The Case for Early Marriage Amid our purity pledges and attempts to make chastity hip, we forgot to teach young Christians how to tie the knot. - Christianity Today
Great article, worth reading the whole thing.
A few things I took away from it:
“Most young Americans no longer think of marriage as a formative institution, but rather as the institution they enter once they think they are fully formed.”
The evangelical culture of the time I went to college certainly promoted this idea: you had to be “a whole person” before you married. However, becoming a whole person is a lifelong process. The emphasis on self-actualization stymied a number of people from getting married.
“Unfortunately, education about marriage is now sadly perceived as self-obvious, juvenile, or feminine, the domain of disparaged home economics courses.”
Yes. Yes. Yes. We really do need to educate TEENS about the importance of marriage and setting up a household. It’s not all about me, me, me.
As an aside: I found it interesting how the author downplayed the importance of premarital chastity (even as he was apparently advocating for marriage) and cheered on the idea of the man being so much older than the woman at marriage.
I’d said earlier that you can’t talk about contraception without also talking about fornication. The men and women in that CT article must have been involved in both. Also what of venereal diseases, out-of-wedlock births, and abortion? The author does not mention these at all. I find it puzzling and a little sad.
It would thus make sense to have a lot of kids, and start early doing so. Much in contrast with today, in which most go off to college, having done little labor (unless on the GI bill), to fornicate and spend more on beer than books, and learn liberal ethos, along with being educated in something that is hopefully practical, rather than some exotic study many major in.
And few of the women know how even cook, or raise kids, but they do love pets, which now now outnumber children 4 to 1 in America
Education is necessary, but as Theodore Roosevelt stated ,
To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility.