Hook-Up Culture and Vocation?

Nice piece on the hook-up culture at the American Conservative. Two paragraphs are worth quoting here:

"However, the modern American university does condition – and often change – students’ priorities. After young adults leave for college, many embrace vocational goals over relationship-centric lifestyles. While it may not be an all-encompassing trend, it is distinctive and growing. Many Americans still enjoy a sense of belonging and roots, but the younger generation likes to move and be free. Many prefer commercial pursuits over constancy or community."

This is part of the problem. Young people are being told, conditioned almost, to wait until they are not-so-young to get married. And that is a big part of why there are so many hook-ups. This leads to the second passage:

"While in college, I possessed more individualistic goals: I wanted to be a roving international reporter, and didn’t envision marriage until my late 20s (if at all). But when I met my future husband, I gave up these plans. I realized my ambition, which would necessarily involve abandoning personal ties and community rootedness, would not bring lasting happiness. A life alone may fill the ego, but it leaves our souls empty. Upon first meeting us, many look at my husband and me with a degree of incredulity. Their first comment is something like, “But you both are so young!” Indeed we are."

I don't know how old the writer was when she got married, but you can see the conditioning here again: she didn't even consider marriage until her late twenties, and yet agrees whole-heartedly that she is "so young [to be married]!" Might I suggest that a large part of the problem is that so many people are waiting until they are so old before even considering marriage? While there's nothing wrong with getting married in one's thirties (or later) per se, a lot of people are waiting until much too late to get married, that the normal state of things is to get married in one's early twenties.

On the other hand, part of the problem is that a lot of people who are getting married really should be remaining single and celibate. So maybe the problem isn't just with marriage, but with discernment. Again, though, if this discernment is put off until the late twenties with a sudden realization that marriage should be in the early thirties, that doesn't leave much time for discernment. Maybe the real problem is that people need to start discerning marriage around the time that they start dating: that is, after all, what "dating" or courtship is all about.

In in the meantime, keeping one's pants on certainly helps with the whole discernment process. It's hard enough to make the right decision concerning marriage when a guy doesn't feel any obligations or other similar pressures to marry a particular girl. Putting the cart before the horse doesn't help anybody nor solve any of these problems. It may be easier to get into a career while single and to work the long hours required to climb the corporate ladder, but it won't make life any better in the long run. In fact, I suspect that if more people got married earlier and insisted on spending more time with their families, that both the hook-up culture and the miserable "work first!" and "go to college now!" culture problems would solve themselves. In any case, for those whose discern that marriage will eventually be in store for them, their first vocation is not career but rather being a good spouse and a good parent.