Teenage Marriage

Erin Donavan is a Senior Teen Advisor with WholeFamily.com. She has written an article "Teen Marriages: Questions You Need to Ask Yourself Before You Tie the Knot". Despite sex education programs for safe sex and abstinence only programs available in schools for teenagers, teenage marriages are growing in the US and this social problem needs to be addressed as nearly 60% of teenage marriages fail within the first five years. In this context Erin Donavan has written this book to give advice to perplexed teenagers on the issue of marriage in their teens. There are several reasons why teenage marriages take place. This paper looks at the three probable causes and assesses the likelihood of each.

The first probable cause of teenage marriage is that they want to leave their parental home and believe marriage is the best solution for that. The possibility of this happening is less as the teenagers examine the bigger problems that will arise because of this. The foremost is where the money is going to come for livelihood. Even with married adults money is a big issue and the teenagers are quite likely to realise as they could have felt the pinch for money on several occasions. Unless this problem is sorted out it is quite unlikely that they would proceed with this. Parental support is not likely to be there and that is a major drawback. The next worry as they think of issues that they are likely to face is the problem of housing and that would be high on the list. Their friends would not be in a position to offer them a solution for this problem on any long-term basis. Then the realization comes that marriage in their teens would entail the taking up of adult responsibilities and giving up the joys of youth. As they visualize what life would be when married would come the realization that all there will be no parents to take care of household chores and cares that have enabled them to spend time in the area of carefree activities. Just these thoughts