marrying too young...

[creekster]

Respectfully, you must be totally ignorant of how harmful and hurtful it is to children to be raised in a home where parents fight and don't love each other. Where that is the relationship modeled for them and the idea about marriage they take into adulthood. No two situations are alike and I agree with what I think the spirit of your post is, that adults should try to work things out for their kids. But to say that kids are better of in a dysfunctional home than they are splitting time between happy parents just flat wrong.

I think this thread is suffering from many poorly defined terms. What does dysfunctional mean? Because there are so many levels of dysfunction, I think you are completely wrong, completely right and maybe wrong or right depending on the family situation. But I do feel strongly that the presumption is and shouold be that children are (absent abuse) better off if the parents stay together.

[wuapinmon]

Hmm. My mother married 5 times, and I had some fairly good first hand experience of decent, awful and average (step)parents, and of single-parenting.

It's ignorant of you to suppose I am ignorant, let alone totally ignorant of this. I am well aware of the damage of abusive relationships on spouses and children. A physically abusive father, for example, has far reaching affect on his children, particularly the males, and their future spousal and parental roles.

To be clear, I am referring to dysfuntional families short of pervasive, chronic abuse.

Five times? That must make you Bobby Garfield?

[Uncle Ted]

The Right Time to Marry

When Ane was in high school, she looked forward to the day that she would attend a university. There were so many subjects she could study and so many careers she could choose from! “I had many, many interests and could do so many different things,” she says.


Although Ane lived in a small town in Norway, she attended a very good high school. Her school encouraged its students to work hard for good grades and to attend a university. Many students at Ane’s school began university studies immediately after graduating. From a young age, Ane had planned to do the same. Going to school, however, was only one of the goals Ane had set for herself.


“I have been well taught in Young Women through lessons and Personal Progress,” Ane says. “My goal has always been to marry in the temple.”

[...]


“Some people may have thought that I had to sacrifice many things to get married and start a family,” she says, “and it could have looked that way. But in reality I have gained everything. I know that when I choose to put the Lord first, everything else will be given me. I am very excited and thankful to get my degree. But most of all I am thankful that we have the opportunity to be an eternal family!”

Benjamin agrees. “God has guided my life in such a way that I have been taught to put Him first,” he says. “For me, it wasn’t a choice between family or education; it was family first and education at the same time. Other decisions are the same. It isn’t God or nothing. It is God first; then everything else follows.”

In other news, Utah students more likely to deliver babies on Medicaid than non-students:

Tasked with controlling Medicaid spending, legislators have bemoaned rumored scores of college students rolling up to hospital maternity wards in luxury cars and having babies on the state's dime. Family advocates downplay the anecdotes as apocryphal.

But state data confirm that Medicaid is, indeed, a key source of health care financing for student parents in rural and urban Utah.

In 2008, Medicaid paid for a quarter of the state's births. But it paid for 44 percent of births to parents who listed "student" as their occupation on birth certificate forms.In Cache County, home to Utah State University, Medicaid picked up the tab for 53 percent of student births, and in SUU's backyard of Iron County, 69 percent, state records show.

Younger student parents, under 26 years of age, are even more likely to turn to Medicaid.Still, the total number of subsidized student deliveries is small: 1,276 in 2008, about 11 percent of all Medicaid births statewide.

The lion's share of those births, 499, happened in Utah County, home to Utah Valley University and LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University."These are 90 percent out-of-state students having babies on our dime," said Sen. Howard Stephenson, R-Draper, referring to the LDS Church youth drawn to those schools from around the country.

[jay santos]

I had a baby on Medicaid while a student at BYU.

[Donuthole]

I had a baby on Medicaid while a student at BYU.

+1.

[Lost Student]

I had a baby on Medicaid while a student at BYU.

But I didn't get a luxury car!

[Donuthole]

But I didn't get a luxury car!

I've still never owned a luxury car.

[Moliere]

I had one kid while in college but it wasn't on Medicaid. We didn't qualify because we had money in savings, which money we were using to pay for school. We considered taking a couple big vacations to blow the money so we could have our baby for free, but vacations suck when you are pregnant.

[Solon]

I've still never owned a luxury car.

The ire at students using medicaid is misplaced (IMO). If anything, students are the PERFECT scenario for welfare safety-net programs. They use the benefits while they're young. Get an education. Then they go to work for 40 years and pay back in taxes many times the amount of money they received.

If indeed students are driving luxury cars, they're probably buying them with student-loan money. I know this happens a lot.

I guess we should really be scratching our heads at the hard-core fiscal conservatives who are all too quick to bemoan out-of-control spending while also accepting government handouts. But that's not unique to Utah. It's always someone else who is wasting the government's money, right?

[Pheidippides]

+1.

+2. I was always a Utah resident though so the last paragraph doesn't apply.

[The_Tick]

We are keeping TK1 on our insurance until:

1. Her husband has a job that provides insurance.

2. She is 26...because that is what the law allows now.

We didn't feel it was right to dump her onto the governments dime.

[Pheidippides]

The ire at students using medicaid is misplaced (IMO). If anything, students are the PERFECT scenario for welfare safety-net programs. They use the benefits while they're young. Get an education. Then they go to work for 40 years and pay back in taxes many times the amount of money they received.

If indeed students are driving luxury cars, they're probably buying them with student-loan money. I know this happens a lot.

I guess we should really be scratching our heads at the hard-core fiscal conservatives who are all too quick to bemoan out-of-control spending while also accepting government handouts. But that's not unique to Utah. It's always someone else who is wasting the government's money, right?

I couldn't agree more. College students are exactly the type of people you want to have covered like this - otherwise, they may not be able to complete college, and I don't think it's takes a genius to see the tax revenue going down the drain there.

I once had an entry level luxury car that I got used. It was okay. But maintenance was expensive, so I have no desire to get one now.

[Paperback Writer]

I really doubt 90% of the student body of UVU and BYU are out-of-state. Further, I doubt 90% of those who are married and/or having children are out of state. It's anecdotal, but almost all of the married students I knew at BYU who had started a family while as a student were from Utah. It got to be a joke in my graduate program when a I heard a fellow student's wife was expecting as my reaction was: "Let me guess, he married a girl from Utah".

[Paperback Writer]

We are keeping TK1 on our insurance until:

1. Her husband has a job that provides insurance.

2. She is 26...because that is what the law allows now.

We didn't feel it was right to dump her onto the governments dime.

Many insurance policies won't allow a parent to cover a child once he/she is married. I know mine doesn't and I've always thought I had pretty good insurance. One of the reasons I tell my kids that they need to think about things like insurance before deciding to get married. I thought most large universities offered insurance but it might only be catastrophic coverage.

I couldn't agree more. College students are exactly the type of people you want to have covered like this - otherwise, they may not be able to complete college, and I don't think it's takes a genius to see the tax revenue going down the drain there.

While I agree, is it asking too much to have students wait until they have insurance before starting a family? I understand unplanned pregnancies happen so I think having a social safety net for students is a good thing/investment. However, I don't understand why so many BYU students plan and start their families while being in school when they really can't afford it. Why the rush?

[PaloAltoCougar]

We had two kids by the time I graduated from law school, and paid for them with insurance. One was through DMBA, the school's insurer--Mrs. PAC was an employee; the second was a policy we purchased approximately 20 days before Mrs. PAC became pregnant with the future Mrs. Parrothead (our timing has always been like a fine Swiss watch). We didn't have a luxury car, but drove a bitchin' '72 Mercury Montego my parents gave me for enduring to the end on my mission.

We got married very young (22 and 20), but have never regretted it, although other things being equal I'd recommend kids wait until they're out of school.