With my debut as a bridesmaid for a friend’s wedding looming menacingly on the horizon, I have found myself thinking about marriage a lot lately. In between trawling the internet like some cyber equivalent of Sig Hansen from Deadliest Catch for purple Jeffrey Campbell shoes (don’t ask) and fretting about how I am going to look in an unintentionally see-through dress that also exposes the top of my ass crack, I have begun to wonder if weddings really have much to do with marriage at all. It occurred to me that perhaps all this ridiculousness is nothing but a cunning ploy to divert attention from being young, a student, and living under the gauntlet of impending nuptials.
Marriage in NZ: The Obligatory Statistics
After all, it is general knowledge that in the Western world, marriage is in decline. New Zealanders are getting married at the lowest rate in over a decade. According to our national bastion of demographic intelligence, Statistics New Zealand, in 2006 the proportion of the over-15 population who were married dropped below 50 per cent for the first time. In 2011, New Zealand residents had 20,231 marriages, the lowest number since 2001. Furthermore, the median age of first-time marriage has risen from 23 years to 29 years for grooms and from 21 years to 27 years for brides since 1971. Throw in the oft-cited figure that one third of all marriages end in divorce, and it is clear that the institution of marriage has become rather unpopular.
In light of these figures, I became curious about that clandestine subculture of “young marrieds” I felt sure must exist somewhere on campus, perhaps lurking furtively around the crèche or the theology department. I wanted to know why anyone would want to get married at all, let alone as a young student juggling drinking and study commitments, with a whole life stretching gloriously ahead in which to sow one’s wild oats with carefree, joyful abandon.
The "Young and Married" Stereotype: Justified?
Let’s face it, young marrieds today are perceived in a rather negative light. When Critic put out the call, bugle-like, for interviewees, I fully expected to endure excruciating sessions listening to boring, lust-crazed Christians, post-natally depressed almost-single mothers and, of course, those short-sighted folk who got hitched to become eligible for the student loan. You can only imagine my disappointment when the people I met turned out to be not only attractive, friendly and intelligent, but also (dare I say it?) such good chat that I now secretly want to befriend them all in real life.
In saying this, it’s true that some young marrieds did say things that aligned with my preconceptions. For example, Imogen*, 21, got married in February and stated that her faith was a factor in her decision to get wed whilst still a student. “I guess we got to a place in our relationship where we wanted to take it to the next level. Yeah, I mean, it would have been another two years, which is admittedly kind of a long time to wait for sex and live together. And I feel like if you’ve decided … it’s almost just like a lot of temptation on yourself.”
A person much wiser than me once said that the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, it is that they are incomplete. Despite what you may be thinking, there were no dowdy hausfraus amongst the engaged or married girls I spoke to. Indeed, spotting one of them at uni the day after our interview, I pointed her out to my friend, who enthusiastically exclaimed, “God, she’s so hot I’d marry her as well!”
The marrieds themselves are aware of the stereotypes. Imogen, for example, has had strangers in her lectures comment on her wedding ring. “People think you’re a little bit strange or something … I think that people assume that if you get married you want to settle down and have kids. I was little bit apprehensive when we were going to tell everyone that we were getting engaged, just because of the whole stereotypical ‘Christian’ thing.”
Lucy*, 23, who has been married for 15 months, has had similar experiences. “There’s still that stigma of, oh you’re gonna get married, you’re gonna have kids and then you’re gonna be in this thing where he works and you’re at home … people think it’s kinda weird.” Despite professing no religious affiliation, Lucy – blonde, gorgeous and distinctly un-Burqa’d – has been asked, due to her youth and marital status, whether she was a Muslim. “I was like, do I look Muslim? And how does that even make any sense? I was sort of like, do you know anything about Islam?”
But Why Get Married At All?
I felt compelled to reassess my initial and, admittedly, rather hyperbolic scorn for the young married. But I was still interested as to why someone would prematurely ball-and-chain themselves when they could have all the convenience and none of the expense or fuss with a good old-fashioned de facto relationship. The Property (Relationships) Act 1976 effectively means that couples over the age of 18 who have been living together for three or more years have similar property rights as those who are legally married. So why fork out, at the bare minimum, the $170 for a marriage license?
It would seem that the reasons for students wanting to get married are much the same as they’ve always been for anyone. Jeremy*, 21, and Beth*, 23, have been married for 16 months. For Jeremy, marriage “gives you an opportunity to officially affirm to each other and everyone else and everyone that matters to you that we feel like this, and we’re doing this with our lives.” Lucy is slightly more matter-of-fact about the subject. “We just did it as a nice way to cement our relationship … you can go and get married … I think it costs, like, $160 for the wedding certificate, so it’s pretty cheap.”
All this is well and good, but it seemed to me that, apart from the Christians being keen to get sexy times underway ASAP, there was no real reason why those I interviewed couldn’t wait until after graduation to say their “I dos.” But maybe I was asking the wrong question. Mariah*, 18, and Justin*, 19, have been together for four years and got engaged in March last year. Mariah says that being a student “didn’t make a difference. We can be engaged and study at the same time, being engaged doesn’t mean you have to act any differently or do anything different to what we would usually be doing, except for the fact that we’re planning a wedding.” Jeremy and Beth felt similarly. “It seemed like the natural thing to do so in that way, it’s not a big deal,” Beth says. “It’s not this thing that I need to sit and plan out meticulously for two years and spend $50,000. We didn’t do it on the cheap, but it wasn’t expensive.” Jeremy and Beth were married in a hillside ceremony in which she wore an emerald-green dress and they recited vows written by a Tibetan monk. “It felt right,” Jeremy says. “I don’t know why you’d wait a few months. I think that’s just a societal thing, that you might be too young.”
The Juggling Act
However, it would appear that the “student factor” does present a unique set of challenges to young marrieds who are still studying. “We seem to be doing things at completely different times, most of the time,” says Jeremy. Beth agrees: “Being relaxed together is the biggest challenge.” Despite being new to marriage, Imogen is also finding this juggling act tough at times. “It’s tricky to find quality time. Also, because you want to devote time and invest in your marriage, I haven’t spent as much time doing student things.” For Lucy, whose husband works in the North Island, long-distance marriage actually helps her manage her work/life dynamic better. “It’s actually a really good incentive to study during the week because I’m like, I’m going to see him this weekend so I have to be free.”
While marriage may affect study, contrary to what I had assumed it does not seem to necessarily affect the social lives of those involved. When I asked her, Lucy laughed. “We go out just as much as we used to, both by ourselves and together, and usually drunk-call each other, which is kinda funny.” Imogen doesn’t see marriage and maintaining a healthy social life as mutually exclusive either, saying “it’s great because you have someone to go home to when you’ve been out with your friends at night … also, it’s quite nice going out with him with his ring on, and it’s like ‘yeah, he’s taken’.”
Traditional Gender Roles? Not Even.
Not historically one to enjoy admitting I am wrong, no one is more despondent than me to concede that, as the interviews wore on, I began to wonder if marriage would really be all that bad. Certainly, my half-hearted, patriarchy-related criticisms of marriage have been dashed. Indeed, not only did Beth propose to Jeremy soon after she had moved to New Zealand to be with him, neither see their marriage as approximating those of their parents’ more traditionally gendered roles. “We’re a lot more equal than my parents were,” Jeremy says. “My parents were very traditional and my dad would go to work and come home and sit in the chair and my mum would look after us and cook food and do all of that, as well as going to work.” Beth agrees: “My mum was a housewife, which is the opposite of what I’m going to be, or am.”
It seems that these days, practical concerns generally tend to win out over any old-fashioned notions of men as the primary breadwinner and women as the baby-maker/slave. Lucy, ever the pragmatist, says, “I fully intend to work, I don’t intend to stay at home and raise the children. He has a very flexible job so it would probably actually be him doing it more than anything.” Similarly, Imogen says that she and her husband “came to the conclusion that we’d try to do whatever worked for the relationship. If that meant that he stayed home and cooked because I was studying then that would be what we’d do.”
However, historical habits can die hard. Despite her egalitarian ideals, Imogen adds that “dad works and mum works, too, but she still does the cooking and that kind of stuff. It’s really hard not to get into that because I find myself wanting to have the dinner on the table.” Selina*, 21, has been engaged for 8 months and is getting married at the end of November. Regardless of my very unprofessional disdain, she admitted that “I personally still kind of like the idea of having the male or the husband be … definitely not superior or anything, but taking a leadership role in the marriage. I want to, I guess, in a way, serve him … but then I don’t want to feel like that’s something I have to do; it’s more something I want to do. And I kind of hope, I guess, that he would want to do the same for me. Which he does.”
The Missing 33%
In 2004, Fox News announced that after 43 years together, the plastic dolls responsible for an entire generation’s low self-esteem had decided to “call it quits.” If Barbie and Ken, the most attractive couple in history, couldn’t make it last despite entirely lacking the powers of speech or movement, what hope do the rest of us have? I mean, where are all those tragic, divorced young souls who statistically must exist out there somewhere? Well, like houses in a Christchurch earthquake, the three divorced interviewees I had lined up all fell through. Given the levels of commitment they had hitherto exhibited, this probably should not have surprised me.
A Final Word
Writing this feature, my growing feeling has been one of deflated, grudging goodwill to all the participants who are, unexcitingly, normal, nice people. Like Kevin McLeod in the final moments of an episode of Grand Designs, I walked away from them having heard of their reasons and their trials, thinking they’ll probably be just fine and wishing them all the very best. But if it’s true that one third of marriages must end in divorce, two of the couples I interviewed are not going to make it. Don’t worry about that too much, though. Divorceme.co.nz makes it easy with a “DivorceMe Pack” that will set you back only $399.
