Maybe it’s the high cost of weddings, or perhaps it’s more and more people cohabitating before they marry, but whatever the reason, people are waiting longer to marry than they have in the past. According to the Washington Times:
Since 1950, the average age for first marriage has crept up from 22.8 years to 27.1 for men and from 20.3 to 25.8 for women.
But is “delaying” marriage really a problem? Or is marrying in the late 20s strange only when measured against the 1950s’ “golden age” of marriage, when wedding bells often followed high school graduation.
To the average American, today’s young people are doing it about right.
In a June Gallup poll, Americans chose 25 and 27 as the “best age” for a woman and a man, respectively, to marry. In 1946, 50 percent of Americans thought women should marry by 21 and men by 25, Gallup said.
The age of marriage could keep climbing. There’s evidence that the average marriage age for college-educated women is about 30, said Stephanie Coontz, author of “Marriage, A History” and director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families.
Not every one believes waiting longer for marriage is a good thing.
“There’s nothing magical that happens at age 25,” said Mark Gungor, founder of the”Laugh Your Way to a Better Marriage” seminars.His advice — speaking as someone who married as a teen more than 30 years ago and is still happy — is: “If you’re going to get serious and fall in love, do it right.”
If young adult couples say they want to get married, parents should support them, even if they’re still in college, said Mr. Gungor, who also is pastor at New Beginnings Church in Stevens Point, Wis. “How can we tell young people that living together and premarital sex lowers their chances for a happy marriage, and then say wait to marry until 28? What do you think you’ve just set up?” he said.
Of course, young people should marry the best person they can, but they should realize that their greatest adversary is selfishness, he said.
“People get divorced for one reason and one reason only: One or both of them get selfish,” he said. “People won’t say they got selfish — they’ll say, ‘Oh, we were too young’ or ‘We rushed into it,’ but it’s all [nonsense]. They’re getting divorced for one reason: One of them is being selfish.”
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