AGAINST

Liu Peng

www.ifeng.com

Huang may have her reasons for lowering marriage age. But in real life, the delayed marital age among young people, and the more serious phenomenon of the increasing number of singles and women who get pregnant late, is not so closely related to the current legal age for marriage. The main reason for these problems is the growing pressure on young people. Why do some young people of marriageable age choose not to marry and gradually slip into the stream of being single and some females have children very late in life? It's not because of the current legal marriage age. It's because most of these young people can't afford marriage and are even afraid of getting married.

We do see cohabitation among the young, but this phenomenon is not common among men who are below 22 and women below 20 years old.

Worse still, the divorce rate among those who were born in the 1980s keeps rising. If a marriage is not so stable in the beginning, it's quite possible that early marriage will further push up this rate, causing more serious social problems. 

Xu Ge

Zhanjiang Evening News

Nowadays, many youngsters around 18 can't get employed without college diplomas. Without jobs, how can they marry and manage to raise children?

Huang might say, in this case, they don't need to go to college and should get a job immediately after graduating from high school. Ok, but when a young couple whose combined wages are very low, how can they raise a child? They even won't be able to support themselves.

Huang said if young people are allowed to get married at 18, they will not choose cohabitation and this will help to protect the health of women and children. However, she seems to have neglected some bigger problems. For example, the young couples might have to depend on their parents.

Han Jing

www.hkwb.net

Recently, news that two college students dropped out of school to get married has caused much public discussion. The two students were both born in the 1990s. At 18 years old, people are still at the stage of growing up. It is a time for them to study hard and gain experience. They don't have stable incomes and thus if they get married at this age, they will still depend on their parents after the wedding.

The large number of single men and women, pregnancy of women over 35 and premarital cohabitation, is more the results of people's values and their own choices, which has little to do with the legal marriage age. Although many countries in the world have a low legal marriage age threshold, they are also plagued by rocketing divorce rates. Thus, it's too ideal to assume that a lowered legal marriage age will reduce social problems.