The Case for Getting Married Young

http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/the-case-for-getting-married-young/274293/?fb_action_ids=4669171372783%2C4669168452710&fb_action_types=og.recommends&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%7B%224669171372783%22%3A176873405796530%2C%224669168452710%22%3A345768852189906%7D&action_type_map=%7B%224669171372783%22%3A%22og.recommends%22%2C%224669168452710%22%3A%22og.recommends%22%7D&action_ref_map=%5B%5D

by saadmalik01 • 13 years ago

40 59 13 years ago

theatlantic.com

alexjeffrey2• 13 years ago

as someone who got married at 21, I can honestly say it's the decision I'm most happy about in my life so far.

However, we had been together for over 7 years by that point and I'd be very wary of advocating getting married young to everyone, as I know at least here in the UK there seem to be quite a few teenage/early-twenties couples who decide to get married after a few months to a year, and end up divorced 6 months later. The facts in this article could be also taken as very misleading, especially considering that the happiness survey they took made no mention of age.

alberich• 13 years ago

> However, we had been together for over 7 years by that point

Just for curiosity... did you start your relationship with 14 y/o? I guess playing video games was all I cared when I was this age :D

jessriedel7• 13 years ago

My parents' relationship did. :) It's something like 40 years they've been together.

alexjeffrey2• 13 years ago

13 actually - funnily enough it started with video games; we met on Runescape!

kscaldef6• 13 years ago

> as someone who got married at 21, I can honestly say it's the decision I'm most happy about in my life so far.

One might hope that statement was true no matter what age you got married at.

wmeredith• 13 years ago

It's a hell of an argument and it matches my own personal experience of getting married at 23 when I we had nothing and built two successful careers before moving on to parenthood (our daughter is two).

No stats or anything, though. I'd like to see some well structured research on this, as marriage itself is a fascinating part of our human culture.

callmevlad• 13 years ago

In my family's culture (Russian Protestant), getting married early is not only common, but expected. My wife and I got married when I was 24, which was almost shocking in a community where the average was around 20. I've had many awkward conversation (of the "I will pray for you" type) with my grandmother, who sincerely believed I was making a huge mistake by choosing school instead of marriage.

Personally, I feel like I got married at the perfect time in my life (I was done with school, had a great job lined up, etc), and have never regretted that decision. My wife helped me re-focus on the important things, and inspired me to pursue my dream of starting a company.

However, the majority of my Russian friends who were married in their very early 20s have seemingly stagnated in their professional (and even personal) pursuits. Most were married either before or during college, and have either dropped out or are pursuing their education on a very limited part-time basis.

My experience is completely anecdotal, but it seems like getting married early (18-21) has significant drawbacks. Perhaps the sweet spot is somewhere between there and the current late-20s average.

inafield• 13 years ago

In 2009, my Great-Opa (1907-2010) asked me why it took my (then girlfriend) and I so long to decide to date and consider marriage, having met online 8 years prior and only 6mo earlier decided to start long distance dating. He met his first wife in his village around the age of 20 and was married 5 weeks later. And at his "advanced age" at the time, the village had been concerned he and his wife weren't going to find anyone to marry. She was 16 or 17 at the time.

Even at his advanced age, he had a great sense of humor. As we were leaving, he pulled my girlfriend aside and said with a twinkle in his eye, "Next time you come back, bring your husband!"

troebr• 13 years ago

Causality dilemma? People who get married young are different from those getting married later. The age at which people get married is more a reflection of a life style, than what drives a particular life style; which is what this article suggests.

jessriedel7• 13 years ago

Here's libertarian economist Bryan Caplan on the difficulty in disputing the causal relationship between marriage and success.

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/03/22_short_argume....

He doesn't talk about the timing per se, but I think a lot of the same arguments apply. Certainty, if you believe that marriage causes success, it's not that great a leap to think that earlier marriage causes more success earlier (with the obvious caveats about getting married when you're 12.)

tunesmith• 13 years ago

I think this is kind of a false issue. I got married later, but it was just because it didn't happen until then - I'd guess that that is usually the reason, rather than meeting what feels like a soulmate at age 22 and dumping her because you'd rather get married at 32.

purplelobster3• 13 years ago

You don't have to be married to be in a committed relationship. A large percent of couples (> 30%) in Scandinavian countries for example never enter into a marriage, or people might marry 5, 6, 7, 8 years after they're first together. In that sense the marriage is a capstone, but there is no difference between that couple and a couple that got married right away and have been together for 8 years.

fusiongyro4• 13 years ago

What's this, proof by Sweden? :) This odd collection of facts seems wholly disconnected from the content of the article.

purplelobster3• 13 years ago

The point being that he's confusing a committed relationship with having a marriage certificate. In Europe, of couples with children, > 30% are cohabiting. In Iceland it's > 60%. Do you suggest that 60% of cohabiting Icelanders are unhappy because they don't have a marriage certificate on hand?

pbhjpbhj6• 13 years ago

>there is no difference between that couple and a couple that got married right away and have been together for 8 years //

Anything to back up that assertion?

Zimahl2• 13 years ago

I don't think he needs to back that up. I mean there isn't a whole lot of difference between an amorous, unmarried couple who cohabitates together or an amorous, married couple who cohabitates together. In the US, other than a document from the state you were married in, there's just about zero difference, other than societal views.

(BTW, I know my above doesn't apply to homosexual couples. I'm purposely ignoring it right now because it doesn't suit my explanation. Those are issues that need to be resolved by SCOTUS.)

danielweber• 13 years ago

Sociologists study the difference between cohabitation and marriage. Here's one paper that's recently been making the rounds among economists:

http://people.ku.edu/~dginther/working%20papers/Marriage_spe...

refurb• 13 years ago

In that sense the marriage is a capstone, but there is no difference between that couple and a couple that got married right away and have been together for 8 years.

I always laugh when I hear this. People also say "Marriage is just a piece of paper."

My answer is "tell that to judge when you want to get out of a marriage."

Does a marriage certificate make your relationship more serious? No. Are you entering into a legal contract when you get married? Yes.

purplelobster3• 13 years ago

Does that legal contract affect your happiness? In general, no. If your culture tells you so, perhaps.

smoyer2• 13 years ago

I'm yet another example of a successful early marriage (I was 22 and she was 19). She finished her undergrad and masters degrees after we married and we also started "with nothing but each other". After 30 years, I still can't imagine being with anyone else ... it makes life so much better if you have someone to share your happiness with - and if there are two of you to tackle life's problems together.

Axsuul• 13 years ago

Does your wife know that you still can imagine being with someone else?

smoyer2• 13 years ago

No ... it's a very well-kept secret. One that I apparently kept even from myself, but couldn't be repressed from my right pinkie and left pointer fingers.

(sorry dear)

simonsarris• 13 years ago

Color me unconvinced of marriage per se.

Literally zero of the things in the author's marriage are necessarily attributable to the marriage itself, or necessarily consequences of marriage for that matter.

And never mind co-habitating, all of the transformative stuff could have happened regardless while simply living with an upbeat roommate.

"The case for living with or near positive people that share similar ideals" probably wouldn't get as many eyeballs, but it would be more to-the-point and true, I think.

Maybe I should write that article anyway. I've had roommates literally my entire life, sharing a room with my brother until college, then dorming with one guy, then seven people, then two guys, then three girls, and now that I've graduated I live in a huge victorian-era house and rent to three friends (my "rent" therefore is free, sans house upkeep). I've been fortunate enough to never have a bad roommate, and communal living can be a lot of fun, significant other or not.

I think living and working alongside loving and caring people is great, but I think restricting it to marriage is maybe a tad myopic. I love all micro-societies and think they have very similar values.

fusiongyro4• 13 years ago

From the article: "...[A]mong the women that report being "highly satisfied" with their lives, 29 percent are cohabitating, 33 percent are single, and 47 percent are married."

That would seem to suggest that "upbeat roommates" are, on average, worse for women than singledom or marriage, no? Your personal experience notwithstanding, the statistics (at least for this claim) are on the side of the article.

perokreco• 13 years ago

No it wouldn't. This statistic is highly misleading and the article author is basically lying by putting it in the article. If there are twice as many women who are married than there are those who are cohabitating then cohabitating is on average better than marriage.

Samuel_Michon• 13 years ago

I made a little graph of how I think this works: http://i.imgur.com/2rWGO4y.png

pbhjpbhj6• 13 years ago

Did you base it on any data?

kscaldef6• 13 years ago

"Unmarried twenty-somethings are more likely to be depressed, drink excessively, and report lower levels of satisfaction than their married counterparts"

Let's all say it together: Correlation is not causation.

jessriedel7• 13 years ago

As I posted elsewhere, you might be interested in some strong evidence for the causal relationship as described by economist Bryan Caplan:

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/03/22_short_argume....

neutronicus2• 13 years ago

Does he address survivor bias elsewhere?

I've seen elsewhere that financial troubles often herald divorce. If the only marriages that can last are ones where someone's making a premium, then of course you'll see one.

jacoblyles2• 13 years ago

It's fun to watch people dismiss a strong statistical signal when it disagrees with their prior beliefs

kscaldef6• 13 years ago

I'm sorry, but that seems to be about earnings, not about happiness or drinking habits. Am I missing something? (It also says that women experience a penalty, whereas the original article asserts positive correlations for both men and women.)

ryusage• 13 years ago

I agree. Someone already in that situation will not be less depressed or more satisfied just by getting married. If anything, that's likely to make it worse in most cases.

pbhjpbhj6• 13 years ago

Do you have a hypothesis why "happiness" would correlate with marriage without their being any causative relationship?

Correlation does suggest causation though. Isn't it generally sound to assume causation until the position can be falsified?

neutronicus2• 13 years ago

I'd at least want the "can't get a date" group to be separated from the "had the option of marriage, but didn't pursue it" group.

abduhl• 13 years ago

Absolutely not as assuming causation implies you know the directionality of the relationship. Cancer correlates pretty well with old age but you'd be pretty silly to assume that it causes old age.

Contero• 13 years ago

The causation could easily be backwards. Who wants to marry a depressed, unsatisfied drinker?

> Isn't it generally sound to assume causation until the position can be falsified?

Not really, no. Would you assume causation in the case of cereal consumption typically increasing 30% on the first Tuesday after a heavy rainfall? There are many similarly insane correlations that you wouldn't be so quick to assume causation about. It's biased to assume causation (based solely on statistics) when you want it to make intuitive sense.

kscaldef6• 13 years ago

Because unhappy people aren't fun to be around, so people don't choose to marry them? Or because depressed people are negative about their relationships, just like anything else, so don't see them as worth pursuing? It's really not hard to conjecture mechanisms for a correlation.

drcube• 13 years ago

I got married at 18. I joined the Army, did two tours in Iraq, came back home, went to college and got a job as an engineer. I couldn't have done any of that without my wife.

I hesitate to generalize, but in my particular case getting married early was a great decision.

nawitus• 13 years ago

Note that you can't really say with certainty you couldn't have that without marriage (as you can have a relationship with someone without marrying her). In addition, there's also many single men who've done the same without marriage.

auctiontheory• 13 years ago

This article is a statistical catastrophe. Sample bias is just the most blatant of many problems.

She might have a different perspective if she'd interviewed a few (dozen) folks who married young and wrong, before they had matured enough to really know themselves or their spouse.

Zimahl2• 13 years ago

The average age at which a woman first gives birth (25.7) is now earlier than the average age of first marriage (26.5), a phenomenon Knot Yet calls "The Great Crossover" and which brings with it all of the well-documented concerns that surround the rearing of children outside of wedlock.

I wonder what these values were historically. I just don't think that those two numbers are ever too terribly far apart.

I mean, if a unmarried woman got pregnant in 1950 she would be married probably within the 9 months before the baby was born and the lack of birth control historically could have lead to many pregnancies immediately following marriage. Both of these would push the first child age to be later than first marriage.

Although, logically, one would think the advent and superfluousness of birth control would prevent unwed pregnancies and allow married couples to wait on having children (should they desire to wait), driving the first child age way up. But that's not the case - intriguing.

I guess in current times people have the means (and typically the lack of social scorn) to wait to get married and don't have to just because of an accidental pregnancy.

jessriedel7• 13 years ago

> One student told him that her parents "want my full attention on grades and school." But such advice reflects an outdated reality, one in which a college degree was almost a guarantee of a good job that would be held for a lifetime.

I really don't think the outdated-ness of this advice has anything to do with the value of a college degree.The modern open dating offers lots of varied sex to those who can navigate it well. This seems like way more time intensive, especially in terms of displacing constructive activities like studying, than a committed relationship.

msg• 13 years ago

I was married at 22, wife was 21. Worked for me!

Beyond that, what can you say? If marriage is wrong for you personally, all the statistics in the world wouldn't and shouldn't convince you otherwise. Your not wanting to get married might be correlated with your being on the wrong side of those statistics.

If marriage is right for you, I doubt this kind of article is how you would find out.

A better article would have listed pros and cons. For instance, pro: the pool of candidates is larger when you're younger; con: the pool of candidates is better when it's smaller. Or whatever is really going on under the numbers. That would be interesting to know.

j4ke• 13 years ago

This is also my experience: I was 22, she was 19 (married 10 years now). We finished school (3 BS, 1 MS, and a PhD between the two of us) and worked before having kids. I feel like we got married before we were each too stubborn and set in our ways to change. We met in the middle and grew into a single individual, greater than the sum of its parts. My (non-scientific) feeling is that in general, those I know who waited to get married had a more difficult time assuming a new identity that incorporates another individual.

m_d• 13 years ago

Anyone else find it interesting that the author is from Liberty University?

largesse• 13 years ago

One thing that the article did not touch upon is that there seem to be health advantages for children who are born of young parents - they have better telomere length [1] and possibly greater longevity. When you add to that general issue of gene damage over lifetime and how it can impact the children we conceive as we age, it seems that nature favors young parents.

The problem is that our economic system favors delaying child-bearing in an unprecedented way. I wonder what it would be like if we inverted incentives and encouraged people to have kids very young, provided social and economic support, and a ramp up to high impact careers as their kids approached their teens.

[1] Paternal age at birth is an important determinant of offspring telomere length - http://hmg.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/24/3097.long

zeveshe• 13 years ago

'29 percent are cohabitating, 33 percent are single, and 47 percent are married'

And that is total of 109%. How's that?

The Case for Getting Married Young

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