Posted on 06/24/2008 3:32:05 PM PDT by rhema
Recently, a friend described an exchange between a mother and her son, a senior at a top university. He wanted to marry his long-time girlfriend. His mother retorted that she was more ambitious for him than his girlfriend was; she advised him to avoid an “early” marriage that might limit his options.
Another friend confided to me that he had counseled his high-school-age daughter to establish a decade’s worth of graduate school and career development before marrying. Marriage would complicate the task of achieving financial independence. And he just wasn’t sure that men could be trusted.
Without a Script
Many young people now earn parental approbation without achieving one traditional benchmark for adulthood: securing the love, commitment, and respect of a spouse. Such parental sentiments appear to be growing, and they have helped to extend and justify the footloose patterns of college life well past graduation day.
“Being 35 today is much like being 35 a generation ago. Adults’ lives are still framed by careers, marriage, children, and civic ties. But being 25 today is very different,” asserted William Galston, speaking at the Forum on Being 20-Something in the 21st Century, part of the Brookings Institution’s Responsible Parenting Project.
“Most young people in their 20s are living outside of institutions and without the structure and norms institutions provide,” continued Galston, author of a recent Brookings report, The Changing 20s. “Many feel that they are living without a script, making up their lives as they go.”
In 1970, only 21 percent of 25-year-olds had never married. In 2005, 60 percent had yet to wed. Asked to identify the key events marking the passage into adulthood, 96 percent of the young adults in one recent survey identified a full-time job. About half that number mentioned marriage.
(Excerpt) Read more at touchstonemag.com ...
50 % or so of these kids grew up in divorced households. Why would they be expected to marry?
once again proof that the social engineering of the dems and socialist have become a norm in or society....
socialists and dicatators hate any institution that challenges their authority and affairs of the heart and soul will beat socialism and the anti-moral mindset anyday
sad.
I married at 21 and I’m still married to him 20 years later. I have two children and have advised them it is better to get their college degree, then marry and have children. It is just easier. I know this because I am attending college now with two young teens and it is difficult.
Life is difficult.
The message: Marriage is a bad thing except for homosexuals.
Well, the economic situation tends to postpone marriage these days, regardless of what parents might advise. The man used to be the bread earner, and could support the whole family. Now women have to work too, in most families.
I have plenty of grandchildren, but most of my children have married older than we did, and will likely have much fewer children themselves. It’s just harder to get started.
The country seems more prosperous, but money is worth much less than it was, and even in this housing slump it’s very expensive to get started.
Our kids were raised in a family/children environment. But a lot of kids aren’t, and in liberal families and schools they are taught that you can have sex without marriage or kids.
Yet the demographic meltdown isn’t nearly as bad here as it is in Europe, Russia, or Japan.
The damage done to our young in college makes me think they’d be better off being poor but loving parents.
Studying for nursing school, taking care of a spouse, shuttling kids around here and there, taking care of elderly mom and working is difficult. No way around it, but this sister is doin’ it. I am not whining, just saying it would be easier for my children to attend college, then marry, then have children. They can concentrate on their studies and not have to worry that they are shirking any of their responsibilities.
Marriage is a bad thing except for homosexuals
It’s really twisted isn’t it? This strange and morbid and sometimes hellish world did not get this way overnight.
It seems the whole society has been turned upside down and inside out.
Darn straight. Since my daughter was old enough to understand I was unwavering in one thing: she is going to get her degree before she gets married. Thank our our self-obsessed society for allowing divorce to run rampant. She is going to be able to stand on her own two feet if necessary without having to pay a bunch of greedy lawyers to squeeze an ex-husband.
When divorce, (and financial ruin), is easy, why get married?
and you should be proud of what you are accomplishing many today do it... bet then again it does not help the media or the dems prove there point... you are not a helpless soul or someone who has a sense of false entitlement... you are an honest hardworking america.... and i am truly coming to belive the dems just cannot stand that.
Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
My husband and I have done our best and will continue to do so, but I would rather they have the opportunity that a college degree can give them.
I told my fiancee and her parents the same thing, but for other reasons. I have no intention of ever divorcing her - as far as we're concerned, it does not exist as an option. Still, she needs to be able to support herself in the event something precludes me from making a living. It is all the more imperative that she be able to do so since I'm in the Army.
Yes but a lot of that damage is done before they experience college.
Pre nup agreement.
In the first place, kids are **deliberately** given a crappy government education.
To be useful in the workplace they need to **waste** 4 years in high school **and**, in addition they need go to college just to get enough education to be able to do a job that my parents ( 95 years old) could have done with an eight grade education.
If they could receive a decent education to the 8th grade, most should be learning a real trade or be working and NOT be going to high school and especially not college. They could then be moving on to real work, establishing real relationships, marrying, and having kids.
My grandmother married at the age of 17. My great grandmother married at 15. For her wedding she was given her first pair of real shoes. Thornton Wilder wrote the play “Our Town”. The young people in this play married immediately after high school.
Second, follow the money!
The money will lead directly to a lot of government schools employees, and those in the entertainment and retail businesses who make a lot of money on keeping kids a infantile as possible for as **long** as possible!
By the way, my kids were homeschooled. All 3 were finished Calculus III and all general college requirements by the age of 15.
The oldest then went to night school to study accounting. At 15 he went to his college's job fair. He was given a **serious** offer for a beginning management job by a local bank. Guess what? He could have done that job, at age 15 and done **well**.
My son didn't take that job, because he was legally too young to have a full-time job, and he wanted to finish his accounting degree. Also, he is a highly ranked athlete in his sport. A job would not have allowed him time to train.
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