Marraige under 18

I am not sure there should be a 'law' on marriage at 18 but I can say I believe that people should not be getting married below 18 in a Western Society. It makes no logical sense, even if someone does get pregnant early on. Just because someone gets pregnant does not mean the person is mature enough to deal with the concept of marriage itself. They are in most cases not even able to deal with the pregnancy alone or just with the man being involved. If anything, I see it as often being a trap for a girl or sometimes women use pregnancy as an excuse to ensnare men.

Boys and girls under the age of 18 in this day and age, in Western Societies have things they are obligated to do. They also cannot support themselves on their own. That is one of the concepts of marriage is that two people get married to live on their own and make choices with each other. How do teens do that when they also have responsibilities to their families and also need to go to school? They cannot hold full time jobs with all the requirements of today and cannot finish school and work a full time job. It's demanding families -must- take responsibility.

Also, if a male or female can support themselves, they are well above the age of 21. The person has gone to college and has an actual occupation which would enable that male or female to take care of the significant other who is not of age to do so himself/herself. This causes entrapment because the other person is going to be co-dependent, in most cases. It may seem romantic and fun to go out with someone older, but often times boys and especially girls are misled because they do not know what the real world is like outside of school and that social circle. The older person will be making their choices and often times it isolates the other person from learning things on how to live on his/her own. With how marriages break up often, it really is not fair that this person who was married at younger than 18 (hell, in some cases, younger than 21+) that suddenly he, or more often she, doesn't know the ropes to what it's like to live on her own. Many women especially have been left in divorce scenarios where they could not survive on their own or with the kids that were left behind and money is not going to solve someone's problems of not knowing how to manage it or how to get new work etc and deal with the many problems of living single suddenly. The person gets a very big wake up call as their safety cushion is pulled from her rather violently.

In older times, when women could not get the same education as a man, could not drive themselves around, could not do things on the same level as a man, sure, marriage prior to 18 was fine. After all... it was the -man's- job to take care of his family. Nowadays, men often cannot find work that allows them to be the -sole- benefactor for a family and a teenager always had a problem doing so. This is why older men often went to find young girls to marry. They were stable enough to do so. Teenage males had to go out and make something of themselves before considering marriage.

So, I guess with the requirements it takes that people should think about when getting married such as being able to support each other, being able to love one another and have some place to go that isn't in the parents' basement, being able to be contributing members of society and being able to vote, both people getting a proper education so they both should they separate, can do something with their lives, etc... these things to me seem rather important to think about in a western society. It simply is not fair to people younger than 18 to get married and some people just seem to look at the romantic ideals behind it. If people cannot also view beyond the romance to sensibility, I think they're too young to be married and most marriages won't survive for people who don't have things set up decently ahead of time and face the reality that marriage takes drive to work. Even for those who do set up things in advance, marriages can fail... but at least they have more of a chance to survive after and don't have so many mental scars from the failure.

 

Usually doesn't last long. When it comes to boys and girls in their teenage years, they don't even know what love really is.To them, it's just finding someone attractive. They are rarely (RARELY) mature enough to know the responsibilites of marriage, and mature enough to realize that, when you marry, you pretty much throw half of your life away for someone else (the second half is gone once you have kids).