Young Marriages: Cause and Effect

Human being as a social animal is influenced by emotions and thereby perpetually needs a sense of care, nurturing, feeling of importance, trust, sense of values and confidence. Some of these needs can only be gotten with subjective basis of love in marriage. We all need love, but love from everyone that comes our way is subject to a threat on privacy leakage, and a forfeit of self worth. This affirms a need for marriage and cohabitation of two lovers for the purpose of sharing love, sex, procreation, et cetera.

Marriage is the bringing together of man and woman into wedlock after perhaps few periods of courtship or dating. Marriage is such an institution ordained by God and performed as a rite by religious leader, the judiciary arm of the government, or even non-governmental body confirmed with the right to observe so. Young marriage comes in when the two parties are relatively younger than the conventional conceived of marriage-age attainment. The age limit varies from region to countries and thereby has a resisted specification within a locality or society in question. For ladies, some nations belief in the age of 18 and some 25, while men are assumed not to be limited by age factor but only subjected to maturity in terms of stability in economy, mental state and every otherwise.

It is important to note that young marriage is stressed simply because it is an aberration of the accepted age group in a society. We shall now critically analyze the causes of young marriage among the ‘underage group’. Prolonged loneliness/desertion, early desire to satisfy uncontrolled emotions, huge sense of insecurity, parental pressure in some Africans, precocity in whites (fast and early growth) and social pressure are some of the causes of young marriage. This spreads across many regions of the continent.

At this juncture, it is expedient to point out that marriages of matured age group are faced with numerous challenges. The challenges are so heavy that even a professional councilor cannot out rightly diagnose and conclude on a prognostic progression. In fact, in American, almost half of recorded wedding ceremony ends in divorce, reported mostly among the young couples. Taking a case report from Jay Teachman, a researcher in Western Washington University, findings show that couples whose moment of courtship is not denied of premarital sex and fun are with no higher risk of divorce. Unlike a short and casual relationship of no sex attached this group records more divorce. “For women in this category, premarital sex and cohabitation with their future husband are just two more steps in building a serious, committed, long-term relationship”(Teachman, 2003). Imaging a young couple with no prior quality moment of intimacy and understanding of individual cultures, values, and norms, both couples perhaps would require huge patience to adjust and adapt. In the absence of patience, tolerance, conflicts crop up so often leading to undue premonitions of intruders setting in. in essence, fast rate of divorce is an important outcome of young matrimonial home.

Furthermore, the concept of time is the most important tool to test the sustenance of professed love. There is a popular sage certain African-American society – “if you love me, you will wait”. This further buttresses the fact that lust categorizes the immediate desire to rush wedding without adequate moment of courtship. A partner in lust is blind to the true symptoms of love. A wedding without a solid foundation on trust and love is like a news firm standing building mounted on a flowing river surface. Sooner or later, the natural course of the river will fulfill its sole mission to erode, weaken the foundation and whole collapse the seemingly strong structure. Such analogy is akin to a young marriage with untested love on the basis of time. Young couples often fall victim for failure to endure courtship and learn with time the real substance of necessity in marriage (The Guardian, 2004).

It is incomplete to itemize some of the importance of young marriage. Firstly, the couple has an early initiation of focus alignment in a hybrid version having resolve disparity early enough when the days are still young- at the beginning of their cohabitation. The children are brought up early enough in life. Such children nurtured, cared for with youthful strength and with freshness of sound education. Still in line of effects of early marriage, the woman reproduces the desired number of children before the age of forty sets in. At this age, some medical specialists suggest the vulnerability of such woman to certain gynecological diseases that could affect the virility of the child.

Young marriage therefore, has both its advantages and disadvantages. The variation in different countries’ beliefs makes it so had to conclusively arrive at a leverage sentence of universal acceptance.

References

• Jay Teachman (2003), Premarital Sex, Premarital Cohabitation, and the Risk of Subsequent Marital Dissolution Among Women, Journal of Marriage and Family 65 (2), 444-455.
• Dr Anthony Bone, (August 2004), Marriage Counseling Hour, The Guardian Newspaper, weekend publication (Nigeria).