Getting Married By 21 Years Can Turn You Into An Alcoholic, Claims Study

Marriage -- either you desperately want it or you don’t want to do it at all, yet it exists ever-so-evidently in our society. Indian society has been of a belief that it's better to get married at an early age, and most families still follow those norms.?

And in case you’re next on the early marital chopping block, this report will surely make them consider giving you some time.

Reuters

A new study has revealed that people who normally get married by the age of 21 years are more likely to get addicted to drinking alcohol.

This is according to a study (published in Development and Psychopathology) conducted by Virginia Commonwealth University in the US, where researcher Rebecca Smith looked at marital status and alcohol habits of 937 people who were genetically predisposed to developing a form of alcoholism -- basically had it in their genes to get addicted to alcohol.

Marrying young linked to alcoholism

The study revealed that people who married young were more likely to consume more alcohol than those who got married at a much mature age.?

Reuters

Rebecca said in a statement, “In a sample of young adults, we found that marriage was not uniformly protective against alcohol misuse. In fact, we found that early marriage (i.e., by age 21) seemed to exacerbate risk for alcohol use among individuals with a higher genetic predisposition. Thus, early marriage does not have the same protective benefit in terms of attenuating genetic predispositions that has been observed for marriage later in adulthood.”

Learning from study on alcoholism

According to Rebecca, this link between getting married at a young age and alcoholism trickles down to other factors that young couples face in general, compared to what older couples experience.?

Smith states that the chances of binge-drinking could be higher in younger couples because most of the time young partners aren’t the best influence on each other.?

Reuters

She said, “When we stepped back to think about what we know about development and developmental psychology, our findings made more sense. Traditional life events, such as marriage and parenthood, tend to occur during certain periods in life. So when those types of events occur either earlier or later in life than is typical (in American culture), they may not be as protective as we would expect.”