This past weekend, I went suit shopping with my boyfriend of nearly four years. As I watched him try on suit after suit, I realized that I was seeing what every morning of the rest of my life would look like - in a few years, that is.
I've known for quite a while that I would not be attending graduate school immediately following my undergraduate studies, and I do want to pursue a career (possibly in journalism), but I also want to get married and have children relatively soon.
Obviously, the choice to begin a family sooner rather than later is not for everyone, but after being with the same person for so long, the most frustrating part of my life is not being able to further our relationship by moving in together and getting married. Still, I find my position difficult to justify to an 18- to 24-year-old demographic, for which voting is too much responsibility (let alone raising children.)
One of the main reasons I would like to get married in my mid-twenties and have my first child by 30 is that I want time with my husband after our children are grown and out of the house. I realize that this is a far-off consideration and that most people my age are more concerned with graduating from college than picking out curtains, but after 20 years of having fun and partying, I feel that it is time for some real responsibility.
Most people I have talked to about marriage feel that couples that marry young, specifically in their twenties, are doomed from the start. I wholeheartedly disagree with this opinion, and there are statistics that show that young marriages can and do work.
According to reports from the National Survey of Family Growth, a survey focusing on marriage, divorce, birth rates and other factors affecting women, marriages are more likely to succeed if the wife was raised in a two-parent home, was over 20 at the time of marriage and is college educated, among other factors. Check, check and check.
Now, I know my ideals here seem a bit old-fashioned, but recent statistics show that 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. I've seen many more divorced 40-somethings who have followed the new standard than senior citizens, who typically were married in their late teens and early 20s.
People may say that I am too young and too inexperienced to walk down the aisle, but if I am in a committed relationship and marriage is inevitable, why prolong the wait until a socially accepted age? While a graduate degree may pad my paycheck and a job may pay off my loans, for me, getting married is the right thing to do.
For those that need factual justification, however, the National Survey of Family Growth shows that married men and women tend to have "lower mortality, less risky behavior, more monitoring of health, more compliance with medical regimens, higher sexual frequency, more satisfaction with their sexual lives, more savings, and higher wages."
Despite these statistics, I realize I have left many unconvinced of my sanity. To them, I can only say, to each her own
