In the past 100 years or so, it has become common for women to pursue higher education and find a position in the workforce. In the US, after the shift from an agrarian society to an industrial society, we had a couple of world wars. Especially in WWII, a lot of women worked in factories to make the equipment to send overseas. But after a depression an a war, women were eager to have babies. So we had American housewives. Then there was the feminist movement, and some of the women started looking down on women who stayed home with the family. Staying home and raising children was seen as less valued.
And nowadays, it is common for parents to send both boys and girls off to college. Many men can be fertile up through their senior citizen years. But women are most fertile in their teens and twenties, and tend to hit their time of infertility in their '40's. The biological clock is ticking.
So parents send girls off to college. Then they are expected to establish themselves in their career. Many of them are single at 30, when fertility is starting to wane, and many of them look for a man to marry and to have children. Not all women do this. And men in their 30's can choose among women in their 20's who are not as career-oriented and the women in their 30's. Much of our society in the west is not sexually moral, and many women who seek to marry late have already had many partners, and the same is true of many of the men.
Biologically, human beings are ready to reproduce in their teen years. Our system of institutions and education doesn't really give people much of a chance to support a family at a young age, at least not in the west.
There are advantages to women staying home with the children, especially babies while they are still nursing. The Bible also speaks in favor of women being diligent about the home, raising children, etc.
Some of these social trends are just decades old. Are they good for society? Are they good for us as Christians? Should we as Christians rethink how we educate our children, how we encourage them to marry? Is it better that young people marry young to 'avoid fornication'? In our modern world with a weak marital institution and social acceptance of divorce, those who marry young statistically have a poorer chance at marital success than those who wait. But was likely not the case in previous eras where marriage was more highly respected, and need not be the case if Christians have a strong culture of faithfulness and successful marriage.
Would it be wise to focus more on training girls to be good wives and less on careers? If that is the case, where are the males with the corresponding set of values, training, and resources to marry these young women?
