My 2 best friends from high school both got married early and never went to college at all. Both have now been divorced and are still competing with HS graduates for their jobs.
I am so glad my parents always taught us about the importance of being educated and able to take care of yourself.
I am a student at UVU, and I have a social problems class. One day we were discussing homosexuality, and I brought up that my ex (not legally yet) is gay. So after class a couple of young women stopped me to ask me about it. We got into a conversation about marriage and how it is different, etc.
One girl had a brother who was gay, and her parents are staunch LDS, but they have accepted him. These two women are 18, and somehow we got to talking about young men and marriage. they said that men still want a young woman to stay at home and cook and clean and have babies. I was shocked that they still are teaching that. These girls said that guys they have dated don't think they should be going to school at all.
I guess I thought that in 24 years things would have changed, but not true. How sad that these women think that they have to give up dating because they want careers instead, but yet they don't want to give up being LDS. I thought guys would be more accepting of that nowadays and that kids would not want to get married so soon. I told them to NOT drop out of school, even if they do get married, unless they want to be a forty-something trying to get through math 25 years later.....
I really thought the attitudes about education had changed. Very sad. I can't tell you how many of "us" non-traditional students there are who are trying to make up for lost time. One of my biggest regrets was not finishing school then.....tried to have babies, and ironically ended up adopting 10 years in. Go figure, guess God has his own plans that don't always jive with "Eat, get married, have babies".