<p>Optimizerdad, it was more like," If the shoe don’t fit, keep trying them on". Niece is happily married now, fortunately.</p>
<p>Well, sounds like her strategy worked! :)</p>
<p>
I think the concern, sjmom, comes from the pressure, both covert and overt, from some families (and esp. Mormon families) to have daughters view marriage/family as their highest and pretty much <em>only</em> aspiration. There is a curiously disproportionate number of Mormon families in our small town. This is because some of the leads at the large aircraft company where my dh works are Mormon, and they tend to hire many people that they know through their church association. I’ve done some reading recently as I was curious about the religion.</p>
<p>This comes directly from the official LDS site. It is part of the church’s stance on marriage/family:
The patriarchal nature of the family is obviously “ordained.”</p>
<p>This may work for some young girls, but in today’s society, it is, IMHO, a real hardship and unrealistic expectation for a bright, determined young lady who wants a measure of independence and desires a career. Young girls who quit college to get married are sacrificing their educations and severely limiting their options should things not work out after children come along. As a result of the considerable expectations for maintaining a “perfect” family and for serving “callings” in the church at the same time, depression is a <em>very</em> serious problem among Mormon women, and this has been well-documented. </p>
<p>IMHO, not much room for “romance” there…the whole situation is too fraught with obligation.</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>Purely anecdotal: </p>
<p>We know several LDS families through our military tours over the years. Although some of the couples DID get married in college, they also waited to start their families until they graduated. They also waited to get married until they had completed their missions. This meant they (and their spouses) went to college for 2 years, did their missions for 2, went back to college for 2. So most of them were about 2 years older than the traditional college jr or sr.</p>
<p>On another note, I am not LDS but I did get engaged to my H in our early college years. We went to different colleges. We knew we couldn’t get married before we BOTH had graduated, but we still were ready to have a formalized commitment.</p>
<p>DKE: Can I get your nieces phone number?</p>
<p>DKE: Wait, scratch that last post, I just saw the bit about her being happily married…</p>
<p>
I am sure that there is variation in the practices of LDS church members as there is in any other religious population. In our particular community, finishing one’s college education rarely happens with these girls. The mom in the family of this girl quit college to raise babies and her D’s all seem to be getting married very young. There are actually three or so of the Mormon high school girls at my kids’ school who are engaged. As I mentioned above, one got married at 18 immediately following h.s. graduation, and another just got married at 18 last month. Several girls my oldest D (a senior knows) are engaged and will be married soon.</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>Do you think that early marriage/teen parenthood is more an indicator of your community than of people of a certain religion within your community? I can’t remember the exact scenario, but didn’t you discuss all the teenage (unmarried) moms profiled in the local hs yearbook? At least the Mormon girls are getting married before they are procreating. :)</p>
<p>It might be. At my high school, there were a few girls I knew who thought along the same line as me. One of them (who happens to go to my church) attended a conference called Silver Ring Thing about why us as Christians should abstain from sex until marriage. (I would have gone too but I had to work) There were also the ones that you absolutely knew had lost their virginity–from their stories of wild parties to the way some of them dressed.</p>
<p>There seemed to be a lower percentage from those who had attended a local Christian Academy before HS in the area–both of the people I know who went there think like me. Catholic schools, however, seemed to be hit and miss. The majority seemed to lose their “good little Catholic kid” label as soon as they got to public school–I saw a change in a lot of them during their first year at my school.</p>
<p>However, when I look at other schools, it seems as if there is a higher percentage of permarital sex folks at some of them.</p>
<p>So if you’re looking at a community indicator, you have to look at the following:</p>
<p>-Religious background of an area–if there are more devout folks in one area due to a particular church that area will probably have fewer cases of premarital sex.</p>
<p>-The type of education in the classrooms. Abstinence-only sex ed can have either a positive or a negative impact.</p>
<p>-The education and style of parenting of the parents. You will obviously have less cases where there are authoritarian parents by the boatload. It also seems that people who know more will teach their kids more.</p>
<p>-The male-female ratio of the school. If there are 20 guys to 1 girl, you’re going to have a lot of guys who won’t have premarital sex. While they could obviously go elsewhere (to other districts), the overwhelming majority of people seem to have relationships within their schools.</p>
<p>It’s amazing that now posters are starting to look at subcultures to see who isn’t having premarital sex. </p>
<p>The point of the study is almost everybody is having premarital sex. 80% of people who waited until they were 20 to have sex still had premarital sex by the time they were 44.</p>
<p>Ninety-five percent of the population has had premarital sex by the time they are 44.</p>
<p>That’s 95%.</p>
<p>
Since I have many kids out in the schools, I have pretty good sources of info. about what is going on out there! <em>lol</em> And the above statement is DEFINITELY not true in quite a few of the cases! 
Well, actually, maybe before procreating (or at least before the results of the procreation are evident), but not necessarily before “engaging.”</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>In this post-Clinton era, we should define exactly what we mean by “having sex.” Seems to me that a female could have lots of sex and still be a virgin. And please don’t ask me to explain this. You know what I mean. If not, check out <a href=“http://www.Lewinsky.com%5B/url%5D”>www.Lewinsky.com</a></p>
<p>I don’t buy that there was a ton of premarital sex going on in the “old days”. (like WW2 and the 20’s and 30’s) Sure it happenned, that’s what shotgun weddings were all about and there were plenty of them. But there was a cultural more of waiting, being a virgin at the altar, purity and the whole “good girl, bad girl” mentality. I just can’t believe that 80% back then were having premarital sex. We’ll never know because no one from that generation would admit it if they did! (not MY folks, anyway!)</p>
<p>Well, purely anecdotal, of course, but I know that my grandmother was pregnant when she and my grandfather eloped in 1929; at least, my mom was otherwise a really strapping five month preemie!!! (actually, grandma apparently never even pretended otherwise; and she wasn’t allowed to graduate hs because of the pregnancy and subsequent marriage.)</p>
<p>Berurah, I’m a somewhere in the middle on the early marriage thing. On the one hand, I know a variety of women who pursued a career and are now alone in middle age - I don’t know if I’d call them happy or fulfilled. On the other hand, I think everyone, male or female, should complete as much formal education as possible, preferably before starting a family. Things happen in life – divorce, death, disability – which mean that it’s important to be self-supporting. But as I approach the Big 50, I think that life’s happiness is far more dependent on relationships with family and friends, than it is on career achievement. I think it will always be harder for women to combine both worlds – most men seem to find it easier to separate work and family. But even with my sons, I would expect that they wouldn’t get married until finishing an undergraduate degree at least. Being a married grad student is not that big a deal to me, but it’s hard to be a married undergrad for some reason.</p>
<p>Great Moments in Premarital Sex History…</p>
<p>In colonial times, there was a practice known as bundling. People lived with their birth families until they were married, so dates conisted of aa guy calling on a girl at her house. In wintertime, it was often impractical for the guy to go home at night, so he stayed over. </p>
<p>And slept in the girl’s bed. The guy and gal had seperate blankets and there was often a board placed between the two. It was expected that the two would talk well into the night, but that they would refrain from any sexual activity. </p>
<p>Well, that was the expectation. ;)</p>
<p>Downside to premarital sex: getting pregnant & no guy to take responsibility for you & baby.</p>
<p>Article in today’s paper–furniture company made a very nice donation to a young lady who had a run of what the paper seemed to see as bad luck. She was homeless b/c of problems with her mom & stepdad…then she got pregnant! Of all the bad luck. The good news is she is on track to finish HS this spring, but you’d think it was a virgin birth or something, the slant they put on it.</p>
<p>My great grandmother married at 12 to a 29 yo. She had five children before age 18. My grandmother had a shotgun wedding at 17 and two kids by 19. I will say that both marriages were longlasting happy ones overall. I think times and expectations of marriage have changed.</p>
<p>Being religious doesn’t preclude premarital sex- consider all those homes for unwed mothers run by churches in past years. Sometimes girls were kept too naive to know better, others rebelled… I disagree with AFPrep850’s conclusions in post 49 but feel too lazy to go into detail or make him prove his points.</p>
<p>Another comment–if we could get rid of all of this sex we wouldn’t have all these Gardasil, etc. vaccines that everyone seems to get nowadays.</p>
<p>Sex is bad, mmmkay? And highly over-rated. I’ve never had it and I’m perfectly fine and functional.</p>