Jam-
Thanks for disagreeing in a respectful way. Please keep in mind that my opinions are … opinions. If you can convince me that I’m wrong, I’ll side with you. Unfortunately your post has not convinced me for a number of reasons:
1. We’re not talking about other people/ communities, we’re referring to ourselves and our own communities. For better or for worse, the yeshiva structure was designed so that talmidim have minimal responsibilities so they can devote their full energy towards their learning. Marriage is an enormous responsibility.
2. I don’t know of any other communities that have a higher rate of successful marriages than ours. I may be wrong but I’m not trying to open a can of worms here.
3. Even if on the outside it looks like a couple is happily married- you never know what goes on behind closed doors.
4. Check out the Shalom Bayis area of imamother.com. You’ll see many, many cases where people who were too young to get married got married. (Please be aware that their moderators are not as good as ours, if you know what I mean:))
In any event- consider the supply and demand graphs from economics. Vendors try to come up with the perfect price for a product- too high and not enough people will buy it and the vendor will be left with a surplus, too low and the vendor won’t have enough to meet the demand of society.
If one takes a supply and demand graph that is in perfect equilibrium and raises the price- I won’t be able to say who won’t buy the product anymore but I will be able to say around how many people will stop buying it.
So too, we don’t want people getting married too young while they are not mature enough, or too old when they are set in their ways. Assuming that the graph- age at marriage and divorce rate- is in perfect equilibrium now (which I’m not saying it is), if we shift the age graph to the left by three years you will see a steep spike in the divorce rate. And yes- we will be blaming ourselves for the divorce crisis that will be created.