Early marriages in our country are still common. And although, of course, each couple decides on their own when to register the relationship officially, there are still objective reasons why it is better to postpone this important step until a later time.
When we talk about early marriages, we mean the specific age of entry into it — from 9 (you can get married at this age, for example, in Yemen) and up to 20 years.
Marriage, early in modern terms, was generally accepted for many centuries. For example, Prince Yuri Dolgoruky married an 11-year-old girl, Nina Chavchavadze married 32-year-old Alexander Griboedov at the age of 15, and Pushkin had a frank episode of a conversation between Tatyana Larina and a nanny in the work «Eugene Onegin»:
— But how did you get married, nanny?
— So, apparently, God ordered. My Vanya
Was younger than me, my light
And I was thirteen years old.
The reason for early marriages in Russia was poverty and hunger — the family gave their daughter to a stranger, getting rid of the extra «mouth». This, in turn, led to high mortality among mother girls, because their body was not yet ready for childbirth.
In the modern world, an early marriage is considered to be one that is concluded between the ages of 18 and 20 years. According to statistics, in Russia the rural population is 1,5 times more likely to marry at this age. This is directly related to the circumstances of life in the villages — in rural areas there is practically no opportunity for career realization, and life often revolves around farming and procreation.
What are the disadvantages of early marriages?
One of them is unpreparedness for responsibility and everyday life in all its manifestations. After all, cohabitation is not only constant sex, as some young people might think, but also disputes about who cooks, washes dishes or fixes the tap … Spouses, in addition to being in love, also become household partners. Now they need to accept the changes and even the old age of each other.
It is not uncommon for young couples to be immature to take on such responsibilities, unable to get along together, constantly quarreling and eventually deciding to divorce, and divorce, as we know, is quite a traumatic experience.
Sometimes early marriage is about the desire to run away from your parents as quickly as possible, about the feeling of loneliness and trying to drown it out, or about the desire to demonstratively prove your independence. But this is not a conscious choice.
Healthy relationships are relationships between people who have gone through a process of separation: they are able to make choices regardless of parental approval; they live in accordance with their opinion, even if their parents think differently; can take care of themselves: know where to get food, how to cook it, are financially independent; are able to quarrel with a parent and then not collapse from guilt.
Being an adult means taking responsibility for yourself and your feelings. As Olga Primachenko wrote in the book “Tender to Yourself”:
“You can no longer crawl under the bed or pretend to be dead — you need to face reality and do something with it. Or rather, like this: it is possible, but the cost of the consequences will be higher. Even the house in which I grew up seemed to me a place where I could always return if it pressed. I sincerely believed in this until the psychologist in the course of therapy said that it was in vain. The house of the parents is the house of the parents, and mine is the one that I will build myself.”
THE NEED FOR SELF-REALIZATION
Most of the early marriages in Russia are due to unwanted pregnancies, and this is already a matter of sexual education, because until now not all young people know that protection must always be used, and coitus interruptus is not a way to protect.
Early marriage often deprives spouses of self-realization because of children, and it is extremely important. According to Maslow’s pyramid of needs, self-realization is at the very top, and when we reach it, we satisfy all our other needs, including financial ones.
To marry or not is your choice, we can only recommend that you make this decision carefully and consciously.
Text: Alisa Abushkevich