WHEN TO MARRY

Gisborne Times, Volume LXX, Issue 11175, 7 April 1930, Page 3

WHEN TO MARRY

VARIATION IN AGE

A girl’s chances of marriage fall off sharply after she reaches the age of twenty-five, while the young man’s chances increase for a time after that age, according to some provocative statistics gathered by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company on the probability ol marriage at various ages, from 15 up. As the Minneapolis “Star” puts it, “the older a young man gets the more likely h e is to many, whereas the older a young woman gets, the less chance she lias of avoiding spiuterhood.” That paper proceeds: “The twenty-year-okl girl has a better chance of marrying witli.n ten years than the young man of the same age. By the time ea r L reaches th e ao e of 25, however, the tables are turned for the young woman has less chance as years go hv and the, young mail more .chance to take the marital vows. V e don’t quite know what the moral of this should ho other than the obvious advice for girls to marry when they get a. chance, and young men to lake their time and he cautious.”

ANOTHER OPINION. Taking for granted that- these statistics will bo duly studied by those who fall within the company’s classifications, the Rochester “Democrat and Chronicle” goes deeper into the subject, trying not to appear too serious—thus: “One learns that at the age of 20 a young man has a 41 per cent, chance of being alive and married within the next ten years, but whether this is to be taken as an encouragement or a wnruino. the company does not state. The girl of 20 has a somewhat higher percentage of matrimonial risk than the bov. but after that age her stock begins to go down, while, for the voting mail it rises, and he is in increased danger of the altar until lie reaches middle-age. The one momentous fact that we can discover from a study of tlie whole situation is that there is no period from the age of 15 upwards that one is . mill rely immune from the possibility of marriage. To be sure, the percentage of likelihood declines as years advance, and it appears that a man of 55 has only a ]() per cent, prospect of marrying within the next five years. But so long as that percentage ol possibility remains in any age, how can one he sure? Why may matrimony not strike m one place .just as much as in another?

. IMMATURE JUDGEMENT. Before the age ot 25, the survey shows the average young man is hardly marriageable, because he is not, vet earning a living for two. Many in' fact, have not yet decided upon llioir line of work at that age, and. as the Louisville “Times" points out, most of them are still immature in judgment. “Yet,” remarks that paper, “it is between 17 and 25, as u rule, that. girls make the great decision of their lives, as often opposed as aided by their parents. ft is an axiom of. mamed life that everyone marries a stranger. The wonder— as Robert Louis Stevenson asserted- —is not that so many matrimonial barques go on the neks, but that so many come safely to port.”