Why the focus on getting married young?

If men marry within the church, soon after a mission, statistically, it increases the odds that they will stay active in the church. For women, the statistics follow that trend — but more stay active even if single.

Peolle who marry young, get pulled into the cultural expectations of starting a family immediately and having a larger family. They stay socially connected within the LDS culture.

Young marriage leads to increased tithing, more volunteer hours, and more availability of women to fulfill callings that don’t fit a working-mom life.

When singles get to 30 without getting married, the rate of inactivity drastically increases and there are less years of fertility.

I actually think that a big part of it is avoiding run-ins with chastity issues. There are studies that say that men peak sexually (produce the most testosterone) at around age 18. The problem? Premarital sex is verboten. The solution? Get married young in order to have sex. I’ve heard this explained in no uncertain terms from MPs, of course that’s just their opinion as well, it seems to be a popular one. Marriage is how you obtain “permission” to have sex.

If you’re looking for more than that:

1) Fertility is fleeting. We waited to have children just to find out that we weren’t very fertile after we started trying to have children. In the end we got lucky but those first few years of marriage could have made for a few more years at trying to have children. Taken from webmd:

Fertility peaks in your 20s. Most women hit their fertile peak between the ages of 23 and 31, though the rate at which women conceive begins to dip slightly in their late 20s. Around age 31, fertility starts to drop more quickly — by about 3 percent per year — until you hit 35 or so. From there, the decline accelerates. “The average 39-year-old woman has half the fertility she had at 31, and between 39 and 42, the chances of conceiving drop by half again,” says Adamson. Approximately one in four women age 35 or older have trouble getting pregnant.

The average age for the first marriage has trended upward in both the secular world and the church. If people wait until later in life to get married and they absolutely cannot have sex before marriage they would be significantly reducing the number of children they can have, which is a big focus in current church culture.

2) Competition. There’s also pressure to get married to a member but there are only so many members. I’m not sure at what age desperation starts to sink in but it can be one of those self-feeding deals. People get married young because they don’t want to be “stuck” being single. People feel like they are “stuck” being single because everyone they know is getting married young. The competition is cutthroat because the dating pool is artificially limited. I get the feeling that the person that ages out of a singles ward (turns 31) may get the impression that their opportunity has forever past. The rest of the world is just starting to think about marriage while members of the church are starting to write it of as a possibility. It’s crazy.

Considering the number of never-married late-30s women I’ve heard saying they still just need to get to some nebulously defined point in their career before “letting a relationship get in the way,” I think it’s an uphill battle anyway.

Disclaimer: I am not much into conspiracy theories. I don’t believe that organizations such as the Church typically set out in directions in order to pull off elaborate shell-games.

My thoughts: I believe what drives the marry-young push is that the Church believes sincerely that marriage/family is THE divine organization; an organization inseparably intertwined with eternal priesthood, and an organization that will outlive the Church itself. Artificially delaying marriage past a person’s child-rearing prime is devaluing the institution (in the Church’s view, as I read it).

I think there’s also a very human piece of this. Nearly all of the people stressing marry and reproduce young did it that way themselves. It worked for them.

I think this recent newspaper article gives some good insight into this general mindset (http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865645017/Elder-Ballard-speaks-at-60th-anniversary-commemoration-of-Churchs-first-single-adult-stake.html?pg=2” class=”bbcode_url”>http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865645017/Elder-Ballard-speaks-at-60th-anniversary-commemoration-of-Churchs-first-single-adult-stake.html?pg=2).

Presiding over the devotional was Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who delivered timely counsel to his young listeners about courtship, marriage, and what has become a recurring theme in his recent addresses, staying in the boat and holding on with both hands, what President Brigham Young referred to as “the Old Ship Zion,” a metaphor for the Church of Jesus Christ…

“My counsel to you tonight, young men, … is that you learn, if you haven’t already figured it out, how to ask a young woman for a date. I don’t know where this ‘hanging out’ idea came from. It didn’t come from the First Presidency or the Quorum of the Twelve, I can tell you that!”…He said, “You may think we are old and don’t quite ‘get it,’” then added wryly, “We really don’t quite get ‘hanging out.’”

He said the Church leaders do understand a young man inviting a young woman on a date, “and we understand that as you visit with each other you come to know one another, and in the process of that you will accelerate the next main responsibility that lies ahead of you in your lives.”…That next great quest, he said, is to find a companion.

He spoke of his courtship of Barbara Bowen, “to tell you that I practiced what I’m trying to preach.” He became aware of her at a university dance he attended three days after he came home from his mission. He told of having to wait in a line of suitors, but he persisted in asking her for dates…seven children later, 43 grandchildren, we just had our 74th great-grandchild. But it did not happen ‘hanging out!’”

He declared that had he been alone in life, he could not have accomplished what he has with Sister Ballard at his side…“Don’t let your studies, don’t let anything deter you from seeking your eternal companion,” he urged. “You hear this a lot, and the reason we are anxious about it is because we are going to need you. We have 3,174 stakes in the Church. We have 558 districts. We have 30,018 wards and branches. We need leaders who have devotion and affection and a commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. We need leaders who are in the boat and are so committed they will never fall out, to continue to move the work of the Lord forward.”

Based on this description it sounds like being married in the temple is seen as just part of being a faithful and committed Mormon and supposedly doing your duty and adult Church members that are single or divorced are apparently regarded as at best a lesser caliber of Mormon not fit to be in the stake presidency, bishopric, high council, etc. and at worst complete failures at Mormonism. And if it worked alright for Ballard to get right to work on finding his eternal companion just three days after returning from his mission back in the 1950s then I guess the general idea is why wouldn’t the same approach work just as well for young men nowadays instead of sitting around playing video games, studying, or whatever else is supposedly not nearly as important and urgent to achieve ASAP?

I think to some extent these traditional expectations are all many of these Church leaders have ever really known because of their own limited background and experience so it makes them uneasy to see Church members deviate from the typical LDS life script for very long. Personally I think more Church leaders need to recognize that it’s not the 1950s anymore, times have changed, and step back and ask themselves why it is typically so much harder for converts and single adult members to remain active in the Church year-after-year than it typically is for lifelong members that are married to another active member. To me it looks almost like the Amish where if people get used to the outside world to the point that they are not afraid of it then there’s a good chance they will never return to what is in all honesty a relatively restrictive and harsh way of life at this point.

I remember my Utah grandpa (He would of been mid 90ish by now) literally went to friend to engagement with his wife. Some other guy ask for her hand in marriage earlier that day too! It wasn’t rare to have a middle ground in those days.

Even in Mormon standards that never happens. Culturally you can’t do that anymore. There are steps to this now. You would be so out of touch if you did that.

I remember when my multi millionaire CEO Bishop flip out when he heard about “no hanging out”. He loved it. Now he has the ammunition to use against us. He would rant in sacrament meeting on how we weren’t doing the work of the lord. He would give RMs a dead line when to be married. He told every RM it’s their “priesthood duty” to go on a date once a week. If they weren’t, they were failing their priesthood responsibility. If the marriage wasn’t happening it was the guys fault and never the women.

Obviously in hindsight it’s no ones fault. It’s just how it is.