late marriage (By Yusuke and Nozomi)

 

1. Introduction

    The theme of our research is late marriage in Japan. Nowadays there is tendency
that many couples get married late. It is seen not only in Japan, but also in other developed countries that the rate of late marriage is becoming higher and higher year by year. There is one data about late marriage of men and women in 2000.

         Age at first marriage according to the data 2000
                                                                  
         Country             Age for men                 Age for women
                                 

         Sweden                 32.9 years                   30.4 years
         Denmark               32.5 years                   30.1 years
         Spain                     31.2 years                   29.1 years
         France                   31.2 years                   29.1 years
         Norway                 31.1 years                   28.6 years
         Germany               30.9 years                   28.2 years
         Switzerland           30.8 years                   28.2 years
         Netherland            30.7 years                   28.3 years
         Australia               30.6 years                   28.6 years
         Finland                  30.5 years                   28.3 years
         Austria                  30.3 years                   27.9 years
         Italy                       30  years                     27.1 years
         Japan                     30  years                     27.3 years
         Ireland                   30  years                    28.2 years
         United Kingdom   29.8 years                  27.7 years
         New Zealand         29.2 years                  27.1 years
         Canada                   29  years                    27.4 years
         Belgium                 29.9 years                  26.6 years
         United States         26.0 years                  25  years
         Weighted average  30.3 years                 28.1 years

 

At the time, 2000, the average age at first marriage for both men and women was very high. Therefore, it can be said that the average age at first has to be higher in today’s world. Now we want to analyze following three points of late marriage in Japan. The first one is what the cause of late marriage is. The second one is problems as the results of late marriage. The third one is what can be done to prevent late marriage in the future.

2. The cause of late marriage

    There are various causes of the late marriage. First of all, the establishment of
women’s social status has great influence as a contributing factor of it. Recently the number of women who put back a marriage in consideration of work has increased. That is because in today’s Japan, women as well as men can get a high position depending on their efforts. As a result, they get to have a strong sense of responsibility for work and be afraid of the problem of child care due to a marriage. If they have a child, they must take a certain period off from work and it is possible that they can’t finish their job. Secondly, the unstable economic situation contributes to the late marriage. Nowadays, it is said that we have difficulty in living single because of a depression. Under this circumstance, it is natural that people are very anxious about the married life. In addition, the Japanese government offers an insufficient child allowance, so that some women can’t give birth to a baby even if they want to do. Thirdly, in today’s Japan,  there is a tendency to think a marriage doesn’t necessarily bring happiness. People used to have the idea that they must get married as soon as possible because remaining single is unhappy. However, now that people have little resistance to a single life as a matter of individualism, a lot of people want to get satisfaction from using time and money to spare for themselves.

3. Problems of late marriage

    Some people might say that there are some advantages as the results of late
marriage. For example, if couples get married at later ages, they could have less problems with money. However, some big problems as the results of late marriage are seen nowadays. We would like to give three typical examples.
    The first is that women have bad influence on giving birth to babies. If a woman gave birth at the age over 35, this would be called “Advanced maternal age”. Moreover it was discoverd by some reseachers that there are many disadvantages for women to give birth to babies. The later couples get married, the more difficult it becomes for women to to have children and the bigger the possibilities becomes that those women catch some diseases. It can also difficult for men to help women with giving birth to babies because the sperm function of men deteriorates. At last, some couples have no child. This leads to “a declining number of children” today.
    Secondly, it could happen that the parents retire their jobs before children become independent of their parents. If parents quit working while their children are young, it is very difficult to have enough money for bringing up their children. As parents get older, they have less energy to work. Parents are responsible for raising their children.
    Thirdly, if a couple gets married at later ages, the parents of both sides of the couple could be very old. As a result, the parents of both sides can’t live on their own anymore and always need someone to help them immediately, after the marriage of the couple. This could deprive the private time of the couple.

4. How to prevent late marriage in the future

    Because late marriage resulted in serious problems as we mentioned above, it is now said that some measures should be taken to prevent late marriage from increasing in the future. There are some measures nowadays offerd by several institutions. We would like to take three examples.
    The first is setting up marriage counseler’s offices. Marriage counseler’s office is an organization that introduces people who are looking for someone to marry. In today’s society, there are many men and women who have difficulty with finding partners.
    Secondly, lessons for marriage are offered by experts. These are for single men or women who are not good at communicating with the someone of the opposite sex. The lessons are held for men and women separately. The themes of the lessons are “How to communicate with a person of the opposite sex”, “Recent Conditions of marriage” and so on.
    The third is offering experienced-based events for single men and women. Through those events, men and women have chances to get to know each other and to practice how to communicate better with someone of the opposite sex.

5. Conclusion
   
    As we wrote so far, late marriage is one of the most serious problems in Japan and all over the world today. Also, we think that late marrige of couples is the biggest cause of aging society. Therefore, there should be more and more measures to solve the problems of late marriage so that men and women have much less diffuculty with getting married. Late Marriage (