Marriage Doesn't Just Happen

[JimG]

This article caught my attention. The writer worries that Catholics not only aren’t getting married, they don’t appear to even know how to court the opposite sex.

In 1960, 72% of 24 year olds were married.
Now, it’s just 9%. Quite a drastic drop.

Anthony Esolen says that at the college where he teaches, boys and girls don’t even hold hands anymore. What happened? Have the sexes become that wary of each other?
I’m just wondering. Maybe someone younger than me knows the answer.

Here’s a quote, and the link:

“Just as boys after fifteen years of being hustled from institutional pillar to institutional post no longer know how to make up their own games outdoors, just as girls after fifteen years of the same no longer know how to organize a dance or a social, so now our young people not only refrain from dating and courting—they do not know how to do it. It isn’t happening. Look at the hands.”

Source:
crisismagazine.com/2012/catholics-awake-marriage-doesnt-just-happen

 

[Baelor]

Article:

Just as boys after fifteen years of being hustled from institutional pillar to institutional post no longer know how to make up their own games outdoors, just as girls after fifteen years of the same no longer know how to organize a dance or a social

I am borderline not okay with this.

almost three out of four Americans aged 24 were married (72%). Now that number is less than one in ten (9%)! That is not a good thing. First, it is evidence of deep and widespread loneliness.

This is not really a problem. Think about it. These data state that people are not married 1-2 years out of school. How is this so horrible?

Third, it implies a divorce of love from the crazy vigor and cheerfulness of youth. And this is what I specifically want to stress. Young people should be oriented toward love; that is natural.

This makes no sense. It is not supported in any way, nor is it even theologically valid.

I agree that there is a problem among young Catholics and young persons in general. It is that they do not wish to get married, in general, for completely selfish reasons. What I do not understand is why it seems impossible to address that problem without becoming inappropriately extreme, like the author of the article.

 

[bzkoss236]

I’ll be 1 of the 9%!

Anyway, I don’t see the data as much of a problem either. Some people prefer to be well established in a job before moving onto marriage. And just because someone around my age isn’t married yet doesn’t mean they are lonely. They could still be dating and not ready for marriage just yet, or they are spending more time with friends. I would venture to say that a lot are also still in school going for a masters degree, since higher and higher education is being suggested now-a-days.

 

[PaulinVA]

It would be interesting to see posters age to put their posts on this thread in context.

I am 53, and was married at 23. I was in the Army, getting out in a year, and we married because we wanted to make our life together. We didn’t know what would happen when I got out and went career hunting. But, we wanted to be together.

This idea of getting all your ducks lined up (college, career, house, car) before marriage is just foreign to us. You build your life together.

 

[JerryZ]

Well the problem with trying to “line up all your ducks” is that many times you end up too old to be able to conceive when you deem that the time has come.
True we live longer nowdays but the human fisiology has not changed that much and women especially need to understand that their internal clock is not easily reprogrammed.
Many of my female friends have had many many issues when or because they delayed their motherhood.
And amazingly they had been warned by their OBGs.
But I guess we all believe we are immortals when we are young

 

[silicasandra]

I am one of the 9% who was married, and while I don’t think the data as presented is much of a problem…I think financial considerations, unfortunately, particularly exploding student debt, make several people delay marriage. If I hadn’t the colossal student loans I had (and I still have them, but less colossal ), DH and I would have married at 22 (him) and 21 (me), instead of 24 and 23 when our job prospects were more secure. But we were also engaged during our senior year of college and had been dating for two years before that.

Outside of the data though…I am not really surprised. I am in the demographic group that is more likely to marry in their 20s than any other (white, Bachelor’s degree or higher, middle-to-upper-middle class upbringing, married parents) and I only have a few other friends who are married even though most of them come from a similar background. When my parents, who also married in their early 20s in the 1980s, were my age almost all of their friends were married (granted, not all of those marriages lasted.) And I love our friends, but it is shocking to me that they have not grown up at all in the five years since we graduated from college. Every weekend is still for boozing and hooking up. Some of them have no problem with this, but I feel awful for the few of them who have come up to me and asked, “How do you and [husband] do this? I would love to get married but none of the girls/guys I find are good wife/husband material.” Well, the same people you know how to look for - people who will have sex with you right after they meet you after a few rounds - are not going to be the kind of people you want to marry. And you’re one of those people, too.

They just have no idea how to look, or their patterns of behavior are so entrenched that it is hard to break them. This is the only way they know how to have fun. My husband and I never did the hookup culture thing (although we did make some mistakes). We met and became friends over our mutual interests. We respected each other as people before we began to date, and when we began dating exclusively, we both had an understanding of what that meant and we both knew we wanted to be married and have children. Our relationship has never been “perfect”, but knowing what we wanted and being willing to pursue that, definitely helped us get where we are. And we are pretty happy, even with our rough spots.

(As an aside, although I think it matters - DH and I are among the only religious people in same friends group. Many friends are “culturally religious” but not observant at all.)

 

[jilly4ski]

It would be interesting to see posters age to put their posts on this thread in context.

I am 53, and was married at 23. I was in the Army, getting out in a year, and we married because we wanted to make our life together. We didn’t know what would happen when I got out and went career hunting. But, we wanted to be together.

This idea of getting all your ducks lined up (college, career, house, car) before marriage is just foreign to us. You build your life together.

I was 22, just out of college but my husband was 24. We again didn’t know what was going to happen (I was going to law school and dh didn’t have a settled job). But part of it is that things aren’t as certain as they were. When my father graduated college he had several offers lined up, my mother (not a college grad) also found a job in the city soon after moving. And while she was poor she still made enough to live off. Now even if you get a factory job or other secretarial job you are not going to be self sufficient on $12/hour. I, on the other hand was unemployed for a long time out of law school, even now, I am working contractual jobs that are not consistent, and my husband (a college grad) has also struggled with finding work, often just taking a low skilled position to help us make ends meet. If you look at the unemployment rather for 18-24year olds, our experience is not so uncommon. This might be a factor in the later marriage (but obviously not the only one as this trend started even during the opulent years of the late 90s early 2000s).

 

[Kelfa28]

Some people are not taking into account the fact that you don’t always meet your husband/wife at the age of 19 when you go to college.

I’m not one of the 9% because I married at the age of 28.
The only reason was because I met my husband when I was just turning 25. Had I met him while I was in college I would have married him far sooner and probably would have been in the 9%. However, neither my husband nor I went to college right away.

I don’t think you need to wait to get married just because you want to do all kinds of things before you settle down like get a masters, travel the world, find a secure career. Within a marriage you are there for each other and you support each other. I’m working on a Bachelor’s degree now and I wouldn’t be able to if I didn’t have the full support of my husband. And yes, we have a kid and aren’t necessarily trying to wait the next one from coming.

I don’t think studies like this are so surprising and groundbreaking. Our culture has changed. Women want careers because they are made to feel unaccomplished if they don’t.
They have pre-marital sex and use contraception. Why would anyone want to get married younger anyway if they can have sex but prevent the natural result of babies?

Too be honest, I’m one of the younger people I know my age to get married. My sister got married at the age of 26 though…she’s the youngest I know of.

A vast majority of the people I knew in high school are nearing 30 and are still not married. They also still go out and party every weekend.

 

[silicasandra]

**Some people are not taking into account the fact that you don’t always meet your husband/wife at the age of 19 when you go to college. **

I’m not one of the 9% because I married at the age of 28.
The only reason was because I met my husband when I was just turning 25. Had I met him while I was in college I would have married him far sooner and probably would have been in the 9%. However, neither my husband nor I went to college right away.

This is true too. We see tons of threads here by single Catholics looking for a faithful spouse and they can be very difficult to find.

I found my husband early, that’s true. I guess what I was thinking of was that we already knew at that point in life that we were called to be married and had that in mind when we started dating, even if we didn’t know yet that we would marry each other. I think some of our friends - the ones who are still partying - expect it to just “happen” or that they don’t need to put any kind of effort in. Then they’re surprised when the hook-up turned “relationship” doesn’t work out.

 

[Jessup]

This article caught my attention. The writer worries that Catholics not only aren’t getting married, they don’t appear to even know how to court the opposite sex.

In 1960, 72% of 24 year olds were married.
Now, it’s just 9%. Quite a drastic drop.

Anthony Esolen says that at the college where he teaches, boys and girls don’t even hold hands anymore. What happened? Have the sexes become that wary of each other?
I’m just wondering. Maybe someone younger than me knows the answer.

Here’s a quote, and the link:

“Just as boys after fifteen years of being hustled from institutional pillar to institutional post no longer know how to make up their own games outdoors, just as girls after fifteen years of the same no longer know how to organize a dance or a social, so now our young people not only refrain from dating and courting—they do not know how to do it. It isn’t happening. Look at the hands.”

Source:
crisismagazine.com/2012/catholics-awake-marriage-doesnt-just-happen

I often here people say "if that's what God wants for me." I think that a lot of Catholics are  to passive in perusing their goals, I think there is a misconception that God is going to do things for you in your life. God isn't going to break the ice between you and a good looking woman. Anymore then he is going to boost you into a cushy career. You've got to be willing to break some rules, and take some risk aggressively and actively.

You have to be an alpha male, and ladies have to be ladies. That’s what dating is.
Talking to a woman is identical to a job interview, put on your nicest shirt, tell them what they want to hear then pray they call you back.

 

[Jessup]

It would be interesting to see posters age to put their posts on this thread in context.

I am 53, and was married at 23. I was in the Army, getting out in a year, and we married because we wanted to make our life together. We didn’t know what would happen when I got out and went career hunting. But, we wanted to be together.

This idea of getting all your ducks lined up (college, career, house, car) before marriage is just foreign to us. You build your life together.

 I'm 33 I've been engaged twice. I wanted un conditional love twice. But life is competitive.

The first time I was engaged I was in my early 20’s working as a power plant mechanics helper.
My second time being engaged I was 30, It was broken off because I was engaged to a woman at a Calvary Chapel, who’s family and pastor hated Catholics.
I would love to get married, but now a days you can’t just dive in, you need that exterior security, mostly monetary; knowing that the government can take everything from you and give it to your wife after she divorces you while sleeping with her drug dealer. That’s life where I’m at, that’s why I have a hard time with marriage. I’ll probably marry a Mormon girl if I do get married at this point.
Family life to me, means living hell, and you’ve got to have an escape route to get out of an abusive relationship with a woman who can’t keep it in her pants and has 10 guys calling her up to get high while you are at work.
I’ve seen it with my brother’s marriage.
I’ve lived part of it, in the past; I, being smart enough to only live in and not marry.

 

[Margarete_Faust]

I would have loved to have been married at 24, but the husband God intended for me has not come yet. I am 25 and still looking.

I would much rather wait and only be able to conceive once or twice than to marry the wrong person (possibly even for the wrong reasons) and have my marriage fall apart after 5, 10 or even 25 years.

For some of us, it is not that we are unwilling to marry; we simply haven’t found that person we can love unconditionally and who can love us unconditionally.

 

[PaulinVA]

When my father graduated college he had several offers lined up, my mother (not a college grad) also found a job in the city soon after moving. And while she was poor she still made enough to live off. Now even if you get a factory job or other secretarial job you are not going to be self sufficient on $12/hour. I, on the other hand was unemployed for a long time out of law school, even now, I am working contractual jobs that are not consistent, and my husband (a college grad) has also struggled with finding work, often just taking a low skilled position to help us make ends meet. If you look at the unemployment rather for 18-24year olds, our experience is not so uncommon. This might be a factor in the later marriage (but obviously not the only one as this trend started even during the opulent years of the late 90s early 2000s).

My generation was “taught”, or our parents were always saying, “Two can live cheaper than one”. The idea was that you met your mate, married, and together you worked hard to build a life together, even if you started with one ****** car and no dining room table.

That might be the reason that marriages used to last longer. After working hard towards a common goal together, working from nothing, you were friends/combat buddies with your spouse. And you never leave your buddy.

 

[JimG]

. . . . I am 53, and was married at 23. I was in the Army, getting out in a year, and we married because we wanted to make our life together. We didn’t know what would happen when I got out and went career hunting. But, we wanted to be together.

This idea of getting all your ducks lined up (college, career, house, car) before marriage is just foreign to us. You build your life together.

I agree with you here. I have to confess that I married late myself—at age 30, but my wife was 21. We were both working, but not at what anyone would call “careers.” The point was to do the rest of life together, not to get it all together first!

. . . That might be the reason that marriages used to last longer. After working hard towards a common goal together, working from nothing, you were friends/combat buddies with your spouse. And you never leave your buddy.

Yes, I think you right. The longer a person delays, it seems to me, the more settled he becomes in his own life and habits, making it harder to make a new life together with a spouse.

I do find a problem with the fact that so few marry in their 20’s anymore. It seems the ideal time for marriage. There are no doubt a lot of reasons for the trend. The author of the article seems to put a lot of the blame on the previous generation for not encouraging marriage, or even passing on the skills for dating.

He says that not many people study theology or are interested in it, but practical theology “comes from learning to love someone forever, under the canopy of the Church; it comes from the vow at the altar, and the child in the cradle, and the daily charities and forbearance of married life, life in a real and precious society.”

 

[Kelfa28]

I would have loved to have been married at 24, but the husband God intended for me has not come yet. I am 25 and still looking.

I would much rather wait and only be able to conceive once or twice than to marry the wrong person (possibly even for the wrong reasons) and have my marriage fall apart after 5, 10 or even 25 years.

For some of us, it is not that we are unwilling to marry; we simply haven’t found that person we can love unconditionally and who can love us unconditionally.

This…

Not everyone marries at a young age. It seems to me that Catholics and other conservative Christians are expected to be married young and if you aren’t then you are not being serious and you’re probably engaging in pre-marital sex and co-habitating and that is why you aren’t married.

How about the fact that people are actually discerning marriage and have yet to find their husband/wife. They aren’t trying to get their lives “together” they just simple haven’t found that special someone yet.

 

[jilly4ski]

My generation was “taught”, or our parents were always saying, “Two can live cheaper than one”. The idea was that you met your mate, married, and together you worked hard to build a life together, even if you started with one ****** car and no dining room table.

That might be the reason that marriages used to last longer. After working hard towards a common goal together, working from nothing, you were friends/combat buddies with your spouse. And you never leave your buddy.

Possibly, 2 can live cheaper than 1, since you have two people living in the same place, with the same heat and electricity. But you also eat more food, need twice the transportation, and need the same number of clothes. When two people get married the natural conclusion is that there will be kids. (As we quickly found out). When my parents were born, the doctor did house calls, most people did not have (or need) insurance. People had some land to grow a garden (though even being farmers my mother grew up in a family where they were frequently hungry and malnourished). They didn’t plan for their kids college education, the kids that wanted to go went and paid for it themselves. It was apparently much cheaper back then. For us, we had to take on lots of debt to get through college, now as parents we need some sort of insurance to pay for the kids check ups and for prenatal care and labor/delivery. With the uncertain job situation it is difficult to both find and afford insurance. (When you don’t know who much you are bringing in each month it is tough to plan and commit to large expenses every month).

In my parents generation, the standard of living was much lower, they could get by with no running water and 2 outfits. (My mom’s family got electricity in 1953 and she didn’t get running water until she moved out 1967. If my \kids only had 2 outfits and no running water, I would be in danger of welfare visits from child protective services.

Besides we all know the nasty names people are called when they have kids and are on government services like medicaid and foodstamps, (ie welfare queens).

 

[Metropolis]

Well, I am part of the 9%. My hubby and I are 26 now and got married at 22. He had a very stable job that could easily support us though, which most people at that age didn’t have. Most of our friends were working minimum wage jobs with college degrees (because the economy in our home state was already really bad by that point and jobs were hard to find even with degrees). Also in our area a small one bedroom apartment was around $1,000 a month and most young adults had to still live with parents or a few roommates. Most of the people I knew that lived outside the home at 18-25 back home were living in situations where a bunch of guys or girls were living in a house together all renting a room or to share a room. One of my boyfriends in early college lived with 7 other guys in a three bedroom house.

Many of our friends were paying off large student loans as well and were in massive debt trying to pay it off while working a low end job. I think in the past (atleast this was the case for my Mom and Dad who got married at 18 and 20 in 1971) it was much easier to get a job that paid well enough just out of high school, college was much cheaper proportionally, and society was built up in a way that made it easier for people that age to move out on their own. Things are different today. If you do not even have the means to support yourself or even pay rent, how are you going to support a family with children?

 

[JimG]

This…

Not everyone marries at a young age. It seems to me that Catholics and other conservative Christians are expected to be married young and if you aren’t then you are not being serious and you’re probably engaging in pre-marital sex and co-habitating and that is why you aren’t married.

How about the fact that people are actually discerning marriage and have yet to find their husband/wife. They aren’t trying to get their lives “together” they just simple haven’t found that special someone yet.

Yes, that’s quite possible. I wonder whether the pool of potential spouses–i.e. those who are willing to make a lifetime commitment–may actually be shrinking and if that’s part of the problem. I wonder if the pool of marriageables has become tainted due to societal factors, resulting in a smaller pool of potental spouses.

 

[Kelfa28]

Yes, that’s quite possible. I wonder whether the pool of potential spouses–i.e. those who are willing to make a lifetime commitment–may actually be shrinking and if that’s part of the problem. I wonder if the pool of marriageables has become tainted due to societal factors, resulting in a smaller pool of potental spouses.

I definitely agree with you on this!

It’s really tough finding a spouse when your values are no longer the norm. When you want to wait until marriage, when you don’t plan to ever use contraception, when you plan to marry int the Church and are required to raise your children in the faith.

The pool shrinks significantly and keeps shrinking. It’s not wise to marry a non-Catholic…but what happens if you don’t really know any practicing Catholics? Then what do you do?

 

[Disciple_pt]

I definitely agree with you on this!

It’s really tough finding a spouse when your values are no longer the norm. When you want to wait until marriage, when you don’t plan to ever use contraception, when you plan to marry int the Church and are required to raise your children in the faith.

The pool shrinks significantly and keeps shrinking. It’s not wise to marry a non-Catholic…but what happens if you don’t really know any practicing Catholics? Then what do you do?

I have the same problem, pool shrinks so much that i feel i’ll end up alone. 28 years old and only bad girls i’v i ever meet, but thank to the help of God i went able to move away from them without dating any of them.

Somedays i just think “God knows what he does, He’ll have someone special for me”, and some other days i think “God gave me an *** to move, so i need to move it and do something… but then disapointment”