Chastity, Young Marrieds, and Pregnancy

[_charity]

We hold our breaths when young couples, without much or most of their occupational education completed , get married. We hope they will be fine, but we are realistic. We hope that since they have decided freely to marry (not ahead of an unintentional birth) that they have considered how to meet all the demands that will be placed on them, mainly for the young man to become prepared occupationally to support a family.

No we do not hold our breath. We are quite fine and even encourage young (21-25) year old couples to marry and start a family andnot wait for college to be done or career started. Where do you get this idea from ?

I got that idea from having two sons and 4 daughters and trying to advise them on how to set up success conditions.

[_Jason Bourne]

I remember listening to those thoughts in General Conference; I got so pissed off when he said that now the guy had to take a low paying job. what a crock of shi?. I guy a year older than I in our ward went to Ricks College. He met a real nice girl from Wyoming. Well they found that they were going to be parents. He wanted to be a dentist. He joined the army and did all the dental things he could there. He then went back to school and got his degree. He then applied and was accepted to dental school. That was the last I heard of him.

This type of speech is dangerous at times. There is a Presidential candidate who lost a close family member from an illegal abortion. She had this image pounded in her mind of a temple marriage. If you are willing to have an abortion so you can get married in the temple then something is very wrong. People here talk about pressure from within the church to live a certain way. The pressure can so bad it can destroy someone or in some cases prevent people from taking a break and reviewing other options.

Gordon B. should have been tazered when he said the words low paying job.

So you generalize from one guy you know that still got to be a dentist after maryring before completing his degree to every can do that. And Church leaders generalize from those who quite scohol to take jobs to support families and are stuck. I think if you were to do a real study, you would find the ones going on to degrees later to be a much smaller number than those who fare much less well.

Charity

are you really missing the point as bad as it seems?

[_skippy the dead]

I remember listening to those thoughts in General Conference; I got so pissed off when he said that now the guy had to take a low paying job. what a crock of shi?. I guy a year older than I in our ward went to Ricks College. He met a real nice girl from Wyoming. Well they found that they were going to be parents. He wanted to be a dentist. He joined the army and did all the dental things he could there. He then went back to school and got his degree. He then applied and was accepted to dental school. That was the last I heard of him.

This type of speech is dangerous at times. There is a Presidential candidate who lost a close family member from an illegal abortion. She had this image pounded in her mind of a temple marriage. If you are willing to have an abortion so you can get married in the temple then something is very wrong. People here talk about pressure from within the church to live a certain way. The pressure can so bad it can destroy someone or in some cases prevent people from taking a break and reviewing other options.

Gordon B. should have been tazered when he said the words low paying job.

So you generalize from one guy you know that still got to be a dentist after maryring before completing his degree to every can do that. And Church leaders generalize from those who quite scohol to take jobs to support families and are stuck. I think if you were to do a real study, you would find the ones going on to degrees later to be a much smaller number than those who fare much less well.

Charity

are you really missing the point as bad as it seems?

Yes.

Until she realizes that the only difference between the couple in the story and a good percentage of the young marrieds at BYU is a matter of weeks between conception dates, she just doesn't get it.

[_Jason Bourne]

It makes no sense to you that one couple which plans for marriage might have a step up on one couple who can't even plan not to get pregnant? I think it shows a difference in attitude and abilities between the two.

The couple that got pregnant were in school. THey messed up. They can still stay in school after they marry and have the baby just as much as they can stay in school had they married and had a baby nine months later. Holy moly woman!!! There is nothing to argue here.

[_asbestosman]

for what it's worth, my wife said that the unplanned aspect was what made it an implosion. Upon further questioning she agreed that implosions are not always the result of sin. One's world can implode by an illness or accident, for example. With young couples who marry, at least it was their choice. Also, the sin aspect seemed to play some part. However, to her it was more of how things felt. Big changes came--changes due to decisions they had not planned for but which were the result of sin. Not all changes result from sin. Not all sin results in big changes, but in this case that's what happened.

I hope I got her position right. All I know is that President Hinckley was right.

[_beastie]

for what it's worth, my wife said that the unplanned aspect was what made it an implosion. Upon further questioning she agreed that implosions are not always the result of sin. One's world can implode by an illness or accident, for example. With young couples who marry, at least it was their choice. Also, the sin aspect seemed to play some part. However, to her it was more of how things felt. Big changes came--changes due to decisions they had not planned for but which were the result of sin. Not all changes result from sin. Not all sin results in big changes, but in this case that's what happened.

I hope I got her position right. All I know is that President Hinckley was right.

I actually think GBH is correct in saying that a youthful, rushed marriage and unplanned pregnancy can cause a serious derailment of one's life's goals, although, as many have already stated, it doesn't have to.

My disagreement with GBH is in this - he expresses extreme consternation over this scenario and yet encourages almost the exact same scenario in countless others - except, in their case, the wedding comes first.

My boyfriend's exwife got pregnant within three months of their wedding. They were already struggling because, like so many young LDS, they really barely knew each other because they had such a fast courtship. When they found out she was pregnant - unplanned - they were both completely devastated.

Internet Mormons almost had me convinced this teaching had changed, but I don't believe it has. I believe church leadership *still* encourages their young people to marry young, (after the mission, of course), marry quickly, and to not procrastinate having children. These children are often driven by their hormones to do just that, and then they wake up after the honeymoon and realize how difficult marriage can be, then get pregnant fast, still in school, living in a tiny apartment, financial stress - recipe for disaster.

Of course it doesn't have to be a disaster. It does make for a rough patch. People can pull through. But so could the "bad" couple, and that certainly was not the message GBH was sharing.

[_asbestosman]

My disagreement with GBH is in this - he expresses extreme consternation over this scenario and yet encourages almost the exact same scenario in countless others - except, in their case, the wedding comes first.

I wish I knew my wife's take on that. I know she purposely posponed children to get to know each other better at least for a while. In fact, she was kinda upset at anyone suggesting that she was doing something wrong by not wanting to get pregnant right away. She also seems to think that couples who get married first will be better off than those who get pregnant first. If I get her correctly, I think she also beleives that unplanned pregnancies are hard in marriage.

So, does she think the church encourages people to marry young and not delay children? I don't know. All I know is that she felt that she was justified in delaying children at least for some time (and she had already graduated in engineering by the time we married).

[_beastie]

I felt justified in delaying having children, too. I'd been married over two years before I (accidentally) got pregnant. For most people, waiting two years is considered minor. In the LDS culture, I knew I was being naughty, but I knew I wasn't ready to bring a child into that marriage.

I think this sentence of yours affirms my own experience in the LDS church:

In fact, she was kinda upset at anyone suggesting that she was doing something wrong by not wanting to get pregnant right away.

In the LDS culture, there's "something wrong" with young marrieds who delay having children.

[_Jason Bourne]

Internet Mormons almost had me convinced this teaching had changed, but I don't believe it has. I believe church leadership *still* encourages their young people to marry young, (after the mission, of course), marry quickly, and to not procrastinate having children. These children are often driven by their hormones to do just that, and then they wake up after the honeymoon and realize how difficult marriage can be, then get pregnant fast, still in school, living in a tiny apartment, financial stress - recipe for disaster.

Still emphasized but perhaps less aggressively so.

by the way, while early marriages and having kids soon make life tough for some time I am not sure I would call it recipe for disaster. An amazing number of these LDS marriages survive and the families often seem quite happy. Many of them are economically successful as well.

[_asbestosman]

In the LDS culture, there's "something wrong" with young marrieds who delay having children.

She said that the pressure was only from one person. She actually got the opposite pressure from others.

I asked her about if it is wrong to delay children. She said it depends and that it wasn't for her to tell others.