The Young and Their Marriages

mature people can be expected to recognise the kind of person with whom they can make a real, responsible and lasting relationship. In late adolescence, with uncertainty about identity and with conflicting feelings about parents still very much alive, some who marry young are bound to find it hard to make such a realistic choice. But then few marriages, whatever the age of the partners, are contracted on this ideal basis. There is seldom, if ever, a single factor which can be held responsible for the failure of a marriage and certainly no evidence that age, in itself, is a decisive factor in marital breakdown. This does not mean that young people are not at risk if they marry in late adolescence and early adulthood. The evidence before the Latey Committee on the age of majority showed that those who marry young are at roughly three times the risk of divorce than are their elders. Teenage girls who marry older men are at twice the risk.