This week a frantic Mom called into Ryan Seacrest’s Los Angeles radio show with stunning query about what to do about her 17-year-old daughter’s engagement to her seventeen-year-old boyfriend. There’s no pregnancy involved just teenaged love hormones. So, what’s a Mom to do?
My answer is simple: Be a parent and say no. The good news is that the law is on your side. According to my research, all but one American state requires a parent’s consent for anyone to get married under the age of 18. Nebraska insists on that partners be 19 to get married with parental permission. So, grow a backbone, Mom, and put your foot down and say NO.
Of course, we all know how oppositional teens tend to react to parental authority, so be prepared to be hated. Use the time before your kid’s eighteenth birthday to impress upon your child the following statistics:
• The current media age that most people get married in the U.S. is 26.7 for men and 25 for women.
• Teen marriage has a dismal divorce rate. About one half of teenaged pregnancies will end in divorce within 15 years. But the younger the teen female the more staggering the rate with some studies showing a divorce rate as high as 70% for girls who marry below the age of 18.
• Teen fathers have incomes that steadily lag behind other males, even into their twenties and thirties. This could be related to the fact that they forgo educational opportunities in order to be a family wage earner in their teens.
• And let’s say a baby comes of that teenaged marriage and then the marriage goes down the tubes. For unwed mothers of all ages, marrying and then divorcing correlates with higher rates of poverty than never marrying.
For some teens, the desire for an early marriage is really a bid for autonomy. Teenagers want to be grown up and bolting from the nest feels very grown up. I would suggest that these parents explore with their daughter ways that she can feel autonomous without having to marry. Does she need a bit more freedom? How about more responsibility? A part-time job and some bills to pay can sometimes be a wake-up call to a teen craving independence.
Above all, validate your teens feelings of love and attachment. Her feelings are real, even if they are a bit premature and are prompting an unwise decision. Try welcoming her boyfriend into the family. If you exclude him and bar her from seeing him, you stand a good chance of making her run further into his arms. One technique for compromise might be to help your teenager plan a “down the road” wedding, say, one that takes place after post-secondary education is complete. Remember, if you like her lover-boy a lot that, in itself, may
Parenting a teen is no cake walk. This mother’s challenge is one that many parents fear. Try to remember that in terms of emotional development, teens are a lot like two-year-olds, with one big difference. Two-year-olds are mentally ready for action before their bodies can do it safely and this causes frustrating tantrums. Teenagers are physically ready for action before their minds have caught up. But both stages secretly crave boundaries. Boundaries help children and teens feel safe, even if it causes them to feel really angry. So be brave mama.
