—It is a time when the wise couple prepares for marriage. The man gets a job, saves some money. The girl learns and perfects her homemaking skills in cooking, sewing, and house managing.
—It is a time to decide whether they want children and how many.
—It is a time when antagonistic habits are broken and new habits which will permit a smoother married adjustment are established.
—It is a time when differences are recognized about religion, about parents, and solved or compromised.
Because of all these functions, the engagement is a period that requires time.
The beginning of the war saw a sharp rise in “gangplank” or hasty war marriages. And the end of the war produced another sharp rise. Thousands of couples rushed into marriage a few days after the returning veterans got off the boat. We can appreciate the desire of some long-separated couples to marry immediately but if they do they are only adding to the inevitable toll of broken marriages that will result.
Hasty marriages get off to a bad start simply because the engagement period, which is the period of planning and preparation for marriage, is cut short.
In one study that was made, forty-seven per cent of the married couples who had known each other less than six months prior to marriage were poorly adjusted! Of those who had been acquainted for five years prior to marriage, less than fifteen per cent were poorly adjusted. Of those who had known each other less than three years, about thirty-three per cent were poorly adjusted.
Similarly, about fifty per cent of the couples had a poor adjustment if they had been engaged less than three months before marriage. In contrast, less than twenty per cent had poor adjustment when their engagement period ranged from nine months to two years. And less than ten per cent of those who had been engaged more than two years were poorly adjusted. In other words, the prospect of an unhappy marriage clearly decreases as the length of the engagement increases.
And incidentally the same study showed that couples were more happily married if both sets of parents approved the marriage. Parents in general are more likely to approve an orderly marriage than one contracted in haste.