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Christianity Today, August, 2009

COVER PACKAGE: Weighing Young Weddings

With Parents' Help

Newlyweds will need our financial help for a while.

David Gushee | posted 8/03/2009 10:05AM

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The following article is part of Christianity Today's cover package on "The Case for Early Marriage."

Mark Regnerus helps us to face certain unwelcome facts: Evangelical abstinence messaging is not stopping most young evangelicals from having sex; it is creating distorted expectations among Christians about the mind-blowing quality of marital sex. But Regnerus moves beyond these widely acknowledged problems and makes a new connection to our society's broader demographic reconfiguring. He is correct to note that Christians are joining the rest of the culture in delaying or rejecting marriage, and that in general, we have grown lax in our thinking and practices regarding marriage (and divorce, I would add).

As one who married right out of college at age 22, who has performed dozens of weddings for new college graduates, and whose daughter will marry next year right out of college at age 22, I heartily concur with Regnerus's thesis. I have seen it work, and I think it is far preferable to the prevailing alternatives.

But I agree with Regnerus that there is much to be done to make such young marriages likely candidates for success. Perhaps the most important practical shift will involve parental economic support for young married couples. It is clear that at least middle-class and upper-middle-class marriages are being delayed in large part because of the need for graduate education to obtain a decent job.

While Jeanie and I worked terribly hard in our early days of marriage to make ends meet while we were both in school, we also received timely financial help from our parents. Parents need to get past the myth that their 22-year-old newlywed children ought to be able to handle all of their expenses on their own.

But Regnerus is also right that, for the relatively young couple to have a chance at lifelong marriage, they must also address less tangible concerns. Extended adolescence and fewer role models mean that fewer 22-year-olds, especially men, are mature enough to even consider getting married. They may be more likely to make a foolish choice based on romantic feelings, sexual attraction, or a misguided sense of God's will. But Regnerus is right in suggesting that even imperfect motivations or an imperfect choice (for all motivations and partners are imperfect) can be overcome through a recovery of the toweringly important concept of marriage as a binding, sacred covenant before God.

As marriage collapses or is redefined beyond recognition in our culture, marriage as God intended it is becoming a profoundly countercultural reality enjoyed by a relatively small percentage of the American population. They will know we are Christians by our (marital) love.

David Gushee, Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, and author of Getting Marriage Right (Baker, 2004)

Related Elsewhere:

This article responds to the cover package on "The Case for Early Marriage."

Previous Christianity Today articles about marriage include:

My Top Five Books on Marriage | By Charles W. Tackett, CEO of PursuingHeart.com (May 7, 2009)

Choosing Celibacy | How to stop thinking of singleness as a problem. (September 12, 2008)

Practicing Chastity | A lifelong spiritual discipline for singles and marrieds. Lauren F. Winner reviews Dawn Eden's The Thrill of the Chaste. (March 15, 2007)

30 and Single? It's Your Own Fault | There are more unmarried people in our congregations than ever, and some say that's just sinful. (June 21, 2006)

Sex in the Body of Christ | Chastity is a spiritual discipline for the whole church. (May 13, 2005)

Reflections: Sex, Love, and Marriage | Quotations to stir the heart and mind (February 1, 2003)

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August 2009, Vol. 53, No. 8

Comments (8)

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Displaying 1–5 of 8 comments

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kian

August 10, 2009 9:24pm

If you're old enough to get married, you're old enough to support yourself.

MHC

August 05, 2009 7:40pm

Helping young married couples financially and teaching them responsibility are not exclusive from one another. Some parents can help, and do. Some can and choose not to. Some just cannot. We have known and counseled couples here in Malaysia who have had all levels of that experience. Add to that the fact that in the Asian culture family members are far more interconnected than we are in America. Parents help their children; children help each other; and children help their aged parents. To the comment that Genesis is clear about children leaving, may I just point that that interpretation is, itself, quite Western. For example, when Isaac married Rebeka the Bible says he brought her to his mother's tent. The extended family unit was absolutely vital for survival. Whether adult married children stay with their parents or not is not the most important issue. The attitudes they have toward each other are far more important.

elly

August 05, 2009 1:41pm

I'm not on board with this one. My husband and I were 21 and 23 and I still a student when we were married 3 years ago, and things haven't been easy financially, but by being patient, we're able to provide for all our needs - and even a few luxuries. We don't have cell phones, we don't have satellite tv, most of our furniture is second-hand (or from the curb), we don't have a car (okay, that one we DO really miss having) we don't eat out often, we wait for movies to hit the $5 cheap DVD bin instead of going to the theater...and that's how we get by without having to ask the parents for cash, and at the end of the month the bills are paid. Be responsible, realistic, and patient, and as long as at least one of you is working and earning a bit more than minimum wage, you should be fine.

lewsta

August 04, 2009 12:37pm

This concept is anti-biblical at its root. Read Genesis, and Jesus' recounting of it: as it was in the beginning, a man shall LEAVE his Father and Mother, and a woman LEAVE her HOME........ the root of the desxcribed problem (accurately so) is that parents have utterly failed to impart to their children the character, and skills, of being responsible, foresightful, industrious..... by the time a young man is fourteen, he ought to be able to self-govern, make wise choices in business, have at least the beginnings of some marketable skill, and have learned the consequences of bad decisions and how to avoid them (the decisions, that is, not the consequences thereof). Instead, our writer favours such young couples being supported, at least partially, by their parents? Nonsense!! I've known young couples to start out in a cheap rented duplex, working at McDonalds or the Bux, driving a pizza delivery car, placing signs for real estate developers, fixing cars or bicycles at home.... whatever

Rachel

August 04, 2009 11:32am

This might work a little for some people - for those upper middle-class people who have enough money to support their various sets of newly-wed children, or who have an only child and won't create dissension among siblings, or whose child's only impediment to a successful marriage is monetary. How about teaching the virtue of temperance to all of one's children, married or unmarried, and coaching them to make mature choices with the money they do have when or if they marry?

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