Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1898 — RIGHT AGE FOR MARRIAGE. [ARTICLE]

RIGHT AGE FOR MARRIAGE.

Health and Happiness Moat Frequent 4 Ijr Attend Barly Marriages. Taking it for granted, which all sensible, right-minded and good-hearted people do, that marriage is the very best condition for all men and women, the question arises, What is the best marriageable age? There is very much to be said in favor of both late and early marriages. Those who start out in life early may have the satisfaction of gathering a large family of grandchildren about them, and spending the latter portion of their lives in comparative freedom from care and anxiety. Having brought their children up in the way they should go, and established them comfortably in prosperous occupations, they may feel relieved from the immediate responsibilities of everyday life, and feel that all the children will have an Interest in their happiness and welfare. Of course, where youngsters begin life together, they usually do so with small means, and if the little ones arrive in rapid succession there may, and almost inevitably will, be more or less hardship in making both ends meet and in providing food and clothes and education for the fast-growing brood; but if parents will only take a rational view of the situation, and understand that simple food is not expensive, that plain clothes are quite as good as fine ones, and that education and knowledge is the one thing of all others to give the children in order to furnish them with working capital, they w’ill have simplified life to a great extent, and can pave the way to prosperity and a peaceful and plentiful old age. People who marry when quite young are likely to live together more harmoniously than those who enter into this relation after their ideas, minds and methods are fully settled. The younger a woman marries the less likely she is to set up her will in the household. For this reason many men prefer young wives; indeed, they sometimes say that they would choose a very young girl and bring her up, so to speak, to their liking. Mature women have their own ideas, and these aro very frequently not specially in accord with the views of the average man. Physiologically, there is a good deal to be said in favor of early marriages, provided the family does not increase too rapidly. If women would observe all the laws of health they could marry later in life with much greater safety than at present; but health is usually the last thing to be thought of unitl it is gone. Marriage is the only proper state for rational beings to live in, and if it is a failure it is not so from general laws, but from the caprices and wrong methods of those who enter into it. From twenty to twentty two is a good age for young women, and men would do well to marry before they are twentyflve. If women were as physically able to assume the most important duties of the mairrlage relation at twenty-five or thirty as at twenty there would be an excellent reason for delay; but all physiologists are aware that the responsibilities of motherhood are attended with much greater risk after twen-ty-five years, and after thirty the dangers are increased tenfold. There is one serious defect in the education of the average girl. Instead of being taught to put herself in perfect physical trim from her girlhood and being-able to meet the contingencies of life with calmness, confidence, and the certainty of a successful outcome, she is left in profound Ignorance of those things that she has the most need to know. At twenty-five or thirty a woman has more inteligence to guide her, but less favorable physical conditions. As health is the most important of all things, it would seem wise to so arrange our life that its most taxing cares come with as little injury to the physical system as possible.