On Love and Family

"Unfortunately, postponing marriage and all the responsibilities that go with is does not prolong youth. It only prolongs the illusion of it, and then again only in one's own eyes. The traits that are forgivable in a twenty-year-old--the constant wondering about who you are and what you will be; the readiness to chuck one thing, or person, for another and move on--are less attractive in a thirty-two-year-old. More often what results is a middle-aged person who retains all the irritating self-absorption of an adolescent without gaining any of the redeeming qualities of maturity. Those qualities--wisdom, a sense of duty, the willingness to make sacrifices for others, an acceptance of aging and death--are qualities that spring directly from our relationships and commitments to others."

"By waiting and waiting and waiting to commit to someone, our capacity for love shrinks and withers. This doesn't mean that women or men should marry the first reasonable person to come along, or someone with whom they are not in love. But we should, at a much earlier age than we do now, take a serious attitude toward dating and begin preparing ourselves to settle down. For it's in the act of taking up the roles we've been taught to avoid or postpone--wife, husband, mother, father--that we build our identities, expand our lives, and achieve the fullness of character we desire."

-What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us