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Show "Teen-agers literally have not lived long enough to develop the basic maturity that marriage demands. And this goes for love too." Dr. Lis wood cites as an example the number of couples in their thirties who come to see her saying. ''We got married when we were much too young, and now we've outgrown each other." Or the teen girl may seek love "as a convenient outlet for other needs." Dr. Esther Lloyd-Jones, Lloyd-Jones, head of the Department of Guidance 'and Personnel Administration Admini-stration at Teachers College Columbia University, believes that today there exists "an easy acceptance accept-ance of next' steps without necessarily weighing them in terms of foresight, caution, a long view of life. This permits and encourages young people to take the line of least resistance." Still another explanation for the rapid rise in the number of teenage marriages comes from Dr. Nathan Ackerman, director of research re-search for the Psychiatric Clinic of the Jewish Family Service in New York: "In many cases. ..the couple is not looking for sexual thrills, but for a secure niche in society... they want a nice steady job, a regular income, a little home with gadgets. And there is the contagious con-tagious fright. Kids are fightened because they live... in a world without with-out certainty and they don't know w,hat lies ahead." Teen-Age Marriage New York Forty-seven per cent of all first brides in the United States today are under nineteen. Twenty-six per cent are under eighteen. Yet according to the Census Bureau, teen-age marriages are three times more liable to end in divorce than marriages involving brides in their twenties. Then why do high sfchool students continue to rush into quick marriages, regardless of the risks involved? Primarily to seek escape from their parents, satisfaction of physical desire, security, or a sense of belonging to the crowd, reveals the February issue of Seventeen Magazine in a report entitled, "What Love is Not." According to Dr. Rebecca Liswood, Executive Director of the' Marriage Counseling Service of Greater New York, the immaturity of teen-agers underlies their inability in-ability to cope with the demands of marriage. "Marriage is for grownups," says Dr. Liswood. |