I thought I'd write quickly about my audience for my next paper. My WATCO is going to be:
WATCO getting married at a young age on survival of marriage?
Before I talk about my audience, though, I'm trying to decide if I should pick a specific age as my deadline. A "young age" seems very broad, but I'm having a hard time deciding what I would choose for a specific age. 22? 25? It'd be hard to find specific studies about a random age I just pick. Then I was thinking I could specify a young age as before graduating college, but I'm still kind of iffy about that too. My point is basically that there's no reason to rush into marriage when you're 19, but I'm not sure how to word that in my WATCO.
Anyway, about my audience. I want to write to young people wanting to get married. But should I narrow it down to engaged young people? Or even specifically to young Mormons? I think that would be really difficult, because in our culture, getting married really fast at a really young age is commonplace. And I definitely think it's good to get married when you find the right person. Maybe the point I'm trying to make is that dating for awhile before you get married can only help. I've heard way too many stories lately about people who got married young and didn't date for a long time who are now getting divorced. It's probably a combination of the two.
Right now I think I'm leaning toward writing toward engaged young people. I think I'll specify young as being under 25, because they seem the most likely to make a rash decision. I just want to emphasize the point that it's a very important decision and there's no need for it to be rushed. In that case, maybe I do want to narrow it down to Mormons, because then I can talk about how marriage is forever, so it's an even bigger deal.
2 comments:
It seems that "young" depends on who your audience is. If you're going to argue the age aspect, perhaps dropping by one of the professors who teach Family Science 100, or whatever it's called would help. I sat in on a lecture of Dr. Barlow's once where he made a pretty similar argument. Any of them could point you towards facts and figures and give the basic arguments. Good luck!
Definitely don't focus too narrowly on Mormons in general, however, we set the stereotype for shotgun marriages so that may be hard. You definitely need to pick and age and go with it, 25 seems to be a good cut off. It'd be interesting if you could find information on how long a couple was dating and engaged before marriage versus how long they were married.
Post a Comment