Can you be too young to get married? Some people think so. If you look at celebrities who got married in their teens and early twenties, most of their marriages ended up on the rocks – Drew Barrymore (to a bar owner at age 19, it lasted 2 months), Avril Levine (married fellow pop-rocker Deryck Whibley at 21 and divorced 4 years later), and Angelina Jolie (to Billy Bob Thornton at just 21, divorced after 3 years).
Admittedly, being a celeb automatically raises your chance of ending up in a divorce court, but certain social scientists and commentators agree that early marriage is possibly the no.1 predictor of divorce. Almost 50% of all marriages end in divorce, but apparently the statistic rises to 60% of all couples who marry between 20 and 25.
A group of sociologists in America summarised our current social marriage trends as such: “In industrial countries, young people age 18 – 25 are expected to explore their identity, work and love by delaying marriage and parenthood…Those individuals who fail to postpone these family transitions miss out on better career opportunities, make poor choices on partners, and may experience problems.”
Hmmm. But how young is too young? A closer look at stats shows that 48% of people who got married under the age of 18, and 40% of 18 and 19 year-olds are more likely to divorce. But the stats are lowered significantly over the age of 20 – only 29% of 20 to 24 year-olds get divorced, and 24% of 25 and older.
To add fuel to fire, a study at the University of Texas found that those couples who married between 22 and 25 and stayed married, experienced some of the happiest marriages.
What these stats omit to add is that couples who marry in their early to mid-20s generally need a lot of support – financial, emotional and spiritual – to succeed. So parents play a pivotal role in these early marriages, as to religious institutions – those couples who feel that they have a commitment to the institution of marriage are more likely to have a happier time of it.
Are you too young to get married? Only you can be the judge of that.
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