There are factors in contemporary American culture that encourage youth to marry. Love, sex, and marriage are idealized and glamorized. Traditional adult society emphasizes romantic love and the happy ending. Economic prosperity reduces the economic risks in marriage. The uncertain status conferred on adolescents in our society makes some of them yearn for the adult status which marriage can bestow (Duvall, 1960).
Marriage is an escape from unsettled and broken homes (Christiansen,
1958), from unsatisfactory school experiences, and from unpleasant community
situations (Martinson, April 1955; Martinson, February 1959). The pervasive search for
security cannot be overlooked as a predisposing factor. Apparently, young people do not
feel as compelled as did those from an earlier time to plan to marry as a way to gratify
their sexual needs or to legitimize their present sexual relations (Sorensen, 1973, p.
341). Over half of adolescents think it is "abnormal or unnatural" for a boy not to have
"sex" until he marries, and 42 percent of all boys and 27 percent of all girls feel the same
way about girls and premarital sex (Sorensen, 1973, p. 342).
Yet the vast majority of
boys (85 percent) and girls (92 percent) agree that they will probably want to marry and
have children at some time in the future (Sorensen, 1973, p. 344). It has been estimated
that a third to a half of all young marriages are precipitated by premarital pregnancies.
Anderson and Latts found that premarital pregnancy is a major influence, if not the
major cause, of high school marriages, in Minnesota (Anderson and Latts, 1964).
Many more high school age girls than boys marry before graduation, and the
girls tend to marry men who are out of school and working, usually at trades (Duvall,
1960). Garner and Sperry (1961) estimated that about three percent of the students in
the nation's high schools were currently married. In 1965, Burchinal (May 1965)
reported that there had been a fourteen-year stability in young marriage rates,
suggesting that a balance had emerged between factors that promote and factors that
deter young marriages.
Girls who marry early usually possess several distinguishing characteristics.
They have started dating younger, have dated more frequently, and have gone steady
more often. They have been in love a greater number of times. A larger number of
their close friends and of their mothers have married young. Finally, they more
frequently dated men who were older than themselves (Duvall, 1960).
Findings of a study of over 3,000 Nebraska high school girls indicate that girls
who marry early are emotionally less stable than are those who postpone marriage.
They also have less satisfactory relationships with their families. Two types of girls
appeared to have an orientation toward early marriage. One is the girl who is
emotionally insecure and who looks to marriage as an escape from an unhappy
environment.
The other is the early-maturing girl whose aspiration level and
expectations of marital happiness are relatively low. Of the girls who married early, 95
percent felt they were ready for marriage, but judged by indices from marriage
success studies, many of them were not ready (Moss and Gingles, 1959).
Although most of the girls who marry young are in grades eleven and twelve,
there are substantial numbers of junior high girls getting married. One explanation
for this is that the girls are physiologically mature and ready for marriage but are
educationally retarded; they are not intellectually competent to meet the
responsibilities of marriage (Ivins, 1960).