really have to start worrying about termination due to death.
For the 38 year olds, the have maybe 20 good years before their tickers start to give out.
The younger couple simply has more rolls of the divorce dice, since all things being equal, their marriage is less likely to terminate due to someone’s death. So the fact that “50% of all marriages under the age of X end in divorce” is not very informative nor meaningful. Put simply, young marrieds just have more years to fuck it up, so it should not be a huge surprise that more end up divorced. It is also not obvious how this study controlled for other exogenous variables that might drive the divorce rate.
Your thinking was:
That is what I was objecting to and why I suggested that you do not know how to interpret this statistic.
They’re not peer reviewed journals, so they are not valid cites. Ok… I cannot devote any more of my time finding you cites. If you do your own search, will you find anything, anywhere, that says that marrying at a young age is anything but a negative predictor of marital success? Believe me, I have looked at a lot of websites in the last few days because of this thread, and nowhere could I find anything that suggested otherwise. Of course, young age at marriage indicates other issues, like SES, pregnancy, marital status of parents, etc. So maybe people who marry young do so because they have other issues going on, and if you control for those, marrying young on its own is not predictive of divorce. I haven’t seen a cite on that, though.
Ah, and here is where I have to disagree with your logic. I don’t think that factors leading to divorce can in any way be likened to rolling the dice. It’s not random. You’re not at the whim of impartial chance. I don’t think the only reason that marrying young leads to more divorce is that you’re married longer. Most marriages end in the first few years anyway, so the longevity issue is a false one-- you are most likely to divorce in the first 15 years, regardless of age at marriage.
Do you feel the same about the “38% of marriages end in divorce” stat too?
I don’t think you do either, sorry. I do understand what you’re saying, about the longer you’re married, the more likely you are to get divorced. But the fact is, the rate of divorce flattens after you’re married for a while, so that sort of diminishes your point, that the longer you’re married, the more times you “roll the divorce dice.” Seems to me as if those who are built to last, last, and those who don’t self-destruct early on.
I am confused about something in this debate. There seems to be evidence offered that marrying in your teens is a predictor of divorce, and that couples who marry 25 or older tend to stick together more often, but I’m wondering what is actually going on between the ages of 20-24? What do the statistics say there?
And slightly unrelated, but I have always assumed that the 20-24 age bracket is the most common age to get married. I’ve always considered age 23 to be ‘‘average’’ marrying age. Is that true?
Not that my cites are worth a tinker’s damn, apparently, but the US Census Bureau says “The estimated median age at first marriage (MAFM) in the United States for 2000-2003 was 27 and 25 years old for men and women respectively.”
Thanks, Rubystreak. I knew it was going up, but I didn’t realize it was that high. I think there may be some truth to the statement (was it here or in the other Pit thread on young marriage?) about one’s social class generally affecting marrying age. I considered it a bit older than average to marry at 23, because my mother and grandmother both married in their teens. I was being mature and practical from my point of view. (Whether I was raised lower-middle class, middle class or working class is open to debate though, depending on the time frame.)
It’s a weird thought to realize I married young. I never thought that would be me… while I feel I was made for monogamy, I certainly wasn’t waiting around listlessly for some guy to come around; he just kinda fell in my lap. We waited for years to marry, but the relationship was serious immediately. As in, when I asked him out for the first time, I said point blank, ‘‘I am in love with you and I really think I could spend the rest of my life with you,’’ and he felt the same way. I sure am happy we waited, though. The timing for us, in our lives, couldn’t have been better. The fact that we both knew it was good to wait is one of the reasons I think we have excellent chances of doing it right. We just fundamentally value the same things and approach life in the same way.
What I would really like to see are divorce statistics based on personality type. If somehow they could categorize the way a person approaches decisions and relationships and then measure whether the outcome would have any impact on marriage survival. I am willing to bet it would. I’m willing to bet it is the greatest predictor. I’m also willing to bet there is a correlation between younger age and the lack of these decision making skills.
Also, whoever mentioned the brain development thing going on until age 25, that is pretty hard science right there. Kind of makes you wonder why we call people who are under 25 ‘‘adults’’ before their brains are fully developed.
(I can say that without fear of repercussions! My own cerebral maturity may only be questioned for two more months. :))
You don’t need to spend any more time looking for cites. You could just say that aside from abstracts from tendentious partisan think-tanks, you just don’t have very good empirical support for what you believe to be common sense. I’m ok with that.
It was an abstraction meant to illustrate my point. I do not think that I flip a divorce coin every month, either. But when you do a longitudinal survey with a portfolio of people, you can observe some kind of underlying probability of an event occurring. It is the same logic that drives drug tests for patients with incurable diseases. At each period, there is an underlying probability that a patient will die and leave the sample. The same logic applies to any other event, especially when there is an extremely limited set of outcomes. It is obviously not completely random, but a probability can be inferred from a population and observation.
Neither do I and it was not exactly what I as implying. But let’s think about marriage duration. Suppose one couple marries at 18 and another at 35. Divorce at age 50 is a very different ball of wax than divorce at 33. I would hypothesize that people are just more likely to settle at 50 with an endurable if not entirely wonderful marriage than at age 33 because they simply have other lifecycle considerations that weigh heavily on them. This hypothesis is testable.
I think the problem here is the way you are thinking about the idea of “predictor”. As it turns out, my wearing a blue shirt to work is an excellent predictor that the subways will work. One thing has nothing to do with the other; nevertheless, you could use one fairly successfully to predict the other. Age may be a great predictor of divorce but that does not mean that it causes it. There could be an omitted variable that is highly correlated with age, there could be a causative variable that is collinear with age, or one of a number of other technical or non-technical reasons. There is still a large amount of quality social science research out there that is trying to understand these phenomena, so really, the jury is not out yet.
Yeah, it is also pretty uninformative.
Well, I suppose you are entitled to your opinion. 
All that does is change the probability distribution and the linearity of the relationship. It does not undermine my hypothesis at all.
The Urban Institue and Council for Contemporary Families are both non-partisan non-profit organizations. The National Center for Health Statistics is part of the CDC. I think you might need to look at my cites a little bit better if you want to make statements like this. I’ve offered a hell of a lot more support for my arguments than you have for yours. This is the Pit and all, but seriously.
Yes, I think this is a valid point, but consider that this is a pretty good reason to marry later in life. You are more likely to divorce if you marry young, become disenchanted with a spouse you’ve had for 15 years by your mid thirties. If you marry in your mid thirties, many of the things that cause that disenchantment(s/he has changed so much from the person you met in your teens or early 20’s, you feel you missed out on having freedom when you were young, you wish you could try something new, etc.-- all that midlife crisis stuff) will not be an issue anymore. You’ve sown your wild oats, you’re ready to settle down, and in 15 years, you will not be in such a radically different place in life. The difference between 20 and 35 is a lot bigger than the difference between 35 and 50, I’d think. So the “less likely to divorce at 50 than at 35” issue, rather than disproving my point, seems to support it.
I believe I stated that youthful marriage is correlated with other factors that cause marital instability.
What happened to using small words?
It really makes no difference that the Urban Institute and Council for whatever call themselves non-partisan. The Center for Creation Science is non-partisan and nonprofit, and it publishes pseudoscience all the time. Non-partisan only means that it does not endorse a political candidate. If it is not peer-reviewed, it does not exist. Sorry.
Marry later in life because it increases the likelihood that you will just settle?
I believe you did, too. Let’s fight poverty and stupidity and let people marry whenever they want.
Ha, sorry.
So honestly, am I really wrong here? Marrying young isn’t a factor in subsequent divorce? Is that what you are saying here? Eh, maybe it is the poverty, lack of education, and lack of two-parent family role models, and not the age. I have a hard time imagining maturity and life experience aren’t a factor in chosing the right lifetime mate, though.
Eh, maybe. But I think you can settle at any age.
Yeah, as if it were up to me to “let” them. If only… I do wish people would wait until they were at that point in their lives where they would be HAPPY with staying home, having a family, and finding that satisfying. Too many people I know/knew got married because they thought it was The Thing To Do, and found that they still wanted to party, hang out with their friends, and have the fun that is so appealing when you are in your early 20’s, so lame when you are in your 30’s.
Sorry, but everyone has to spend a certain degree of time with someone else in order to get to know them. If everyone else here is telepathic except me, I’d sure like to know it now!
Sure, and nothing happened after five months to give you a new perspective on the woman you married. You knew ALL PERSONALITY SIDES of your wife after five months. Either she is the most uncomplicated person on the planet, or you don’t understand subtlety.
This goes for you too, jsgoddess. bullshit that you’re an “uncomplicated” person and so is your SO. Bullshit! Nice rationalizing. I bet you don’t read contracts through before you sign them, either, because they’re such “simple” transactions. On the face of things, everything and everyone is “simple”. Dunno what else to say.
Meanwhile, thanks to everyone who has explained to the masses of offenderati in here that anecdote /= argument.
I’ll restate my point in easy-to-understand terms. It’s a bad idea to get married not knowing the person well. It’s a bad idea to get married in a time in your life where you’re making drastic changes in your personality and life circumstances. I’ve related both of these to age, b/c I think younger people (early 20s) are more likely to jump on the marriage boat without thinking it through, but it’s true across the board. If you get married at 23 and you’ve been with the person a multiple number of years, and you nkow what you want, and you’ve spent some time getting to know your partner, this is NOT WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT. I’m referring more to the jokers who propose after three months. Whether you’re 45 or 21. You’re fools, putting it nicely. INTENSITY OF RELATIONSHIP will NEVER take the place of DURATION OF TIME in regards to getting to know someone well. Feeling strongly for someone /= knowing them well. End of point.
Okay, but so what. That doesn’t justify the OP’s rant.
If I had evidence that interracial marriages are more likely to end in divorce than same-race ones, would that mean it’s a bad idea for an interracial couple to get married?
If I had numbers that showed that atheist/agnostic couples were more likely to get divorced than theists, would that mean it’s bad for atheists to marry?
The fact is one could look at statistics and tease apart a whole host of factors that are associated with divorce. And all of that may tell you what’s going on with big groups of people. But it won’t help when you’re trying to predict what will happen to individuals. That’s why the OP’s rant looks a little stupid on its face. If the worse thing she can say about these relationships is that they are too young, then she has no basis for this pitting. Is there love? Is there committment? Respect? Determination to make this thing work? If yes, then age shouldn’t be the focus.
Is that what I said? No. Go back and read the thread if you want to comment. Or how about my post above? I said length and quality of time knowing eachother is more important than age.
“Length and quality of time” based on your own subjective feelings of what’s appropriate. Sorry but to me, that’s not enough to hang your rant on.
Come back when you have some real tales of woe to share about your friends. Like cheating, physical and verbal abuse, incompatible values and habits, sexual problems, or any other irreconcilable differences or issues that they would have seen coming if they had waited long enough to meet your standards of acceptability. In the absence of this, all you have is a rant based on potentialities. Weak stuff, in other words.