Anti-Dowry?

I've been following the discussion about women and college at Carmon's blog with interest, though I haven't taken the time or mental energy to comment (Sometimes it's just better to listen anyway...I might learn something!:o).

She recommended this informative article: ‘Anti-Dowry’?: The Effects of Student Loan Debt on Marriage and Childbearing by Allan C. Carlson, Ph.D.

Let me just say...how true, how true. Take it from someone who found out the hard way not to finance education with debt! Though I don't at all regret my time spent at college, Micah and I are in total agreement that we would give anything now not to have made the financial choices that we did to pay for it. Though we did not delay marriage (for which I'm glad), and we don't often fight about money, it certainly hasn't been a piece of cake to make ends meet over the last few years! Our future children will NOT BE ALLOWED to even consider debt for any reason:o).

(In reading some of the stats, I realized that I was near the bottom of the youngest 23% of American women to marry, and Micah was in the youngest 13% of men. No wonder people thought we were crazy. No wonder people still can't believe me, two and one half years later, when I tell them I'm married! The most telling stats about the declining rates of marriage in this country are that, within my lifetime, the number of people who marry in their early to mid-twenties has decreased almost in half).