Going to the __________ and we're gonna get married

Hello, friends.

I'm 22. When did that happen? (Actually, it happened on February 8. I may be terrible at remembering names, but I do know my birthday!) Most of my friends are vaguely the same age: 21, 23, etc. In many cultures around the world, by this age my friends and I would already be married with multiple children.

This trend is not limited only to people in far-off places, though, places like rural Africa or islands in a distant sea. Marrying young is a trend for many traditional religious folks even in the US, whether they are amongst my friends in the Modern Orthodox community in NYC or my traditionalist Christian friends from further south. Is it for the best, though?

Some of my secular friends can't even contemplate marriage yet. "We just graduated college, for goodness' sake! Marriage?! We barely even know what to do with the next year of our lives, let alone the rest of our lives!" seems to be the feeling in that group. Then some of my more religious friends are much more certain of their desire to get married. I can comfortably discuss their desires to marry and have children, probably not immediately, but at some point in the next few years. Certainly there are some people who fall on the opposite sides (religious people who are definitely not comfortable thinking about marriage right now, and secular people who know they want to get married) but my experience thus far has shown that those with a stronger faith life are more firm and open in their desire to get married.

I think it has to do with religious community norms. Amongst Christian groups getting married is often pushed, as in Jewish communities. From early on, discussions in religious groups, religious schools, etc. often focus upon marriage and children, and what the particular religion views as the proper home life. Celibacy until marriage for strict Catholics, for example, or marrying another Jew for many Jews. I remember having a full-fledged mock wedding in Hebrew School when we were maybe 10, complete with wine and a chupah (pronounced with a "ch" like in "challah," chuh-paa, a traditional Jewish wedding canopy).

But secular folks might be missing similar opportunities to openly discuss these ideas, unless their parents decide to discuss it regularly for some reason. Let's look at TV shows as an example of a small view of secular culture. In these, the secular culture presents a lot of sex outside of marriage in its twenty-something sitcoms (thinking of "Friends" and "How I Met Your Mother," both shows I love but they do have a lot of sex in them). Then you have the middle-age sitcoms that present the kind of ideal mid-life situation: married with kids, thinking back on crazier younger days, but with stable family lives (like "Everybody Loves Raymond" or "Modern Family"). But do we present enough of a clear, perhaps less sex-crazed route for non-religious young people? Because I just don't love this view in the media, through shows like these where people appear to have sex with a bunch of people throughout their twenties, until they finally find someone they like enough to marry in their thirties. My personal views on the matter completely aside, I think there has to be an alternative other than this rampant sex model or more conservative interactions until marriage. Can't we have some balance? I wonder if this type of sex-driven relationship model (and for more info, check out any of the many articles published in the last few years about "hook-up" culture) is one of the reasons behind some failed marriages today, as religious groups also tend to frown upon divorce and thus also have a higher marriage success rate.

Maybe some secular people also feel a bit awkward like I do, talking so openly about marriage and how we want to get married, almost as though by saying "I want to get married" implies either that I do not fulfilled with just myself, or that I am confident that someone will actually want to marry me. It's different for religious communities in which everyone plans to get married, but in secular culture, I understand that it can be a little awkward to discuss.

Then there's the whole complication of whether or not people want to have children! In religious communities, again, having children is usually seen as a mitzvah (a good deed). But for some secular people (again, I am not claiming this as my opinion), without the cultural and religious norm of propagating life as being an ideal situation, they might ask why they would have children. "Interrupt my life and career, for what?" Same thing with sex in general: without a religious reason to abstain, why would people do so? I am sure there are many in the middle, but for some reason it often seems like a there exists a sharp divide between the very religious opinion of relationships, and the sexual one presented in the media.

How can we present a healthy view of romantic relationships in both religious and secular culture? Can there be a middle point between the two? Is marrying young a better option than marrying later, or vice versa? How can we teach our young men and women to have healthy partnerships in life that both fulfill their needs and still maintain respect for themselves and others? I think this is not only a religious issue, but also a cultural one. What does your religion teach about this?

Now go out and love one another.

<3,
Allyson