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Prabhupada mentions in his books that in previous times people used to marry much earlier. He mentions that in Vedic societies, an age of 24 years for the boy and 16 years for the girl was considered ideal. This may be considered quite early by today’s standards, but it is actually quite conservative in a historical context. In most historical societies, people used to get married sooner than that. In most of medieval Europe, girls would be married around 13, if not earlier. This changed only in recent times, a couple of centuries ago.
Nowadays, it is, of course, more common for both ladies and men to get married much later, often in their late thirties, sometimes in their forties. This is a general tendency that has been noticeable in practically all societies, including among devotees. That’s just how things work nowadays.
There is, however, one disadvantage in it: late marriages don’t stop boys and girls from having romantic relationships; it just makes them have them outside of marriage. It’s not up to me to judge, but in the end, that’s a decision every society has to make: early marriages or early sexual relationships outside of marriage. Unless someone finds the secret formula to create a society composed exclusively of pure devotees, it’s going to be one or the other.
Apart from technical progress, what has changed in modern times compared to the traditional Vedic societies described by Śrila Prabhupada? The main difference is that in these societies, people would have strong role models in their mothers, fathers, and other relatives. People would grow up in families and learn by observing how to be a husband, father, wife, mother, etc. Moreover, their education would be strongly geared towards family life and moral values. As a result, a boy of twenty-four years, or a girl of sixteen, would already be perfectly capable of cultivating a mature relationship. Even if there were problems, the parents were around to help to fix them.
Nowadays, however, few people receive a good example from their parents, and schools teach only technical knowledge. To make things worse, consumer societies teach people to remain in a permanent childlike state, satisfying their basic instincts and seeing themselves as the center of the universe. We try to apply the same consumer mentality we have towards products and services to our relationships, and as a result, we have people in their twenties or thirties who are still emotionally immature and bereft of the basic tools needed to cultivate practically any kind of healthy relationship.
In this situation, people often have to learn by trial and error, usually by going through a series of failed relationships. The ones who are intelligent may be able to learn something by their thirties, but the majority reach maturity only in their forties or fifties, or not even that. Many become so scarred by all these failed relationships and setbacks suffered earlier in their lives that they continue having problems cultivating normal relationships up to the end.
This affects not only the relationships with the wives and husbands but also the relationships with the children. It’s not uncommon to see children who, observing the emotional immaturity of their parents, try to assume an adult role early on, having to emotionally support their parents instead of being supported by them. This may sound like a good idea at first, but it can be very detrimental to their development, later creating issues in their relationship with their own children.
People going from one partner to the other during their lives, with the children often not being raised by their biological fathers, mothers, or both, is not considered a very good thing from the spiritual perspective. Prabhupada mentions that women have, by nature, a tendency to be faithful to the first man they have a romantic relationship with. When women are properly protected in such a relationship, they can grow into affectionate wives and mothers, who are the fabric of any civilized society. When men are unreliable, and women are forced to go from one partner to the other, many problems ensue.
Child marriage is certainly a very serious issue, but the way things happen nowadays is not much better. The Vedas seem to offer a solution for both extremes, training both boys and girls and getting them married at the ages they attain maturity. Girls are trained inside the family, learning from the example of their mothers, while boys learn to be responsible and control their senses in the gurukulas.
It’s important to notice that in the traditional gurukulas, the boys would be educated not just by a brāhmana teacher but by a couple. The brāhmanas would be married and would receive the boys in their houses, with the wife taking the role of a mother to them. In this way, the boys would learn not only the scriptures but also have a positive family experience, which would be positive both for the ones who would become householders later on and for the ones who would go to renounced life. One of the reasons many of the early gurukulas in our movement failed so miserably was exactly that immature celibates would be put in the role of teachers of small children, instead of mature couples. Even nowadays, good schools are difficult to establish due to a lack of mature couples in our movement with this disposition.
How to solve these problems? This situation can change only when we can somehow rediscover this lost culture and be able to successfully implement it in our spiritual society. From the point we can again have people who will reach emotional maturity in their twenties, we may again have earlier marriages that can work, with mature couples being established, who in turn may be able to bring forth good children who may change the world.
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Our Western culture is so sad, because even growing up as a devotee of Krishna in this culture, marriage and motherhood was never emphasized in my family or in my American culture. Getting an education was always seen as the utmost priority. Now that I have an education (Master's degree) I just wish that I could have started my family sooner.