Have people changed?

[progressivegal]

How is it a misplaced priority to think before having kids? Not sure where you live, but where I live, we don't rely on children to work the fields or bring extra income in. Infant death rate has massively decreased, so it isn't as necessary to have multiple children in the hopes that a few will make it. Leaving more time to establish a better living environment for those children.

Plus, there isn't anywhere in the Bible that says you must have children, get married, or settle down.

 

[Lee_Lee]

Hey,

Two very different topics..that I think everyone has made very good observations about.

Same-Sex attraction has been around along time, even in biblical times;

Romans 1:26-27; Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

*Today's society has simply made it more acceptable and open, through media and legalisation, to name a few.

*As for people marrying older, this is definately a trend we are seeing (less so in christian churches were marriage ages are prob. lower then the general pop. because of the no sex before marriage thing).

People are marrying older for several reasons:

- It has become more necessary to have a universary degree to gain decent employment.

- Housing is less affordable and thus people stay in the family home longer.

- People want to focus on living first..going travelling, doing what they want to do before settling down.

- There is less need to marry, as defacto relationship are more common and acceptable within society.

- (And as someone else said) there is a longer life expectancy.

-------------------------------------------------------

In some parts of the world there are still arranged marriages and people still marry as young as 12.....so I guess things have to be taken into consideration with cultural relativism.

-LeeLee.

 

[Chan1976]

Several generations of dominating, feminist mothers produces effeminate men. The public schools are promoting it, and the churches having long ago stopped teaching God's law are guiltlly silent or tolerant.

Many young women have misplaced priorities nowadays and want to have a career etc before they settle down.

At first I thought the poster was just being sarcastic...
I had a career before I got married. Now I'm back in school so that I can further my career, and I don't see anything wrong with that.

 

[Redguard]

At first I thought the poster was just being sarcastic...
I had a career before I got married. Now I'm back in school so that I can further my career, and I don't see anything wrong with that.

Well, you need to straighten out your priorities, WOMAN!

 

[Rebekka]

Though I will point out, most of the heroines in Jane Austen books were thought to be confirmed spinsters.

Emma was 21 and said she'd never marry, and she claimed her position allowed her to do so without social implications. She just didn't realize that she was the center of gossip for her choice... Ask Mrs. Elton.

Elinor Dashwood is 20 at the start of Sense and Sensibility, and already thought to be a spinster. Marianne is 17 and it's feared she's on the same spinster path. Both had very negative experiences socially because of their unmarried status.

Anne Elliot, at 26 was a confirmed spinster. She had no social standing, other than that as a companion, "nurse," and future governess. Elizabeth Elliot was widely disgraced because of her unmarried status, and how it encouraged her father to spend on her lavishly, leading to their financial ruin.

When Mr. Collins proposes to Elizabeth, he points out that at her age (21), rejecting him was unwise because it was unlikely that at her age she'd ever be proposed to again. Jane is 23 when Bingley leaves, and part of what is bemoaned by her mother is that he was her last chance before a life as a governess.

So whlie those women did eventually marry in their 20s (though I think Anne was 31 when she married), a very open thread in the book is how all of the above are "past their prime" and most likely destined to be spinsters.

That said, they did remark that how Emma's dad was an old man at 55, and I do believe that in Sense and Sensibility, the father died at 59. The girls mother in Sense and Sensibility was described as an "old matron," and she was 40.

You're right about the social stigmas on being an old maid in those circles, and women became one in their mid twenties, which becomes clear when you look at Charlotte Lucas and Anne and Elizabeth Elliott. But I don't think the women mentioned became old maids as early as 21, even though it is hinted at by Mr. Collins. Not even Jane is seen as old, at 23; only the mother is obsessed with them marrying, but she isn't the most sensible person.

Several Austen women were older when they got married: Charlotte Lucas 27, Emma's governess Miss Taylor must have been over 30 (as she had been a governess and companion at Emma's house for over 16 years), and Anne Elliott 27 (not 31 - what would have been the reason for such a long engagement?). I didn't perceive Marianne at 17 to be on the spinster path; the only one marrying under 18 in the Austen books is Lydia, and her marriage is seen as a shameful one because she and Wickham lived together first. The Jane destined to become a governess is not Jane Bennett (who ends up marrying Bingley) but Jane Fairfax from Emma, who ends up marrying Frank Churchill.

In farming circles over here it has been the norm to marry in your late twenties or early thirties for the past couple of centuries at least. Perhaps kings and queens went into (arranged) marriages at extremely young ages, but the farmers didn't: they had to be financially independent first, and that took years. Also, when looking at marrying ages in that class, men and women aren't that far apart in age, on average.

CF is the first experience for me with people who got married very young. I think Americans marry younger than we do, and christian Americans even younger. In real life I don't know anyone who got married before 24, and only two who got married before 27. Teenage marriages have never happened in my family, not even in the 19th century.

So all in all, I think that marrying "late", as in your late twenties and early thirties, has been normal in the western world for a long time - at least a couple of centuries.