If Charlie Kirk is right, the clock is ticking: Get married before your 30th birthday or your bloodline dies with you.
The right-wing commentator made a stir online with his recent comments on the right age for women to get married.
“In their early 30s, they get really upset, because they say, you know, ‘The boys don’t want to date me anymore.’ Because they’re not at their prime,” Kirk said at a Turning Point USA event in March. “People get mad when I say that, well it’s just true. If you’re in your early 30s, I’m sorry, you’re not as attractive in the dating pool as you were in your early 20s.”
Sure — no one is as young at 30 as they were at 20. But Kirk’s comments have the opposite of his intended effect, discouraging and infuriating many of those people who would’ve loved to find someone and settle down by 25, but are still single a decade later.
My parents were one such couple. They met at 35, married at 37, and had five children in their first seven years of marriage. While they would’ve loved twice as many kids, not being “at their prime” didn’t stop them from creating a lively, happy family for us.
My parents may have married late — especially for practicing Catholics — but no part of me wishes they settled for a lesser partner just for the sake of getting married before their 30s. First of all, I wouldn’t exist— neither would my brothers, or my parents’ beautiful relationship.
I’m just glad my lawyer mother wasn’t in Kirk’s audience that day, for Kirk’s sake.
Kirk’s reductionist take on dating and marriage fails to account for the complexity of circumstances surrounding any romantic relationship. Some conservatives intent on fixing our country’s marriage woes have a bad habit of tossing out pithy maxims to their young audiences on Twitter or at conservative summits.
I want to give Kirk the benefit of the doubt. But he’s a grown man, and needs to realize that getting married isn’t simply a matter of personal agency, like deciding to buy a pack of Skittles at checkout. If he does realize it — and as someone who married a woman in her 30s, he likely does — Kirk needs to do a better job of conveying this complexity in his rhetoric.
It’s wonderful to encourage Gen Z to marry young, but that advice needs to come with a healthy reality check. Dating isn’t a checklist that rewards good behavior with finding Miss or Mr. Right. The beauty of romance comes from the fact that it’s not a science, but an unfolding mystery.
Some people meet their future spouses at 14, and that’s amazing. But others don’t until 44, and it doesn’t mean they’re doing something wrong. Young people can develop the kind of virtue that makes them good partners, and show a healthy openness to dates and relationships, but there’s so much in the realm of dating that’s completely beyond their control.
The simplistic advice to “just get married” is just as unproductive for teens in relationships. What if you’re like me, and met your boyfriend at 16, long before either of you held high school (let alone college) diplomas?
Nor does marital status determine the meaning or goodness of one’s life. Putting too strong an emphasis on getting married before you’re “past your prime” risks encouraging young people to settle with a poor partner out of fear. Marriage is about who, not just when.
Many of my peers have the mental and emotional maturity to settle down young, but that’s not true of everyone in this generation. Some need a few more years than others: If tying the knot at 32 rather than 22 means they’ll make a happy, virtuous spouse, so be it.
We’d win over far more bees with honey than with vinegar — something my mom told me growing up. Kirk (and all of us) can have more of a heart for single men and women, and ensure our words reflect that.
Although it’s scary and frustrating, our need to surrender to a plan greater than our own points us into the arms of a good and loving God, one with good things in store for us no matter whether we are in what Kirk deems our “prime.”
