Is There a Right Age to Get Married?

¶ … right age to get married?

While love and the emotions are the key aspects that are commonly seen as important determining factors in romance and marriage, there are many experts who point out that marrying at too young an age can create a wide range of problems. These problems include a high incidence of divorce, rising single-parent families, substance abuse, and domestic violence. Victims of unhappy or failed marriages find it hard to cope with the demands and many suffer from mental diseases such as depression. Fundamental problems also include aspects such as emotional immaturity, incompatibility and financial instability.

On the other hand, couples who delay matrimony beyond their thirties or forties also encounter a different set of problems as evidenced by some of the partners interviewed in this paper. In attempting to establish whether there is a "right" age for marriage, one has to bear in mind the aims of matrimony. The expectations people have of marriage and how they perceive the aims of the union are central issues that influence the question of this paper.

Most people interviewed for this study had conventional ideas about marriage which prioritized the importance of love, relationship between husband and wife, and building a family; as well as closeness and support. However, different ideas and expectations of marriage will obviously affect the question of the right age to enter into matrimony. There are also cultural aspects that influence this question.

There are very disparate views on the "right" age to get married. Many people feel that age is essentially irrelevant and that compatibility and love are the most important aspects to be considered. On the other hand, there are those who insist that age is an essential factor and that young marriages often end in divorce as the bride and groom are sometimes not mature enough to cope with the expectations and responsibilities of marriage. Responsibility and maturity was a theme that occurred numerous times in the interviews conducted with married couples. The preponderance of opinion from experts such as doctors and psychologists seems to lean towards the view that marring at too young an age is be avoided. As one psychologist states:

The fact is, whenever a couple in their early twenties or younger comes to me and declares their plans to marry, a neon sign in my mind flashes Danger! I know the divorce rate for couples under twenty is incredibly high (between 80% and 85%). Social scientists have found that people who marry young are seldom prepared for marital roles.

(Warren N.C.)

The adverse statistics with regard to early marriages are alarming. The general divorce rate for those who marry in their early twenties is double the rate of those who marry in their mid-twenties. (ibid) One of the reasons that psychologists give for this is that at 20 or 21 years of age the individual has not yet developed a full sense of their own self-identity and is still developing on a personal level. In this light an interesting statistic is that women seem to be marrying at a later age than a few decades ago.

Through the years, the average gradually declined to 22.8 for males and 20.3 for females after the Second World War in 1950. But by 1988 the average age for men at first marriage was back up to 25.9, and the average age for women had reached an all-time high of 23.6. The average age at marriage for females is higher now than at any time in our history, and there is a slow, upward trend.

(ibid)

Many experts estimate that marrying young can result in an increased divorce rate; while divorce rates generally seem to decline where the couples are older. However, this does not necessarily imply that the marriages of older partners are more successful; divorce rates may be artificially low in this category due to financial and other factors. All these aspects were the focus of my questions in the interviews conducted with a number of married couples.

Interviews

Three couples were chosen for the survey. The first two couples married at a relatively young age while the third couple married rather late in life. The Rushveldt's got married when Mary was 18 and Clive 23. They have been married for 13 years. I asked them to be honest in their appraisal of their marriage and to what extent their relatively young age had influenced their relationship. Mary stated that it was very difficult at first. "I only realized what it was all about a few months into the marriage. One thing is for sure, the early romantic notions are hard to sustain when one is young and struggling financially with a child on the way." Clive concurred that the first few years of their marriage had been difficult. Both felt that they had got married too young and that life could have been much easier had they waited a few more years; not only in terms of their personal maturity but also to plan for their financial security. However, when asked whether they would do it differently if they had a chance, they both stated that they would not and that in many ways the earlier years, while difficult, had cemented their relationship.

Another couple who also married young, Sue and Chris Doubel, had different views. Sue was divorced from a first marriage mainly because "I was too young and immature to deal with the responsibility of marriage and sharing your life with another person. I didn't even know who I was." This concurs with the psychological assessment that young people have not yet had time to establish their identity. Sue added that she was also influenced by relatives, which also points to a lack of self-identity.

The third couple, the Smith's married at a relatively late age. Beryl was 36 and Brian 40 when they married. While they both agreed that from a financial point-of-view it had been a wise decision they also felt that postponing matrimony created a number of problems. The greatest problem that they encountered was the fact that they had become to some extent set in their ways and found it difficult to deal with the quirks and eccentricities of the other partner. "I found that petty things irked me; (she laughs) the fact that he did not hang up his clothes nearly caused a divorce."