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Valentine's Day, many twenty- and thirtysomethings might be resorting
to a gift from despair.com
to mourn — or at least express their confusion and frustration
with — the memories of their marriages past. Pamela Paul, a
30-year-old, is one of those young people, who was married for less
than a year and then divorced when she and her husband realized
it wasn't working.
Paul, confused about her own experience, went out and interviewed
60 former couples, and in the process wrote a book (The
Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony) and coined
the phrase "starter marriage." A starter marriage, according
to Paul, is a childless marriage that lasts no more than five years.
Starter marriages
usually start young. While the age of Americans entering marriage
has increased slightly over the past century (the average woman
today marries at age twenty-five, the average man twenty-seven),
many people still marry in their early and mid-twenties. Starter
marriages end young too, with divorce papers often delivered before
the thirtieth-birthday candles are blown out.
According to
census numbers released earlier this month, for people under 45
about half of first marriages end in divorce, and the marriages
tend to last about eight years.
Paul blames
a "matrimania culture" that sets unrealistically high
expectations for marriage. She says that people of her (and my)
generation focus so much on the wedding day that they don't see
beyond it until the big day is through. And then they realize they
don't really want what they've got.
But the phrase
"starter marriage" is a bit misleading. Paul suggests
it "may very well be the wave of the future." But that
gives it much more credit than it deserves. And in doing that —
and in making it official as a trend — it's also defining young
love and matrimony down.
What the 60
couples Paul interviews point to is an irresponsibility and immaturity
— and not just among the Generation-X kids who get hitched
without thinking what they are doing. The larger community —
the parents (who may be divorced), schools, churches, etc. —
needs to better consider the message it is sending out about marriage.
As "Why
Marriage Matters," a new study from the Institute
for American Values, points out, "marriage is more than
a private emotional relationship. It is also a social good."
The study also
highlights a very untrendy point: "Communities where good enough
marriages are common have better outcomes for children, women, and
men than do communities suffering from high rates of divorce, unmarried
childbearing, and high-conflict or violent marriages." Obviously
exempting marriages where violence is an element, those "starter
marriage" kids might be too quick to quit. So long as the first-run
marriage is a trend, they might even figure they're almost expected
to.
In fairness,
Paul seems to be on an honest quest both as a demographer and as
a young divorced woman — and to her credit, she spares the
reader an airing of her personal marital laundry. While she is short
on solutions, she does not say that cohabitation is an answer. Nor
does she paint a pretty picture of divorce. But there is a certain
resignation. At least, she says in interviews, starter-marriage
veterans want to marry again.
And so the
starter marriage is more like a first job — the one you get
for some experience. But Paul's "starter marriage" discovery
is not alone on the bookstore shelf in softening the edge of divorce.
E. Mavis Hetherington's Divorce
Reconsidered suggests that divorce isn't as bad as we think
it is — while still admitting, for instance, that between 20
percent and 25 percent of the children of divorce suffer from long-term
emotional problems. While starter marriages, by definition, involve
no kids, think of the long-term possibilities for the future of
marriage. Paul cites a demographer who predicts that in the next
century, we'll be marrying four times within our lifetimes. And
why not — indeed, why even wait till the next century —
if each marriage just better prepares us for the next one? Practice
makes perfect.
The other danger
lies in viewing these "starter marriages" as a normal
trend. Considering early, failed marriages as a warm-up for the
real thing can only lead to an eventual discounting of young marriage
itself. To avoid divorce — if any stigma is still assigned
to it, by then — marrying in the early and mid twenties will
simply be discouraged. Work on your careers, ladies. Establish "independence."
Marry in your thirties. Reproductive technologies will make all
things possible, so don't sweat the biological clock. But that's
not a good message either. After all, for every Drew Barrymore and
Tom Green, there's a Dick and Lynne Cheney and a Don and Joyce Rumsfeld.
Paul says,
"It's time for all of us — single, engaged, married, divorced,
remarried, widowed — to figure out what starter marriages are,
why people jump into them and then jump out, and whether they're
worth it."
What we X-ers
need to consider is that when "they say our love won't pay
the rent," they might be onto something — before
we take the plunge. Premarital counseling — whether from a
religious or other professional source — should be considered
part of the wedding process. And even if you have spent a year planning,
it's still better to be a runaway bride than to take "for better
or for worse" in the short-term.
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