Having learned it the hard way, I agree with you. I got married at 19. We struggled to make it work for nine years, then realized that we had simply grown apart from each other. We managed to salvage a long range friendship out of it. I’ve sometimes wondered how different things would have been if we had waited even a couple of years longer to get married.
Tennesse, which for some reason the USA fought a nasty war to hang on to.
Sounds like it’s getting better, but bits of the USA are/have been medieval until disturbingly recently.
Couples who cohabitate before marriage have exactly the same divorce rate as couples who do not. Psychologists speculate that people who are more willing to break the taboo against cohabitation, are also more willing to break the taboo against divorce.
I went to college in a state where the voting age was 18, but the drinking age was 21. Back then, I thought that the drinking age should be lower. These days, I often find myself thinking that the voting age should be higher.
Regardless of brain development, our culture has embraced the 18 voting age rather strongly. It would be hypocrisy to shy away from the consequences. If that means an increase in drunk-driving fatalities and bad marriages, so be it.
I support 18 as a minimum age for marriage. It won’t protect girls from exploitation, but it will protect men from accusations of exploitation.
I find most couples who marry before age 25 end up divorced. I tell kids in HS dont get too tied to the person they are dating in HS because rarely will it last more than a couple of years past HS. Some do though.
In Kansas I think they can marry as young as 16 with parental permission and 14 with a judges. It so so rare though it hardly ever comes up.
25 is probably ideal.
But, try telling that to love struck teens. I rather see them shack up instead of marrying. At least then it’s simple to separate if there’s no kids.
I agree we’re totally different people at 25 compared to 18. Different interests, different view points of the world and different priorities. It’s hard for 18 year old newlyweds to survive that change as they get older.
It may be unwise but 18 year olds are legally adults and have the right to marry.
I wouldn’t want to see any laws forcing them to wait until 25.
In the US. Twenty five states have NO legal minimum age for marriage, all it takes is a judge to sign off on it and/or parental consent. Care to take any wagers regarding the possibility of a corrupt judge and desperate parents being swayed by a good sized payday into selling off their girl children to well heeled pedophiles? Hint: a goodly number of cases exist where parents sold the rights to rape their toddlers for drug money.
Lets talk the impact on women. Lets say a woman really wants children and family. She goes to college and then marries around age 25 and then wants to get her career going before she starts having children. So she waits until around age 30 and it might be harder to leave a job or go part time.
Contrast that other couples I’ve known where the woman gets married right away around age 18-20. She then can go back to work full time around age 30-32 (when other women are having to stop working) and the kids are out of the house by 40 and the couple then can devote 25 years or so on careers and personal lives before retirement. They also have the youth and energy, not just for their own kids but for their later grandkids.
Interestingly… IIRC, it was all 21 back in the day- drinking AND voting, with only the military drafting as low as 18. Then in the late 60s/early 70s, they dropped the voting age to correspond with the draft age out of the theory that if you’re going to go fight and possibly die, then you should at least have a say in it, however minor. And many states dropped the drinking ages to match. Then in the 1980s, the MADD efforts got most states to raise them to 21 again.
I’m having a hard time seeing a necessity for anyone to legally need to get married prior to 18 in this day and age. At least with 18, you’re a legal adult in every way (save drinking age, and that’s a historical quirk).
Well, I married at 22, I’m still married 25 years later, but I wish I had waited a few years at least. I wouldn’t dream of legislating any age above 18 though.
Actually, all U.S. states have a drinking age of 21 now (though some states have exemptions, such as for consumption when in the company of adult family members).
The 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act essentially strong-armed states to adopt a drinking age of 21, by threatening to withhold a portion of federal highway funding from states which did not comply.
I agree with 18 as the minimum legal age, though I might make an exception and allow emancipated minors who are at least 16 to marry also. I feel strongly that parental consent to marry should never be a thing, ever; either you’re mature enough to make the decision on your own, or you’re not mature enough to marry at all. But I would urge anyone who will listen to wait until they’re at least 25. So much growth happens during those years; marrying while you’re in the midst of it risks either stunting that growth or finding out at the end of it that you and your spouse have grown apart.
I would add smoking and driving to this - it seems more and more that the minimum age for smoking is going up and up and I believe that some states only have a unrestricted driver’s license for 18 and above.
But I would not say they have to be reconciled, but harmonized among the states. Unfortunately with today’s political picture, this might take away same-sex marriage.
18 should be the minimum. But if one of the parties is going to colleage, or signed up for the military, they should wait a while. Starting college and marriage or starting military service and marriage at the same time seems to be a recipe for divorce.
Own experience? Married at 22, approximately a month after I graduated from college, now married 27 years.
Babies should wait until 2 years of a committed relationship. But that’s worth a different thread.
18 Sounds about right to me since they’re adults and they can do a host of other things…why not marriage?
Ideally I’d think 24 or 25 is a good age to get married. You can still have some fun with your spouse before kids come along and still be young enough to keep up with them when they do.
Not for nothing, I started dating a girl for about three years and one of her biggest regrets in life was not finding a boyfriend in high school, marrying him at 18 and having her first kid at 21. It was something that came up a lot in our relationship.
You’ll never guess why it didn’t work out…
It’s not the divorce that’s the problem; it’s the ruinous cost of the marriages. I’d be happy if the notion of marriage was scrapped altogether.
Wisconsin’s laws on sex and marriage are screwy as hell, IMHO.
A person can get married at 16, but cannot consent to sexual intercourse until age 18.
Unless they are legally married.
If a 30 year old has sex with a 16 year old they are guilty of a serious felony. But if they were married the state has no problem with it. If sex with a 16 year old is so horrible how does a piece of paper make it alright? :rolleyes:
They either need to lower the age of consent or raise the age of marriage. The current law is weird.
A child is many times more likely to be abused, molested, or killed, by a parent’s lover, than by a parent’s spouse.
A child with one parent is far more likely to grow up in poverty than a child with two parents.
A child with unmarried parents is far more likely to grow up in poverty than a child with married parents.
Married people tend to be healthier, be wealthier, live longer, and require fewer social services than single people.
I agree. Even marriages that are basically 2 people sharing the same roof is still 2 people who (generally) they can count on the other person to watch the kids, bring in money, help with chores, etc… Often your not madly in love anymore but you can still be supportive of the other person and the kids (as long as your not openly fighting).
How is marriage expensive? Kids are expensive, wedding can be expensive, but marriage itself is pretty cheap. Even in a traditional marriage, where only the man works, it’s useful to get a helper with all the day to day household stuff.
Yes, I was speaking of the cost of the wedding, which I’m sure you knew.