The Pressure to Marry at a Certain Age

505 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Effects of sociology on life

Beginning at a very young age we are programmed to believe that our lives are on a schedule, and the goal of all is the same, to meet someone, fall in love, get married, buy a house, have children, raise a family, grow old together and live happily ever after, ‘til death do us part. With this in mind, if for some reason this plan does not happen within a certain period, it becomes an issue, and questions from others often arise. For example, if a person is not married by the age of thirty, then “something must be wrong”, or if a woman has not had a child by the age of thirty-five, her “biological clock is ticking, and she should get busy“. With this being said, you could say that marriage is still the end goal for most couples, because of this pre-planned notion of how everyone’s life should be, and the pressures implied when the plan doesn‘t happen.

On the other hand, the world has changed, and people are changing right along with it. The old-fashioned pre-planned way of thinking often resulted in failed marriages, simply because people married the first to come along, not for th...

Show More
Related

  • Gender Roles In Stephanie Coontz's The Way We Never Were?

    944 Words  | 2 Pages

    Marriage has changed more over the last 30 years than the previous 3,500 years. As

    Read More

  • Traditional Wives verses Stay at Home Wives

    1063 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Like most wives of our generation, we’d contemplated eventual widowhood but never thought we’d end up divorced” (Hekker 278). Traditional wives married for love and to follow th...

    Read More

  • Janie's Perfect Marriage In Their Eyes Were Watching God

    776 Words  | 2 Pages

    Human beings are not isolated individuals. We do not wander through a landscape of trees and dunes alone, reveling in our own thoughts. Rather, we need relationships with other human beings to give us a sense of support and guidance. We are social beings, who need talk and company almost as much as we need food and sleep. We need others so much, that we have developed a custom that will insure company: marriage. Marriage assures each of us of company and association, even if it is not always positive and helpful. Unfortunately, the great majority of marriages are not paragons of support. Instead, they hold danger and barbs for both members. Only the best marriages improve both partners. So when we look at all three of Janie’s marriages, only her marriage to Teacake shows the support, guidance, and love.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Drew Magary's The Postmortal

    1199 Words  | 3 Pages

    In this era we live in, we are brought up to think divorce is bound to happen. According to The American Psychological Association, “about 40 to 50 percent of married couples in the United States divorce” and “the divorce rate for subsequent marriages is even higher.” Many adults decide that it is less messy to just live with one another rather than actually get married. This is beginning to drive the rates of marriage down. Many have speculated that relationships will continue to evolve, especially if the human lifespan continues expand. Fiction writers such as Drew Magary and real world scientists such as Aubrey de Grey have explored this very topic of relationships.

    Read More

  • The Persuasive Essay: What Is Marriage?

    1307 Words  | 3 Pages

    “A recent Pew Research Center survey showed that 39 percent of respondents believe marriage is becoming obsolete. And as far as the issue of living together vs. marriage, 55 percent of respondents felt that it was a good thing or made no difference if a couple lived together without being married.” The older generations are surprised at how different the newest generation is. They are the ones fighting against the new generation. They do not want change and are not prepared for it. It is different than what they grew up with and it’s breaking what they have always known.

    Read More

  • The Risks of Premarital Cohabitation

    2936 Words  | 6 Pages

    It is not a new thought that today’s young Americans are facing issues, problems and difficult decisions that past generations never had to question. In a world of technology, media, and a rough economy, many young adults in America are influenced by a tidal wave of opinions and life choices without much relevant advice from older generations. The Generation Y, or Millennial, group are coming of age in a confusing and mixed-message society. One of these messages that bombard young Americans is the choice of premarital cohabitation. Premarital cohabitation, or living together without being married (Jose, O’Leary & Moyer, 2010), has increased significantly in the past couple of decades and is now a “natural” life choice before taking the plunge into marriage. Kennedy and Bumpass (2008) state that, “The increase in cohabitation is well documented,such that nearly two thirds of newlyweds have cohabited prior to their first marriage”(as cited in Harvey, 2011, p. 10), this is a striking contrast compared with statistics of our grandparents, or even parents, generations. It is such an increasing social behavior that people in society consider cohabitation “necessary” before entering into marriage. Even more, young Americans who choose not to cohabitate, for many different reasons, are looked upon as being “old-fashioned”, “naive”, or “unintelligent”. This pressure for young people to cohabitate before marriage is a serious “modern-day” challenge; especially when given research that states, “... most empirical studies find that couples who cohabited prior to marriage experience significantly higher odds of marital dissolution than their counterparts who did not cohabit before marriage”, stated by Jose (2010) and colleagues (as c...

    Read More

  • The Differences Between Dorian Solot’s and Stephanie Coontz’s Essays

    1619 Words  | 4 Pages

    Is marriage really important? There is a lot of controversy over marriage and whether it is eminent. Some people believe it is and some people believe it is not. These opposing opinions cause this controversy. “On Not Saying ‘I do’” by Dorian Solot explains that marriage is not needed to sustain a relationship or a necessity to keep it healthy and happy. Solot believes that when a couple gets married things change. In “For Better, For Worse”, Stephanie Coontz expresses that marriage is not what is traditional in society because it has changed and is no longer considered as a dictator for people’s lives. The differences between these two essays are the author’s writing style and ideas.

    Read More

  • Summary Arlene Skolnick Ground For Marriage

    521 Words  | 2 Pages

    While marriage is still quite alive, the rates are definitely declining. It is interesting to distinguish the qualities and characteristics of relationships between generations. At some point, marriage would succeed or fail depending on happiness and satisfaction of couples. Today, there is high expectation between couples. Arlene Skolnick talks about a few different topics one of them being “ For better and for Worst”. For this topic Arlene Skolnick talks about a sociologist Jesse Bernard argument that every marriage consists of two other marriages, his and hers, and how marriages typically favors men rather than the women. He sates that that the stresses that are experienced in a marriage come from expectations between the husband and wife. Anther topic Arlene Skolnick talks about is “Marriage is Movie, Not a Snapshot”. For this topic Arlene Skolnick talks a little about Heroclitis the ancient Greek philosopher saying of how “you can never step into the same river twice, because it is always moving” and how this is smaller to a marriage. Arlene Skolnick talks about a few different studies that where done over a short period of time demonstrating that families, marriages, and people can change over

    Read More

  • The Importance of Communication in Marriage

    2216 Words  | 5 Pages

    Throughout the last half of the century, our society has watched the divorce rate of married couples skyrocket to numbers previously not seen. Although their has been a slight decline in divorce rates, “half of first marriages still were expected to dissolve before death.” (Stacy, 15, 1991) Whatever happened to that meaningful exchange of words, “until death do us part,” uttered by the bride and groom to each other on their wedding day? What could have been the cause of such inflated divorce rates? Perhaps young married couples are not mature enough to be engaged in such a trremendous responsibility, or, maybe, the couples really do not know each other as well as they thought. Possibly, they have been blinded by infatuation rather than by true love, or, quite simply, the couples mistakenly have different relational expectations.

    Read More

  • Marriage as an Outdated Institution

    1061 Words  | 3 Pages

    is the most usual in which a man and a woman unite themselves in the

    Read More

  • The Development of Marriage

    999 Words  | 2 Pages

    Marriage has gone through many changes throughout its history. It's earliest forms date back to the story of creation. It has developed a great deal since then. It is a simple fact that men and women can not survive without each other. Marriage is part of the created natural order, we were meant to be together.

    Read More

  • Essay On Successful Marriage In Society

    1207 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Rereading Americas Chapter Harmony at Home: The Myth of the Modern Family, the ideas of both past and present meanings of what a family truly is, are brought to light with some staggering statistics. “Among Millennials those born after 1980- only 30% say having a successful marriage is “one of the most important things in life””. An in depth look at this statistic raises questions about the mindset of this new generation and the role of marriage in the development of future generations. Today’s modern view of traditional marriage is one that most affiliate with in a new, constantly changing society, an almost ancient idea from 1950’s American homes. Gender roles have also changed as women become more relevant in today’s work force making an extreme impact on the consecrated relationship of marriage. This inevitably changes parenting and the way children are raised.

    Read More

  • Pros And Cons Of Getting Married Vs Single Life

    1104 Words  | 3 Pages

    The debate on whether to get married or stay single has been raging for a long while, with both sides of the coin having their own pros and cons regarding the matter. Many proponents of either marriage or single life have strong individual convictions, and it is difficult to reach a definitive objective conclusion. Is the married individual happier than his/her single counterpart, or is getting married just a comfort seeking ritual that people believe they have to fulfill at some point in their lives? It is necessary to dissect this issue in the light of four factors: health and other medical factors, the economic and finance front, mental and emotional wellbeing and lastly, the social factor.

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On Late Marriage

    600 Words  | 2 Pages

    Marriage is an inevitable stage of our life. Some people choose to get married in

    Read More

  • Marriage At a Young Age

    916 Words  | 2 Pages

    While the age of marriage is generally on the rise, in many countries, especially among poor, migrant or displaced communities, early marriage – marriage of children and adolescents below the age of eighteen – is still widely practiced. Tremendous number of couples enters marriage without any chance of exercising their right to choose. Some are forced into marriage, others are simply too young to make an informed decision about their partner or about the implications of marriage itself. Studies have shown that teenage married couples are often less advantageous, may come from broken homes, may have little education and work, low status jobs in comparison to those that marry after adolescence. It could be very encouraging if our community established a prohibition on the early marriages, giving a room for young couples’ relationships to grow. I propose to ban early marriages because they bring a lot of flaws in our society and make the young couples face imposing obstacles during their life path.

    Read More

More about The Pressure to Marry at a Certain Age

Open Document