Single young women: You can marry young if you want to! NOOO! Don't do it! - Granite Grok

Single young women: You can marry young if you want to! NOOO! Don’t do it!

This girl is baaaad! Believes in marriage! Run her out of town!
This girl is BAD! Believes in young marriage! Run her out of town!

(Well, Skip said I could write about anything that interests me. Sooo…here goes.)

Sheesh. My interest was piqued this morning when I ran across an article by young Julia Shaw in Slate. Published just two days ago, Ms. Shaw’s thesis for women in their 20’s is that “you don’t have to wait till you’re 30 or older to get married. If you find the right guy, it’s okay to get married young…even desirable!” (Hmmm and…uh oh.)

That’s interesting, I thought, not least because I’ve got a millennial-generation daughter myself. But whew! The article—entitled “I got married at 23. What are the rest of you waiting for?”—set off a virtual conflagration! I mean…

…it was only published 48 hours ago, but it was like flipping a match into a smoldering, gasoline-soaked issue. And as usual—Somebody stop me! How many times must I say it?—the thousands of comments posted in response to the article are fully as interesting as the article itself (the comment-count stands at 3,192, and is growing by the minute).

Now, I’m an old guy, so I don’t have a dog in this fight (besides, I didn’t marry till age 35 myself). And I’m used to hearing 20-something girls (I’m Old, so I can call’em that) protest that “I’m only 26!” or “I’m only 28!” when I ask about attitudes toward marriage. Manana seems to be a strongly-enforced byword when it comes to the subject. In other words, among that generation there’s a pretty obvious cultural bias against marriage, at least before age 30, if not later.

So what does this Julia Shaw do? She trumpets There’s another way! And it’s acceptable! (she didn’t add “you dummies!” but she may as well have). The response has been a great flame-fest: You’d think Ms. Shaw was advocating a law requiring mandatory marriage for all females by age 20!

Read it yourself, and then brave the comments after the article (when I read ’em, I kept hearing shouts in my head of “INCOMINGGG!!!!”).

Heh.

This thing…this essential thing about being a human being—especially a young one…. It’s just endlessly fascinating. Endlessly mirthful!

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