55% of Teenagers View Marriage Positively
YORK, Pa., March 29, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — With the wedding season kicking off in mid-spring, StageofLife.com—a resource and blogging website for high school students, Baby Boomers, and every life stage in between—asked its teen and college visitors, “What is the value of marriage?” This question is part of StageofLife.com’s ongoing monthly blogging contest series.
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Over 4,520 students from all 50 US states visited the marriage writing contest page. From those who submitted a blog entry to StageofLife.com on the topic, 55% of the teenagers shared a positive view about marriage, 28% had a negative view, and 17% took a neutral, unbiased, or more academic approach. In less than 30 days, over 41,500 words were uploaded to StageofLife.com as students shared their opinions and feelings about marriage.
The winning college student essay, You’re Stuck With Me, came from Kaleigh Somers, a Creative Writing minor at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. When asked why she submitted an essay, Somers explained, “As soon as I read the contest description, I had this strong visceral reaction to it. I knew that I wanted to remind people that college students haven’t lost sight in marriage. Some of us, myself included, still believe in the sanctity of marriage. Writing it out was the best method to express that.”
Outside of the positive or negative emotional reaction, five common themes/trends about marriage emerged from the scores of essays written by high school and college students:
1. Religion: Students used religion—mostly Christianity—to describe the importance of the sacrament of matrimony. However, some students took an anti-religious tone.
York College of Pennsylvania junior Michelle Pease confessed in her essay, A Word, “I don’t care much for the religious undertones in the word marriage. Words don’t belong to certain groups of people, and so there is no reason for the religious to “triumph” the non-religious in the gay marriage debate.”
2. Parents: Students’ parents’ marriages affected how these students viewed marriage. If the parents’ marriage was successful, then the student viewed marriage positively; if not, then the students often resented marriage.
StageofLife.com blogger purpleoveralls broke away from this trend in the winning high school essay, Let me keep my childhood dream. She wrote, “I know from personal experience the effect divorce has on children, and I would never put my own child through that misery. But instead of giving up on marriage…I
Article source: PRNewswire
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