Isn't this what some of us Trads have been saying for years? Past Popes and Saints saw it. One's focus should be their real and actual vocation (marriage, religious life), not their "secular vocation" which is a Protestant(Calvinist) invention. It looks like the Evangelicals and Neo-Catholics have caught on to our talking points about culture.

Why Delay Marriage and Invite sɛҳuąƖ Sin and Loneliness say Some US Evangelicals and Catholics

By Hilary White

August 10, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Young people who, under the sway of raging hormones, simply cannot hold back from having sex should just get married say some US Evangelical leaders. An article in Christianity Today magazine, the flagship publication of the US Evangelical protestant world, titled, "The Case for Early Marriage" says that more "chastity training" will not work to keep young people from having sex before marriage.

Mark Regnerus, a professor of sociology at the University of Texas and author of the book "Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers", wrote that while over 90 per cent of Americans have pre-marital sex, despite a strong official enthusiasm for chastity and virginity in the subculture, a majority, nearly 80 per cent, of conservative Christians in the US, do not wait until marriage.

Regnerus asserts that the emphasis on "discouraging" and "delaying" marriage among Americans, including Evangelicals, has damaged the institution. He says the community has to return to encouraging young people to marry, a daunting prospect, he says, given the hostility the suggestion garners among the general public.

"To esteem marriage in the public sphere today is to speak a foreign language: you invoke annoyance, confusion, or both," he wrote. But, despite Christians making "much ado" about sex, they are becoming "slow and lax" about marriage.

In an April op-ed in the Washington Post, Regnerus blamed the parents of today's 20-somethings, who focused on academia and career success, putting marriage on the backburner.

"Many of us got our MBAs, JDs, MDs and PhDs. Now we advise our children to complete their education before even contemplating marriage, to launch their careers and become financially independent," he wrote.

It has been one of the most-recorded, but least talked-about statistical changes surrounding the family through the 20th century. In 1930 the median age for men to marry was 24.3 years; for women it was 21.3. This was higher than the ages between 1950 and 1960 when men married at about 22.8 years and women at about 20.3 years. Since 1960, however, the age range has steadily risen to 27.7 years for men and 26 for women by 2007.

Expecting young people to wait through a large portion of their reproductive years for sex is unrealistic and a case of "battling our creator's reproductive designs".

Fox News interviewed a number of young Evangelical Christians and quoted a young songwriter and guitarist, Jay Mkrtschjan who had planned to marry his sweetheart, Megan, at 20 but held off a year under parental pressure. He said, "By getting married young and dating for a shorter period of time, it leaves less room to sin sɛҳuąƖly."

"For me, it was really a trust issue," Megan said. "Marrying right out of college was showing our friends, showing the people we were acquainted with, that we trusted our lives with God."

In the Catholic Church, it was once common for clergy and parents to encourage their children to marry. But the culture of feminism and careerism has made advances in the Catholic community. Fr. Michael P. Orsi, a chaplain and research fellow in law & religion at the Ave Maria School of Law in Michigan, maintains that the trend for later marriage "or no marriage has been the cause of a great deal of our social deterioration".

"While many sit wringing their hands over the seeming demise of marriage as an institution and the concomitant breakdown in sɛҳuąƖ ethics, none are willing to state the most obvious reason-it is being delayed too long," Fr. Orsi wrote in his 2001 essay "A Case for Earlier Marriage". Orsi points to the high incidence of pre-marital sex, increasing rates of infertility and the growth of the abortion industry, the rise of ɧoɱosɛҳųαƖ activity, the widespread use of artificial birth control as symptoms of the trend.

An article in the November 4, 2005 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, tracked a shift in the demographics of childbearing. Americans delaying marriage are also having children later and less often. The number of first births per 1,000 women 35 to 39 years of age increased by 36 percent between 1991 and 2001, and the rate among women 40 to 44 years of age increased by 70 percent. This while most fertility specialists agree that the ideal age for child bearing remains the early 20s.

With the age of marriage getting steadily higher, the age at which young people first have sex is well below. According to the National Survey of Family Growth and the National Survey of Adolescent Males, the median ages of first intercourse are 16.9 years for boys and 17.4 years for girls.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/aug/09081004.html

The article only glances on the point that economically it's very difficult for a young man to get married young.

Unless he's spent his teen years learning a trade (which I would advise any teen), he's going to have a hard time supporting a family on a minimum-wage job.

The economy is very messed up and unrealistic. For example, those who can produce things of value (e.g., food) wouldn't be able to make a living selling it -- though a man SHOULD be able to make a living selling food he grew. But since we have factory farms, agribusiness, etc. it brings down the "perceived value" of a head of cauliflower, for example.

I've grown various vegetables, and I know that some of them take a lot of effort to get to fruition. A head of cabbage/cauliflower should NOT be $2 -- or the value of 1/4 an hour worked at McDonalds. There is no proportion there. No wonder people don't bother growing their own food!

But growing food is just one example. There's making shoes, carpentry, digging, blacksmithing, and countless other jobs that have been taken over by machines.

Matthew

The article only glances on the point that economically it's very difficult for a young man to get married young.

Unless he's spent his teen years learning a trade (which I would advise any teen), he's going to have a hard time supporting a family on a minimum-wage job.

That is what I was thinking about. I would not be able to support a family at my age. I know how to clean swimming pools, play the piano and organ, but that is about it. I could probably only find a job at restaurant washing dishes or sweeping floor at supermarket (I would not mind either of those).

I don't think getting married early is going to solve the problem. The people of today, especially the young people, are not taught to mortify themselves, but instead are taue ght to live according to the flesh (not just sex but in every area of their life - such as entertainment, food and drink, dressing, etc..). If their worldly mentality does not change, then they are going to probably end up still seeking sɛҳuąƖ pleasure outside of marriage when things go bad in the marriage or if they are bored with their spouse and want something more exciting.

I want to add also the young people today are too immature to get married early. They'll only end up getting divorced after a few years. Even those in their 30's don't have the proper idea of marriage and that is why divorce is so high.

Yes, I was going to add that.