The Case for Getting Married Young | Hacker News Reader

The Case for Getting Married Young

theatlantic.com

40 pointssaadmalik0159 comments

Color me unconvinced of marriage per se.

Literally zero of the things in the author's marriage are necessarily attributable to the marriage itself, or necessarily consequences of marriage for that matter.

And never mind co-habitating, all of the transformative stuff could have happened regardless while simply living with an upbeat roommate.

"The case for living with or near positive people that share similar ideals" probably wouldn't get as many eyeballs, but it would be more to-the-point and true, I think.

Maybe I should write that article anyway. I've had roommates literally my entire life, sharing a room with my brother until college, then dorming with one guy, then seven people, then two guys, then three girls, and now that I've graduated I live in a huge victorian-era house and rent to three friends (my "rent" therefore is free, sans house upkeep). I've been fortunate enough to never have a bad roommate, and communal living can be a lot of fun, significant other or not.

I think living and working alongside loving and caring people is great, but I think restricting it to marriage is maybe a tad myopic. I love all micro-societies and think they have very similar values.

From the article: "...[A]mong the women that report being "highly satisfied" with their lives, 29 percent are cohabitating, 33 percent are single, and 47 percent are married."

That would seem to suggest that "upbeat roommates" are, on average, worse for women than singledom or marriage, no? Your personal experience notwithstanding, the statistics (at least for this claim) are on the side of the article.

No it wouldn't. This statistic is highly misleading and the article author is basically lying by putting it in the article. If there are twice as many women who are married than there are those who are cohabitating then cohabitating is on average better than marriage.

I'm guessing she took that from this graphic:

http://twentysomethingmarriage.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/0...

Note that 33 + 29 + 47 = 109, not 100. Her wording makes it sound like they computed from one pool of "very satisfied" people the amount that were single, cohabitating and married, but the numbers in the infographic don't support that interpretation. It looks like instead they separated the groups by gender and status, and then tallied up the number that said they were "very satisfied" which I don't think is vulnerable to your rebuttal.

I made a little graph of how I think this works: http://i.imgur.com/2rWGO4y.png

Did you base it on any data?

You don't have to be married to be in a committed relationship. A large percent of couples (> 30%) in Scandinavian countries for example never enter into a marriage, or people might marry 5, 6, 7, 8 years after they're first together. In that sense the marriage is a capstone, but there is no difference between that couple and a couple that got married right away and have been together for 8 years.

In that sense the marriage is a capstone, but there is no difference between that couple and a couple that got married right away and have been together for 8 years.

I always laugh when I hear this. People also say "Marriage is just a piece of paper."

My answer is "tell that to judge when you want to get out of a marriage."

Does a marriage certificate make your relationship more serious? No. Are you entering into a legal contract when you get married? Yes.

Does that legal contract affect your happiness? In general, no. If your culture tells you so, perhaps.

Sociologists study the difference between cohabitation and marriage. Here's one paper that's recently been making the rounds among economists:

http://people.ku.edu/~dginther/working%20papers/Marriage_spe...

What's this, proof by Sweden? :) This odd collection of facts seems wholly disconnected from the content of the article.

The point being that he's confusing a committed relationship with having a marriage certificate. In Europe, of couples with children, > 30% are cohabiting. In Iceland it's > 60%. Do you suggest that 60% of cohabiting Icelanders are unhappy because they don't have a marriage certificate on hand?

I suggest that American results are more pertinent to Americans than European results are, and vice-versa. Did you see this article from a few days ago?

http://www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/...

>there is no difference between that couple and a couple that got married right away and have been together for 8 years //

Anything to back up that assertion?

I don't think he needs to back that up. I mean there isn't a whole lot of difference between an amorous, unmarried couple who cohabitates together or an amorous, married couple who cohabitates together. In the US, other than a document from the state you were married in, there's just about zero difference, other than societal views.

(BTW, I know my above doesn't apply to homosexual couples. I'm purposely ignoring it right now because it doesn't suit my explanation. Those are issues that need to be resolved by SCOTUS.)

Maybe societal views and expectations are an important factor in stability.

What about vows? In the UK, at least, it's normal for a wedding to include vows - promises if you will - of how the couple will devote themselves to one another, sacrifice for one another, et cetera.

The institution of marriage has at it's centre the continuation of family whilst co-habitation does not. Marriage is also a lifelong commitment, co-habitation is not.

It's maybe like saying there's no difference between soldiers who've vowed to serve and protect people and if necessary lay down their lives doing so and hired mercenaries who're doing a protection detail.

I got married at 18. I joined the Army, did two tours in Iraq, came back home, went to college and got a job as an engineer. I couldn't have done any of that without my wife.

I hesitate to generalize, but in my particular case getting married early was a great decision.

Note that you can't really say with certainty you couldn't have that without marriage (as you can have a relationship with someone without marrying her). In addition, there's also many single men who've done the same without marriage.

In my family's culture (Russian Protestant), getting married early is not only common, but expected. My wife and I got married when I was 24, which was almost shocking in a community where the average was around 20. I've had many awkward conversation (of the "I will pray for you" type) with my grandmother, who sincerely believed I was making a huge mistake by choosing school instead of marriage.

Personally, I feel like I got married at the perfect time in my life (I was done with school, had a great job lined up, etc), and have never regretted that decision. My wife helped me re-focus on the important things, and inspired me to pursue my dream of starting a company.

However, the majority of my Russian friends who were married in their very early 20s have seemingly stagnated in their professional (and even personal) pursuits. Most were married either before or during college, and have either dropped out or are pursuing their education on a very limited part-time basis.

My experience is completely anecdotal, but it seems like getting married early (18-21) has significant drawbacks. Perhaps the sweet spot is somewhere between there and the current late-20s average.

In 2009, my Great-Opa (1907-2010) asked me why it took my (then girlfriend) and I so long to decide to date and consider marriage, having met online 8 years prior and only 6mo earlier decided to start long distance dating. He met his first wife in his village around the age of 20 and was married 5 weeks later. And at his "advanced age" at the time, the village had been concerned he and his wife weren't going to find anyone to marry. She was 16 or 17 at the time.

Even at his advanced age, he had a great sense of humor. As we were leaving, he pulled my girlfriend aside and said with a twinkle in his eye, "Next time you come back, bring your husband!"

I'm yet another example of a successful early marriage (I was 22 and she was 19). She finished her undergrad and masters degrees after we married and we also started "with nothing but each other". After 30 years, I still can't imagine being with anyone else ... it makes life so much better if you have someone to share your happiness with - and if there are two of you to tackle life's problems together.

Does your wife know that you still can imagine being with someone else?

No ... it's a very well-kept secret. One that I apparently kept even from myself, but couldn't be repressed from my right pinkie and left pointer fingers.

(sorry dear)

Causality dilemma? People who get married young are different from those getting married later. The age at which people get married is more a reflection of a life style, than what drives a particular life style; which is what this article suggests.

Here's libertarian economist Bryan Caplan on the difficulty in disputing the causal relationship between marriage and success.

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/03/22_short_argume....

He doesn't talk about the timing per se, but I think a lot of the same arguments apply. Certainty, if you believe that marriage causes success, it's not that great a leap to think that earlier marriage causes more success earlier (with the obvious caveats about getting married when you're 12.)

It's a hell of an argument and it matches my own personal experience of getting married at 23 when I we had nothing and built two successful careers before moving on to parenthood (our daughter is two).

No stats or anything, though. I'd like to see some well structured research on this, as marriage itself is a fascinating part of our human culture.

"Unmarried twenty-somethings are more likely to be depressed, drink excessively, and report lower levels of satisfaction than their married counterparts"

Let's all say it together: Correlation is not causation.

As I posted elsewhere, you might be interested in some strong evidence for the causal relationship as described by economist Bryan Caplan:

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/03/22_short_argume....

Does he address survivor bias elsewhere?

I've seen elsewhere that financial troubles often herald divorce. If the only marriages that can last are ones where someone's making a premium, then of course you'll see one.

I'm sorry, but that seems to be about earnings, not about happiness or drinking habits. Am I missing something? (It also says that women experience a penalty, whereas the original article asserts positive correlations for both men and women.)

The alternative theory being (1) that marriage causes men to invest more in their jobs and women to invest more in children, but (2) that the correlation between women's marriage with happiness, and between the historical decline of marriage and raising of children with increasing female unhappiness, is acausal?

Are you attempting to make an argument of the form: A is correlated with B, and A causes C, therefore A causes B?

Unfortunately, making understanding the real world is not easily reducible to propositional logic. Since you seem interested in pedantry, the technical thing to say is that you must use Bayesian inference and reasonable priors.

In this case, explanations for A and C being correlated without A causing C are strongly related to explanations for why A and B might be correlated without A causing B. (E.g., people who get married are predisposed to be successful.) Evidence, which necessarily can't be in the form of a randomized controlled experiment and yet can still be very strong, that A in fact causes B greatly reduces ones belief that A might not be causing C. My previous comment was asking whether you would defend alternatives that I find to be very unlikely, like a hypothetical predisposition for people to both get married and be happy but which is completely independent from the increase in earnings.

Since we're talking about belief rather than what we can prove, I think it's extremely plausible for the causation in question to go the other way. Given the choice, would you rather date / marry someone who was happy and healthy or someone who was depressed and drinks too much?

All science is about belief. Randomized controlled trials are useful not because they convey mathematical proof, but because they give strong evidence for beliefs.

Your question doesn't help. For the sake of argument we have granted that marriage causes men to earn more money. And yet, I would still prefer to marry someone who was earning more money (or who had the potential to earn more in the future), all else being equal. This preference doesn't dispute the causation.

It's fun to watch people dismiss a strong statistical signal when it disagrees with their prior beliefs

Do you have a hypothesis why "happiness" would correlate with marriage without their being any causative relationship?

Correlation does suggest causation though. Isn't it generally sound to assume causation until the position can be falsified?

The causation could easily be backwards. Who wants to marry a depressed, unsatisfied drinker?

> Isn't it generally sound to assume causation until the position can be falsified?

Not really, no. Would you assume causation in the case of cereal consumption typically increasing 30% on the first Tuesday after a heavy rainfall? There are many similarly insane correlations that you wouldn't be so quick to assume causation about. It's biased to assume causation (based solely on statistics) when you want it to make intuitive sense.

>Would you assume causation in the case of cereal consumption typically increasing 30% on the first Tuesday after a heavy rainfall? //

I can't really conjure an imaginary causation because for your imagined one [?] I'm not sure what your claim is - do you mean 30% more breakfast cereal is eaten (as opposed to purchased) on the Tuesday following heavy rain, in all areas (globally??). If it were a local statistic to the USA then one could argue that when the weather is bad people stay in at the weekends and drink more, then they miss breakfast on a Monday because they're hungover, then on Tuesday they resolve to better health and so eat breakfast cereals, they of course give up on Wednesday on the whole and the cycle repeats.

There are no real causes for imagined realities so there is no gain in asking - or answering - the question if it is indeed made up.

It's entirely plausible that there is an explanation for a similarly absurd sounding but real statistic that relies on causation.

>you wouldn't be so quick to assume //

You're right, I try not assume much but FWIW I only asked if it were sound or not, not if one were likely to do it.

You say it's "biased", I don't understand what you mean. If you always assumed a causative chain when first encountering [direct, gross, longitudinal] correlation where would the bias lie?

Because unhappy people aren't fun to be around, so people don't choose to marry them? Or because depressed people are negative about their relationships, just like anything else, so don't see them as worth pursuing? It's really not hard to conjecture mechanisms for a correlation.

Absolutely not as assuming causation implies you know the directionality of the relationship. Cancer correlates pretty well with old age but you'd be pretty silly to assume that it causes old age.

By "assume causation" I meant "assume there is a causative link", which for cancer appears to be true to a degree. So if I specify and say "is it sound to assume a causative link [without specifying the cause and effect direction or that link] where a strong direct correlation is observed" (or similar wording) would you go for that?

There are many examples of course to prompt this clarification - fatness causes over-eating, bruises cause people to get hit, et cetera. There are also likely many examples where the direction of the causation is not clear - poverty and [minor] theft say.

Can you [or anyone] give an example where a causative relationship as a first hypothesis is ludicrous without questioning direction of the relationship?

I'd at least want the "can't get a date" group to be separated from the "had the option of marriage, but didn't pursue it" group.

I agree. Someone already in that situation will not be less depressed or more satisfied just by getting married. If anything, that's likely to make it worse in most cases.

This article is a statistical catastrophe. Sample bias is just the most blatant of many problems.

She might have a different perspective if she'd interviewed a few (dozen) folks who married young and wrong, before they had matured enough to really know themselves or their spouse.

The average age at which a woman first gives birth (25.7) is now earlier than the average age of first marriage (26.5), a phenomenon Knot Yet calls "The Great Crossover" and which brings with it all of the well-documented concerns that surround the rearing of children outside of wedlock.

I wonder what these values were historically. I just don't think that those two numbers are ever too terribly far apart.

I mean, if a unmarried woman got pregnant in 1950 she would be married probably within the 9 months before the baby was born and the lack of birth control historically could have lead to many pregnancies immediately following marriage. Both of these would push the first child age to be later than first marriage.

Although, logically, one would think the advent and superfluousness of birth control would prevent unwed pregnancies and allow married couples to wait on having children (should they desire to wait), driving the first child age way up. But that's not the case - intriguing.

I guess in current times people have the means (and typically the lack of social scorn) to wait to get married and don't have to just because of an accidental pregnancy.

as someone who got married at 21, I can honestly say it's the decision I'm most happy about in my life so far.

However, we had been together for over 7 years by that point and I'd be very wary of advocating getting married young to everyone, as I know at least here in the UK there seem to be quite a few teenage/early-twenties couples who decide to get married after a few months to a year, and end up divorced 6 months later. The facts in this article could be also taken as very misleading, especially considering that the happiness survey they took made no mention of age.

> However, we had been together for over 7 years by that point

Just for curiosity... did you start your relationship with 14 y/o? I guess playing video games was all I cared when I was this age :D

13 actually - funnily enough it started with video games; we met on Runescape!

My parents' relationship did. :) It's something like 40 years they've been together.

> as someone who got married at 21, I can honestly say it's the decision I'm most happy about in my life so far.

One might hope that statement was true no matter what age you got married at.

> One student told him that her parents "want my full attention on grades and school." But such advice reflects an outdated reality, one in which a college degree was almost a guarantee of a good job that would be held for a lifetime.

I really don't think the outdated-ness of this advice has anything to do with the value of a college degree.The modern open dating offers lots of varied sex to those who can navigate it well. This seems like way more time intensive, especially in terms of displacing constructive activities like studying, than a committed relationship.

I think this is kind of a false issue. I got married later, but it was just because it didn't happen until then - I'd guess that that is usually the reason, rather than meeting what feels like a soulmate at age 22 and dumping her because you'd rather get married at 32.

I was married at 22, wife was 21. Worked for me!

Beyond that, what can you say? If marriage is wrong for you personally, all the statistics in the world wouldn't and shouldn't convince you otherwise. Your not wanting to get married might be correlated with your being on the wrong side of those statistics.

If marriage is right for you, I doubt this kind of article is how you would find out.

A better article would have listed pros and cons. For instance, pro: the pool of candidates is larger when you're younger; con: the pool of candidates is better when it's smaller. Or whatever is really going on under the numbers. That would be interesting to know.

This is also my experience: I was 22, she was 19 (married 10 years now). We finished school (3 BS, 1 MS, and a PhD between the two of us) and worked before having kids. I feel like we got married before we were each too stubborn and set in our ways to change. We met in the middle and grew into a single individual, greater than the sum of its parts. My (non-scientific) feeling is that in general, those I know who waited to get married had a more difficult time assuming a new identity that incorporates another individual.

Anyone else find it interesting that the author is from Liberty University?

'29 percent are cohabitating, 33 percent are single, and 47 percent are married'

And that is total of 109%. How's that?

One thing that the article did not touch upon is that there seem to be health advantages for children who are born of young parents - they have better telomere length [1] and possibly greater longevity. When you add to that general issue of gene damage over lifetime and how it can impact the children we conceive as we age, it seems that nature favors young parents.

The problem is that our economic system favors delaying child-bearing in an unprecedented way. I wonder what it would be like if we inverted incentives and encouraged people to have kids very young, provided social and economic support, and a ramp up to high impact careers as their kids approached their teens.

[1] Paternal age at birth is an important determinant of offspring telomere length - http://hmg.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/24/3097.long

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