Original post: https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/stop-shaming-men
Archive post: https://archive.ph/JzmQy
It’s one of the most well known facts in social science that women initiate the vast majority of divorces – around 70% or so depending on the source you look at. It’s a fact I have never heard an evangelical pastor mention. In fact, as one feminist scholar found in her academic research, in evangelical sermons ‘women are framed primarily as receivers of divorce rather than initiators.’ And, while there have been improvements, divorce court and child custody practices still favor women. . . . It’s also worth asking what Blake – and by extension the rest of the evangelical leadership class – are doing to reduce these risks, help men manage them, or to create an environment in which men have a better chance of marital success. The answer is basically nothing. . . . They could tell men, “Get married and we’ve got your back.” But they don’t. Instead, should some man actually get married and any troubles arise, they will almost certainly blame him for it.”
Evangelicals, is there nothing they can't fuck up?
I think another important observation that makes it difficult is that the 'sweet spot' is different for different people, because people mature at different rates. I know that if I had gotten married in my early 20s, I would have made a complete pig's ear of it and would probably be divorced now, because I was still a stupid kid who didn't know what he wanted from life. Other people that age are much more impressive and really have their head screwed on straight, usually because they experienced more difficulties in life than I did, so them getting married at that age would be a lot safer.
That's probably another reason why people used to get married a lot younger, because people were forced to mature much earlier and didn't have this extended adolescence we have today.
I'm glad I waited, but at the same time getting married later presents its own problems. There's less time for my wife and I to live together as just the two of us because neither of us are getting any younger and we want to have kids before we're out of that peak fertility window.
Overall I guess people used to get married earlier because 1. It makes more sense biologically and sociologically to pair up sooner and 2. The quality of people's upbringing (and the people themselves) was better in the past, so they didn't have to worry so much about their immaturity going into their 20s.
I certainly agree, that sweet spot can vary from individual to individual. That's why I tried to describe it with a somewhat broad yet generally applicable range. There's always going to be a few tradeoffs, however that plays out, but that's just how most things in life tend to go.
I'd add one more thing to your stated reasons for why relationships tend to develop later on in life than they did in the past: There's far more distractions. And I'm not talking about "youngsters and their phones", but the vast number hobbies, entertainment, and general preoccupations that can end up eating up solid volume of time. Granted, in the past they also didn't have as many practical conveniences either, and thus a lot of time had to be devoted to fairly consuming yet necessary chores.
Mind you, I'm not making any kind of a moral or ethical statement when I say that, just stating it as a matter of reality. I think future generations will have a better handle on how to manage their priorities though, I've already seen this pop up occasionally with a few self-aware and observant zoomers every now and then.