MARRIAGE AND ADULTHOOD

Greetings!  I'm Nico Trimoff, manager of transcription and accessibility services at www.sterlingcreations.ca.
Today, I have a very interesting article to share with you; a reader's contribution from Alex Dinado and I thank Alex for his contribution.  it's interesting and informative. 
Enjoy  your day.

 

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A reader's contribution

 

MARRIAGE AND ADULTHOOD
Why weddings matter more than ever
Two are stronger than one, a life together can be infinitely richer than the
one you've lived alone

 

Margaret Wente
Globe and Mail, May 2, 2010-

 

My husband and I have reached the time of life when our friends' children
are getting
married. So we're going to a lot of weddings. As friends of the parents,
we're the
least essential people in the room. But we're thrilled to be invited. We've
known some of these brides or grooms since they were adolescents, and a few
since they were born.

 

Last weekend was the wedding of a close friend's daughter. It was warm and
intimate
and wonderfully moving. The couple are obviously well-matched (to say
nothing of head over heels in love). They were married by a family friend,
and devised the ceremony
themselves. They left God out of it, but did exchange the traditional
commitment vows. All the parents seemed overjoyed.

 

A wedding is a union not just of two people
but of two clans. So the families, too, are joined now. The bride and groom
have each acquired a second set of relatives, with a whole new web of joys
and sorrows
and surprises.

 

I didn't always enjoy weddings as much as I do now. I never longed to be a
bride.
When I was in my 20s, I thought marriage was a dusty relic of the
patriarchy. Weddings
were a silly, conformist ritual full of fake piety, tasteless clothes and
ostentatious
spending. Who needed one? Not me. I longed for self-actualization and
adventure - anything but the banality of coupledom and family life.

 

I vaguely pitied the friends who chose to settle down early. They were
cutting off so many of life's possibilities.

 

I was wrong, of course. My friends should have pitied me, instead. They were
getting
along with the work of becoming mature, responsible adults, while I was in
avoidance
mode. They discovered then what I only discovered much later. Two are
stronger than one, and the life you make together can be infinitely richer
than the one you've lived alone.

 

It's their children - their remarkably accomplished, kind, sensible and
optimistic children - who are getting married now.

 

In the past two generations, the cycle of marriage and maturation has
changed radically,
especially for the middle class. My mom got married at 18, when she and Dad
were penniless college students. She popped out three babies by 26, and
nobody thought twice about it.

 

I never would have dreamed of doing that and, if I'd tried, my parents
would have been rightly horrified. The new norm was that marriage had to
wait until you'd finished your education. None of my friends got married
until after university.

 

Today, finishing your education can take until you're 25, or longer. Then
you're supposed to get a job, establish a career, pay off your student
loans, build up some
savings, maybe trek through Asia. These days, the average first-marriage age
in Canada is 34 for men and just under 32 for women - the highest in the
world, except for Spain. No wonder.

 

Marriage rates are in decline. But marriage as an institution is probably
more important
than ever. That's because so many of our other institutions have faded away.

 

Church, community, long-term jobs, and relatives within close reach can no
longer be relied
on to give continuity and structure to our lives. Without the purposefulness
and shared goal-setting that tend to go hand in hand with marriage, many
young adults
today seem unmoored - adrift on a sea of casual relationships where nothing
much is asked of them, and nothing much is offered.

 

Marriage also matters because it is indisputably the best arrangement for
raising
children. No government, no matter how well-heeled or well-intentioned, can
offer an effective substitute for the devotion and parental investment of
two nurturing adults. The young couples we know would make fantastic moms
and dads. But if you're a woman, it's not always easy. My friend's newly
married 27-year-old daughter is a promising scientist with a newly minted
PhD. Her younger sister is finishing law school. They're at the ideal age to
have kids - and also to be establishing themselves in highly competitive
careers.

 

Society needs to figure out better ways of helping them do both.
Next weekend, we'll be at another wedding. The father of the bride is my
husband's oldest friend, and her mother - who died when she was just a girl
- was his other oldest friend. The bride and groom, a strikingly
good-looking pair, are one of Those increasingly common biracial couples who
are helping to turn Canada from a Mosaic to a melting pot. We intend to
drink a lot of toasts and dance the night away

 

(okay, at least till 10). We'll be among the least essential people in the
room, but we'll be witnesses, and that's important.

 

Whenever I go to other people's weddings, I remember mine. It was pretty
special (at least to us). We devised the ceremony ourselves, and it was warm
and intimate.

 

We left God out of it, but did exchange the traditional commitment vows.
Although we were well into middle age by then, all our parents were present,
and seemed quite overjoyed (and also, on my side, mildly relieved). That
day, I realized the marriage ceremony wasn't only about us. It was as much
about the friends and family who had come as witnesses, the second families
we had gained, and the promises we made in public to each other and to all
of them. I sometimes think of it as the day when I became a true adult. If
only I'd known, I might've done it sooner.

 

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