Counter Culture

I guess I tend to blog in blocks. Some days I have nothing to say, and other days I can't seem to shut up. Anyhoo....

Today's outpouring is directed towards the counter-culture idea of encouraging young people, or at least allowing young people, to marry and raise a family. A few weeks ago after church I raised the idea of allowing young teens to marry with some of the ladies and I am not sure how it was received. Probably not enthusiastically, especially when we silently considered some of the foolishness and antics some of the young people we know have been getting up to. How could we expect these young people, who are stuck in the "it's all about me" stage of life to be responsible wives and husbands, never mind being parents?

Right now these young people are stuck in the no-man's-land of adolescence where they are frowned upon if they act in a childish manner, but aren't yet considered capable of being adults and doing adult things. Somehow our culture has raised the bar of adulthood and left a gap that leaves teens at the mercy of their hormones and the worst elements of our culture with a lot of time on their hands and often the money for absorbing and experiencing it. Education has been stretched out to cover the years between childhood and adulthood, but the covering is pretty thin if you ask me. It used to be that people could enter college and university in their early teens instead of waiting until they were in their late teens or early 20's.

In an earlier post I mentioned the instability that many young people go through as they make the transition from believing things that mom and dad believed, to the point where they begin to either reject or take ownership of these same beliefs. Is much of this instability caused by this long gap of almost meaningless existence? I don't know. I do know this: if you are busy working to make ends meet, or raising babies and keeping house, you don't have a lot of time for angst unless you are exceptionally self-centered.

I know one girl who could have benefitted from an early marriage. Two girls, actually. They are my oldest daughters. And actually one of them married within days of turning 18. She told me not that long ago that this was one of the best things she could have done, and I believe her. When Trista was only 15, she was fully capable of running and managing a household. She was one of my right hands, especially when I was recovering from childbirth. I had trained my daughters from an early age to cook, make bread from scratch (including grinding the flour), clean house, and they had lots of experience with babies and small children. This made them pretty capable beings at an early age. If their father and I had been in a different frame of mind and if the prevailing culture didn't consider it irresponsible and oppressive to marry off young teens, they could have been settled in their own homes, minding their own husbands and children. A lot of problems would have been eliminated or avoided.

Are a lot of teens ready for this important step? Not if we continue raising them with the expectation that they have to live through the frustration of adolescence. I suspect that if our expectations were that people should marry younger, we would do a lot more intensive training and teaching than we do now, and they would actually be ready. How we are going to get to that point is a puzzle to me. Not only does the general culture need to change, but so does much of Christian culture. Perhaps we shouldn't be "tsk tsking" when we hear of some young thing of 16 or 17 being engaged and getting ready to marry. It is as though we think that "it is better to marry than to burn" only applies after the worst of the hormonal storm and drive is over. Instead, maybe we ought to be congratulating young people and doing what we can to assist and support them in this desire to take on the mantle of responsibility and find a lawful outlet for all that drive and energy.

As usual, some of my ideas for blogging are sparked by the reading Carmon's blog, or articles that she recommended. Thanks, Carmon.