Graduating seniors face many pressures. One is the pressure to get married after college graduation.
"It's sort of a life transition stage," Becki Adams, who teaches a course on marriage at Ball State University, said. "Sometimes in the transition, you do [want to] get married."
The pressure for young people to find the right mate and commit to a lifetime together is more likely to come from their peers than their parents, Adams said.
"What pressures people to do it is if a lot of their friends have gotten married and they think, 'Oh wow, my friends have gotten married, so I guess I should,'" Adams said.
Lindsey Jendraszak, 2006 Ball State alumna, and her husband, Stephen, wed this year, but it was important to wait until after graduation to get married, she said.
"I did not want to deal with the financial pressure of being an undergrad student and trying to make a marriage work," Jendraszak said.
Personal growth and maturity as well as career goals and financial stability are several key issues for couples to take into consideration. Establishing independence from the parental unit can be far more burdensome than it is liberating, Deborah Fowles, financial planning expert on About.com, said in her article, "Plan an Affordable Memorable Wedding." The average cost of an engagement ring is between $3,500 and $4,000. The average cost of a wedding in the United States is $27,000. These expenses alone can add a substantial amount of stress to an already stressful situation for a recent college graduate.
"I think getting married while still in college brings a lot of stress into your first few years of marriage that may not be there otherwise," Jendraszak said. "During college, you're still developing and deciding who you are and what you stand for. I changed a lot during my four years of college, and it's not like that development stops when they hand you your diploma, but I felt I had a lot more to bring to our relationship by finishing my degree and knowing, to an extent, who I was and what I believed in."
It's less common for college students to get married, as the U.S. Census Bureau reports today's average bride is 24 years old, while in 1980 she was 22.
Jendraszak said she faces a negative stigma whenever she tells people about her marriage after graduation.
"When I tell them I'm 22, they express to me how young I am to be married," she said. "It's really rather annoying."
During her senior year at Ball State, she said, she often didn't tell professors she was engaged because she felt she was being judged.
Whether college students are engaged or completely unattached, the pressure to secure a spouse around the time of graduation is undeniable for some.
Rather than Facebook flirting or hinting "my finger next to my left-hand pinky is awfully lonely," Jendraszak advocates "developing and deciding who you are and what you stand for," before rushing to the altar, she said. -á
"I think getting a college degree is a big milestone to achieve," she said. "It signifies that you are ready to go out into the world and have grown into your own person. I wanted to make sure I had developed into my own person before I go get married."
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