Marry 'em young in Boston, but not as young as ND!

[Sal Atticum]

I see freshman at UND who are already married, and it just seems to young to me.  What are you going to do with your life, go home and live in the same town you grew up in without seeing any of the world?

THE WEDDINGS ISSUE
The Boston Globe
Early to Wed
While their college peers perfect the casual hookup and their older sisters and brothers delay marriage until later and later, a small number of college students are bucking both trends and committing to "I do" while still in school. A look inside the lives of these quiet rebels.


KRISTIN HUANG'S RIVERWAY APARTMENT HAS A DISTINCTLY JUST-OUT-OF-COLLEGE FEEL: A halogen lamp lights up the small living room, purple milk crates serve as bookshelves, and shoes line the narrow hallway. Otherwise, her domestic life is atypical for a 2007 graduate of a Massachusetts college. The 22-year-old got engaged during the fall of her senior year at Harvard, spent spring semester with what she calls a "fourth class in wedding planning," and married Yi-An Huang - who was two years ahead of her at Harvard - a few weeks after her graduation last June.
the weddings issue

Eight months later, over a dinner of spicy beef and rice, the Huangs say they love married life - which, for Kristin, has been inseparable from post-college adult life. As committed Christians, they did not want to live together before marriage, as many of their peers do, nor did they want to wait until they were closer to the median age for first marriages in the United States, now 25 for women and 27 for men. In Massachusetts, brides and grooms are among the oldest in the country: The median age here is 27 for women and 29 for men. "Once we knew that we wanted to get married eventually, we were thinking, 'Why not now?'" says Kristin. "We were excited about the possibility of spending life together for the rest of our lives, and we wanted to start that journey sooner rather than later."

The journey, they say, has brought challenges and surprises for both. Kristin, now a first-year student at Harvard Medical School, sometimes feels out of synch with her new classmates and spends less time with them than she would like. "I definitely spend more time at home than I would otherwise, if I weren't married," she says. Then there are the usual challenges of adapting to living together, the sort many couples now experience before putting rings on their fingers. "She sleeps funny," jokes Yi-An, 25, who works as a consultant to nonprofits. "She sprawls and moves around."

His new wife slaps him playfully. "He sleeps like a mummy," she says.

In embarking on marriage when she did, Kristin is an anomaly among four-year college students, especially in the Boston area. Most local colleges and universities reported no more than three married or engaged students; several didn't know of any. At one school, the dean's receptionist just laughed when I asked to interview some married students. "Married?" she repeated. "These kids don't even date anymore. I don't think we have any who are married."

It's no surprise that college students in the Northeast rarely marry while still in school, says sociologist Paula Aymer, who teaches a class called "Family and Intimate Relationships" at Tufts University. Fear of divorce, high student debt, and greater acceptance of premarital sex have all lessened the appeal of early marriage, she believes. While approximately 11 percent of Massachusetts weddings have brides or grooms between the ages of 18 and 22, the young people who are going to the altar are usually not the ones attending four-year colleges. "College-educated middle-class young people," says Aymer, "are marrying much later."

The rest of the article.

[pmp6nl]

I know a lot of college students that are married.

Maybe this is "good" for ND, considering they are keeping themselves in the state... maintaining population?

[red hibiscus]

I wonder how much of couples' decisions to marry really young are based on not wanting to have premarital sex. Especially in this part of the country. I'm not suggesting that all very conservative, religious people choose to be abstinent until married, but that some of them may want to get married sooner so they can have 'guilt-free sex'.

[pmp6nl]

I wonder how much of couples' decisions to marry really young are based on not wanting to have premarital sex. Especially in this part of the country. I'm not suggesting that all very conservative, religious people choose to be abstinent until married, but that some of them may want to get married sooner so they can have 'guilt-free sex'.

Keen observation, I think you may be on to something.