Why Adolescents Marry Young

By Hu Wo (Cuckoo’s Song)

 

THESE days, many adoles­cents are found to marry young here and there. Hence, the question `Why do they marry immaturity?´ becomes an absolutely interesting one. While we were children, some of our friends used to get married just before their marriage age, but there were few young marriages at that time, if compared to today. So, why on earth are there more ado­lescent marriages nowadays than before? To be candid, there may be several potential reasons for this case. These possible reasons can certainly include parenting styles, environmental influence, schooling, peer pressure, misuse of social media, and personal de­velopment.

 

As we may all know, there are four parenting styles at home, namely authoritative, authoritar­ian, indulgent, and neglectful. In my personal experience, the last three parenting styles mostly lead to young marriages. Most adoles­cents do not like to be controlled by their teachers, friends, neigh­bours, acquaintances and even parents, simply because during this age, they tend to want more freedom about everything, such as their clothing and relationships, than is needed. Thus, when au­thoritarian parents overly dom­inate their adolescent children, they like to break themselves loose from their parents, and then this may lead to a young marriage of adolescents. Similarly, due to indulgent parents and neglectful parents, their adolescents often get married as a result of parents' pampering and ignorance about what their children are doing.

 

It is greatly difficult for ado­lescents to stay away from their environmental influence, espe­cially in an environment where young marriages happen so often. Of course, young adolescents still imitate others as regards behav­iours and manners like their dai­ly lifestyles, clothes, senses and speaking patterns. That is why they will rarely burden themselves with a young marriage, mainly af­ter they have seen their former elders marry young. This is only human nature. It would be even worse for them if young loving cou­ples were leading a better life with good health and wealth. Such an environmental influence will very easily drive adolescents crazy to get married too early.

 

In fact, adolescents are mere­ly school-aged children. Whenever possible, they should pay atten­tion to school studies only. Despite this, adolescents must surely meet their physical development stages in one way or another owing to growth hormone changes, particu­larly during the very early middle school life and the very early high school life. Within those spaces of time, adolescents are given to becoming interested in others, es­pecially opposite-sex roommates. It is commonly known that adoles­cents' heart is inclined to pound very quickly during these periods of time, even though they find a little unimportant leaf itself is flut­tering. Also, middle school-aged children as well as high school-aged ones are considered the most difficult to handle for not only parents but also teachers. At that time, some adolescents would like to have a bash at a young marriage out of curiosity, or, less probably, their sexual desire.

 

In the same way, peer pres­sure usually exerts the biggest ef­fect on young marriages, I should think. As the saying goes, since human beings are a social animal, adolescents must never avoid fac­ing their friends. Here, we have to be aware that primary students get influenced by their parents at home; secondary students by their teachers at middle schools; and high school students by their near­by peers. Really and truly, peer in­fluence is so strong among young adolescents that their future suc­cess or failure can depend upon it to a greater or lesser degree. Con­sequently, if teenage friends had a happy marriage, as luck would have it, adolescents can envy their friends having such a relationship and then follow a rite of passage sooner or later after them.

 

After all, a young marriage is gradually rising from the misuse of social media, Facebook and TikTok in particular. Also, in the age of BeeTalk, too many undesirable marriages had occurred badly. Ac­tually, adolescents should only pur­sue their education flat out. It can­not be said for sure that a young marriage is never right or always wrong. Nevertheless, in the main, young marriages go wrong. This is because most adolescents have not yet developed any emotional maturity or emotional control to the full. And many adolescent mar­riages end in divorce, too. Just be­cause of immature life experience, adolescent husbands and wives encounter life sufferings to the death. Quite frankly, the university is the best place to look for our life partners for the simple reason that university life will give us a great chance of knowing each other to a certain extent over the course of four or five academic years. To think it candidly, a young marriage puts first to the heart, as usual, not the brain. Despite this, a happy marriage is required by both the heart and the brain. Therefore, I want to suggest here that all ado­lescents had better give up a young marriage as much as they can.