Keep your eyes wide open
before marriage
and half shut afterwards
- Benjamin Franklin

Some children have difficulties because of developmental issues. When they reach a marriageable age, they are not mature enough, or capable of marrying. However, some parents feel that it would be good to marry off the child and to let the spouse fix up the child. Others feel that they want to let Israel or another country fix up the child. Some institutions that deal with problem children have the same concept of marrying off children. In some cases, both of the children are problematic, and in that way they feel that they can kill two birds with one stone.

Killing may indeed be a good term to use. It is not always to child's advantage to be married to someone who is not capable of dealing with their needs.

The child's problem should be handled before going into marriage. Marriage should not be used as a cure. There are enough troubles and changes to be made in a person's lifetime and especially when the person gets married. That causes a strain on their abilities to function. Marriage itself can cause a strain. To use one strain to deal with another may not be very wise. It is better to handle the problem at hand, and to postpone marriage until the child is ready.

This may also be one way to resolve some of the alarming divorce statistics. Many children got married because their superiors thought that it may be a way to help them resolve their problems. The marriage suffered as a result. Either they had a bad marriage or the marriage was dissolved.

That should not be the goal of any marriage. A person should get married with a partner who is as close as possible to their ideal.

A marriage that only handles a separate or different problem does not meet these requirements.

Do any marriages that are intended to solve a different problem succeed?

Yes, of course, there are individual cases of success.

However, it does not make sense to get married under difficult circumstances, when the odds are stacked against the person, and to hope that your marriage will be the exception to prove the rule.

In today's world marriage will be difficult. Give it the best possible chance of success, by marrying under the best possible circumstances.