Salient writer Jessy Edwards explores the reasons why some young people are deciding to tie the knot—some would say—much too young.
“You’ve done too much, much too young,
You’re married with a kid when you could be having fun with me,
You done too much, much too young,
Now you’re married with a son when you should be having fun with me.”
—The Specials, ‘Too Much Too Young’, 1979.
They sung it in ’79, and we’re singing it even louder today.
It’s 2010 and we live in a secular, progressive society. We are Generation Y, with a passion for individualism and ourselves. We have contraception, not to mention a healthy cynicism for love. The average age for marriage in New Zealand is 28 years plus, and rising.
And yet we all seem to have those mates who have been dating since—it seems—forever. Now they’re deciding to get married. Many of us would react with a “what the fuck?” or at least an “oh my god”, but for some marriage is still the natural next step to take.
What is causing some young people to buck the current trend and decide to marry young? Is it just a small town phenomenon: religion, boredom, something in the water? Are small town folk still adhering to old-fashioned values? Just why, for God’s sake, are people doing it?
Is it weird now?
Information from Statistics New Zealand released just this month confirms that Kiwis are choosing to get hitched later. The median age for first marriage is 29.8 and 28.1 years for men and women, respectively.
In 1971 it was a different story—the majority of New Zealanders marrying for the first time were aged between 20 and 24. Today, based on recent statistics, only 16 per cent of men and 23 per cent of women decide to tie the knot that young.
And why would you? These days there isn’t much you can do in a marriage that you can’t do in a romantic relationship—unless you’re a devout Christian. As a result, we have seen the marriage rate decline to a mere third of what it was at its peak in 1971.
Statistics New Zealand suggests many factors have contributed to the decrease, such as a rise in de facto unions, a general trend towards delayed marriage, and an increasing number of Kiwis remaining single.
Sandra Johnson got married at age 21, and has been married almost 30 years. She agrees that times have changed—in the late 70s a lot of people did marry young in her hometown of Invercargill, and in other small towns all over New Zealand.
“I had just finished my nursing training when we got married, and in my class of nurses probably half of us got married soon after graduating,” she says.
“In small towns then we still held on to family values that had been instilled in by our parents. If you wanted to live with someone you got married, and had a family—just got on with it.”
These days, things are different. There is no norm to say that we should get married at any specific time, if ever. In fact, we are encouraged to pursue travel and careers before settling down. The women’s liberation movement was a contributing factor in the change in society’s attitudes to marriage.
Pill poppin’
Despite the fact the contraceptive pill became available 50 years ago, it was not readily available to single women from that time. Elaine Tyler May, Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Minnesota, says that of the 6.5 million women who were using the pill by 1964, the vast majority of them were married.
Johnson agrees that a lack of opportunities for women, both contraceptive and career-wise, led to more young marriages.
“Contraception was not so available as it is today, nor was abortion, so if someone got pregnant they got married. Smaller towns were more traditional in their values, travel was not as accessible and it was expensive, and job opportunities for girls were still a bit limited.”
Politics and gender roles also play a huge role in public attitudes towards marriage. For example, Susan Williams met the father of her children in the 1960s, when she was just 21. In the midst of the sexual revolution and women’s liberation movement, she made the conscientious decision not to get married, just to play her own part in the movement.
Now that women can choose to have a career, have sex without getting knocked up, and travel to almost anywhere in the world, marriage seems less and less relevant.
Melanie the escapee
It is hard to imagine Melanie Williams, 21, as a married farmer’s wife in Murchison—population 555 at the last census count. The tall, slender, red-head looks as though she has just stepped, gazelle-like, off the stage of a glamorous cabaret in New York. She studies architecture in Wellington, and plans to travel—but her life could have been very different if she had not broken up with her fiancée in Murchison at age 19.
“We had been going out a year and a half. I wasn’t planning on getting married young, I wanted to live together first and travel. He would have preferred that maybe I didn’t go to uni, and become a farm wife—which I didn’t want to do.”
When asked how she thinks her life would be different if she had ended up tying the knot, her reply resonates more with the sense of ‘dodged bullet’ rather than ‘lost love’.
“I would feel a little bit ripped off. Because I was still studying, I hadn’t achieved my various life goals that I wanted to pursue. Getting married, there is the expectation that you settle down and have children. It would have come too quickly.”
Melanie describes Murchison as a small farming community with very traditional values. A place with routine and ritual where it was fairly common for people to marry young. A place where you would go to a tea room and have a custard square.
“A lot of people were stuck in a previous time. Even the sayings they use… and the industries are less cutting edge. Even the way they dress, I really stood out. There was a strong sense of community and more traditional values, which translated in to marrying young.”
Small towns are like Greeks
Studies show that rural communities, like Murchison, do have more of a tradition of marrying young. The small town culture is similar to those cultures with a collective focus, such as Greeks or Indians, where there is an expectation to continue the family traditions or business and look after your elders.
City slickers can be compared to individualistic societies, of which most Anglo cultures are an example. These families encourage individual uniqueness and self-determination. Kids are cheered on to leave home, go flatting, and make a career for themselves. Marriage is postponed until you’ve done everything you want to do.
In collective societies marriage is an important marker in the life cycle, especially where there is a family business to continue. It signifies adulthood, and the succession of authority. If you’re not married by a certain stage in a collective culture, you become something else—a spinster, or that old guy who is always in the pub by himself.
Melanie noticed the difference between attitudes of those in Murchison to those in larger cities who are looking for love in the Hollywood sense. In Murchison, marriage is as much a model of practicality as it is of love, especially in a town where many girls leave because the main industry is farming.
“You’re going out with someone and, hey, there’s no one else, and you’re not gonna leave so you may as well marry them—to put it bluntly. Most of the people are paired up, and if they aren’t then you’ll just end up alone. There are a lot less girls in a community like that, so once they get a girl they stick with them.”
The Religious Model
Another reason people might marry young is religion. It is a common belief that the rule stipulating “no bonking before an eternal oath” has driven many a young Christian down the aisle.
In some countries sex before marriage is an offence punishable not just by eternal damnation, but also by a cane to the backside. Vice Magazine reports that “fornicators (people who fornicate but aren’t married) are flogged all over Asia”, with the number of lashes corresponding to how much of a fornicator you are. This is also the case in countries like Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, Nigeria and Pakistan.
Thankfully we live in a society where we can “fornicate” as much as we like without fear of not being able to sit for a week—depending on what you’re doing. But are some young Christians still getting married just so they can get in the sack?
Mike and his wife Laura are Christians from Feilding and Gisborne, respectively, who decided to tie the knot young. Mike was only 21 when they got married last year, but he insists that sex had hardly anything to do with their decision to get married.
“Because of our faith, Laura and I didn’t go for the ‘try before you buy’ option, you know, live together first,” he says.
“It’s difficult, but that’s how much we believe in our faith… It’s so much more to us than just following some ancient rule… Sex is just one—awesome—part of marriage, and so when we decided to get married, sex was just one part of our decision.”
So Christians like sex too, but they also like God—fair enough. But with an increasing trend for citizens of Western nations to marry later in life, it’s fair to ask what exactly the benefit is of marrying young, if it’s not to bonk.
The “We found each other young” Model
For Mike and Laura, marriage was just the logical next step in their relationship, he says, as well as a commitment in the eyes of God to be together forever.
“We felt we had reached a point in our relationship where we were ready to make a serious commitment to each other. It kinda felt like things had ‘plateau-ed’ and marriage was the next step for us.”
Catherine Sparks and her partner are both 21, non-religious and from Tauranga. They decided to get engaged a year ago. Cat says that from age 17, they were both pretty sure that they were going to get married.
“The idea of being married and sharing everything and making a family with him is so exciting. It is a lifelong commitment… but not in the eyes of God for me, as I am not religious,” she says.
“I have had the best role models in terms of a happy marriage, my parents have been together for almost 30 years and still madly in love.”
Nicola, 23, married her partner both as a “celebration of love”, but also as a legal recognition of their relationship. As the couple want to live overseas at some point, this aspect of marriage was also important to them. Being a non-religious couple, this was the deciding factor between getting a civil union, and getting married.
“Civil unions are not as widely recognised overseas, so that was something we weighed up before we decided between marriage and civil union. I know people who have had to get civilly united and then get married later on because of visa requirements.”
The reasons for young marriage are more plentiful than we might think. But whether because of religion, because you have good role models, or because you want to be legally united, the decision to get married boils down to one thing: love. These couples really like each other, and plan to do so for a really long time.
A really really really long time
Getting married young means that you have promised to spend the rest of your life together, which—if you are smoke-free, eat healthy, and exercise—is a really long time.
The life expectancy for New Zealanders is around 82 years for women and 78 years for men. If you marry at age 21, you can probably expect to be with that one person for over 50 years. Which is a bloody long time—a long enough time to set off a siren of cynicism in most young people. It’s so long that it makes me feel like lying in bed with a ciggie burning in one hand and the grease from a chicken drumstick dripping down the other.
Yet some people have gone the distance, and still believe in the institution of marriage whole-heartedly. Barbara Johnston, an Invercargill girl, was 20 when she met Gus, a central Southland farmer.
“We had only known each other a year when we married and now we are coming up 30 years of wedded bliss,” she says. “When it’s all boiled down, what we want out of marriage is love, commitment, security—and it doesn’t just happen, you have to keep working on it.”
Today, with divorce rates being what they are, some couples are choosing to go in to marriage with more ‘realistic’ vows. Instead of “till death do us part”, one might say “as long as I love you”.
Take our celebrity friend Peaches Geldof, British socialite and daughter of rock royalty Bob, as an example. She was married in Vegas at age 19 to 23-year-old musician Max. After six months the couple separated, with Peaches revealing that she was always realistic about her marriage.
“You can’t ignore divorce rates. Every friend of mine has parents who are divorced. I didn’t go into it with Max thinking, ‘This is going to last forever,’ but I did go into it thinking, ‘I love him right now and I know that I’ll continue to love him for a long while.”
Just a few months after her 23rd birthday, Britney Spears married her childhood friend at The Little White Chapel in Vegas, ironically the same chapel where Peaches was married. The marriage lasted 55 hours.
Perhaps marriage is not the infinite vow of love that it once was. Perhaps there is now room for young people to toy with the idea of marriage for as long as it suits them—much to the Pope’s delight, I’m sure.
The Verdict
Despite the changing attitudes to marriage, all of the young couples I spoke to absolutely believed they would be together forever. All admitted that married life is not going to be easy, but that they were committed to it.
It might be true that people from small towns get married younger, but small-town values have well equipped these young people for the long haul—AKA wedded bliss.
Though young marriage may not be for everyone, a background of community, parents who have been together forever, a small, strong support network and an optional dash of faith can’t hurt when one finally decides to take the leap. Just don’t expect to see me walking down the aisle any time soon.