Conservatives want to talk about biology all the time now. Well biology says you can have children as soon as you have your period. Which is age 11-15 for most girls. Another principal which is culturally almost as fundamental as biological facts, is that marriage is for the protection of children. So what is the basis for the principal that being married from age 11-18 is immoral? Is it in the Bible? I don’t think so. Is it in biology? No.
It seems to be something we just made up. Oh well girls that young are not ready for marriage, they say. Well God seems to think they are. Just like He made them male and female, he made them ready for procreation at whatever age. Maybe we should prepare them better, for the reality of this responsibility. It doesn’t mean they all have to, but it should at least be a possibility.
“And when I passed by you and saw you wallowing in your blood, I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’ I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare.
“When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord GOD, and you became mine. Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather. I wrapped you in fine linen and covered you with silk. And I adorned you with ornaments and put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck. And I put a ring on your nose and earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. Thus you were adorned with gold and silver, and your clothing was of fine linen and silk and embroidered cloth. You ate fine flour and honey and oil. You grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor that I had bestowed on you, declares the Lord GOD. -Ezekiel 16
What is the situation in our culture? We live in a hyper sexualized culture, it is pushed everywhere at a young age. The demand is driven up, but the only legitimate remedy, marriage, is seen as inappropriate until an older and older age. Our cultural idea is generally that you shouldn’t get married until you are done with college which happens at a later and later age, probably something like 22. The average now is 28.6. That leaves ten years for girls to be ran through, trained up by liberal professors(90% are), deceived by media and formed into a creature which has very little use as a real wife. And that’s the low end, many are much older. And this supposed education, otherwise called becoming your own person, training isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be either. A bachelor’s degree today, is probably about the equivalent of the 8th grade education our grand parents received. That puts you at age 13. And we all know this training is more about recruiting feminists to causes than it is making women who love their husbands and their children.
Frances Cleveland, 1886
Even in churches, young marriages are often mocked, though they do happen. We need a better system. Women are more and more likely to get divorced the more people they have slept with and that number grows the more years they are single.
Another growing factor is the way young people despise anyone older than themselves. They have been told their whole lives that old is bad, old is the patriarchy, old people enslaved everyone and they were. . . mean. Which leads to younger women told not to consider older men, you know the best able to care for them and actually support a family. Of course it still happens, but men like Leonardo DiCaprio are ridiculed often for dating younger women.
The only U. S. President to be married while in office was Grover Cleveland. At the time he was 49, he married Frances who was 21. And the country loved her. She was arguably the most beloved First Lady ever. That was only 137 years ago, what happened? Why do we prolong childhood indefinitely? Why do we not build better people more prepared for marriage? Why don’t we incentivize situations that make it possible for families to work?