OPINION: Marriage Mathematics – Why You Must Marry Early if You Can

By Anayo M. Nwosu

When I came to the knowledge of this truth way back in the secondary school, I made up my mind to marry before the age of 30 against all odds.

My had dad died at a retirement age of 64 when I was 7 and my younger brother was 4. The dead man left no plans or economic arrangements to train both the younger and far older children in school or in trade.

This mistake is being repeated today by even far more educated and exposed people. We do this and claim a non-existent covenant with God when we should have applied the common sense He gave us.

Don't say u didn't read this wise counsel from here.

I decided that I would not repeat the same mistake my father made hence my determination to marry at 30 which I later found out was even late.

HARD FACTS FOR GUYS

Assuming u get married at 30 and your wife conceives and delivers your first child when you are 31.

Because the average age of graduation in the universities these days is 26 then, you shall be 57 at the graduation ceremony of your first child.

Also assume that  you have 3 kids with an average spacing age of 2 years then your last child would be 5 years younger than the first. Therefore, you shall be 62 at the graduation ceremony of ur last child.

ISSUES: Look around you and u shall notice the increasing rate of delayed conception and child mortality which is 1/400 (i.e one new born baby out of 400 to Nigerian parents dies in the hospitals) and if you factor in the possibility that there might be delays and assign a number of years e.g 4years to that, then a man may be 66years at the graduation of his last child.

INFORMATION TO CONSIDER
1. All civil servants must retire at 60 or 70 for professors and judges.

2. Average life expectancy in Nigeria is now 47 years for men and 48 for women meaning that most Nigerian men die before the age of 48.

The above implies that you would be retired and may not be able to earn enough money to pay the school fees of your last child starting from his/her third year in the university.

It's worse for bankers because the CBN has capped the age of retirement of bankers at 60.

Most banks now find reasons to retrench their staff once they clock 55.

HARD FACTS FOR LADIES

Hardships in the extended families and need to work to augment income, pursuits of professionalism, feminism, long stay in school, sheer greed, materialism, choosiness and other factors have singularly or combined to make women delay in committing to marriage much earlier.

INFORMATION TO CONSIDER :

1. Science says that the best age for a woman to have less complications during child birth is between 18 and 25.

2. Most professional ladies now marry at over 30 years of age and have difficulties either in conception or post delivery sicknesses. This has posed a great gynecological challenge for non-circumspective couples. They spend so much to get pregnant and sometimes the women die in so doing.

3. In most cases, fibroids occur when the womb lays fallow for so long without conception. There are other causes.

ISSUES: Imagine both parents being retired and cannot provide for their undergraduate children.

This has helped fuel student prostitution in civil service states of Enugu, Owerri, Abeokuta, Akure, and around university campuses.

AGE LONG ADVICE TO AN ONLY SON

If you are an only son or if your desire in marriage is to beget children, ensure that you marry a lady in her early twenties and never beyond 26 so that even if you have fertility challenges and it takes up to 10 years to be resolved, you still have a fertile wife.

Please note that IVF, Artificial Insemination and Surrogacy techniques are expensive with no assurance of success after huge expenditure. 

GENERAL ADVICE

If you intend to have children in marriage, please marry early enough to avoid birth complications and be capable of shouldering your responsibility before you port to the netherworld .

You can still achieve all you want with careful planning. Many women who married early are MD of coys and are doing well.

I know that some readers would start pointing at Abraham and Sarah, Hannah, the mother of Samuel and other isolated cases.

However, a visit to fertility clinics and gynecological section of a teaching hospital shall speak common sense to a young girl and boy.

If you have problems with the facts I adduced, please consult a medical personnel for clarifications.

SCARY TRUTH

1. There is a disturbing likelihood that a child conceived at a later age would be born with Down Syndrome or Mongolia Disease.

2. Some women now approach menopause as early as 35. Why opt for treatment when it could be avoided?

3. Men's sexual libido reduces with age. You are at your best when you are below 40. There is an extent Viagra and other performance-enhancing drugs can go.

4. There is every likelihood that if you marry late to a sexually active woman and fail to satisfy her you may lose her to sex toys or gigolos.

5. Reminiscence of old couple of their early life great sex is sometimes enough for them to reach orgasm. You have great sex when your engines are new or fairly new.

NB: Medicine records that females' sexual libido increases with age while the males' reduces with age.

But age does not affect a man's ability to impregnate a woman but the act would be a mere inoculation for old men.

My first Degree is in medicine related course, so I know what I am saying.