Al Mohler is right:  the most helpful aspect of Mark Regnerus' case for early marriage is that he makes it, and makes it in the pages of Christianity Today.  By bringing the issue to the forefront, Regnerus has done an enormous service.  Along the way, he pens these four paragraphs that I very much wish I had written myself, as I have said very similar things on this blog:

 The answer is pretty straightforward: While our sexual ideals have remained biblical and thus rooted in marriage, our ideas about marriage have changed significantly. For all the heated talk and contested referendums about defending marriage against attempts to legally redefine it, the church has already ceded plenty of intellectual ground in its marriage-mindedness. Christian practical ethics about marriage—not the ones expounded on in books, but the ones we actually exhibit—have become a nebulous hodgepodge of pragmatic norms and romantic imperatives, few of which resemble anything biblical.

Unfortunately, many Christians cannot tell the difference. Much about evangelical marital ethics is at bottom therapeutic: since we are pro-family, we are sure that a happy marriage is a central source of human contentment, and that romantic love is the key gauge of its health. While our marriage covenants are strengthened by romance, the latter has no particular loyalty to the former.

Our personal feelings may lead us out of a marriage as quickly as they lead us into one. As a result, many of us think about marriage much like those outside the church—as a capstone that completes the life of the autonomous self. We claim to be better promise keepers, but our vision of what marriage means is not all that unique. When did this all change?

The shift has gone largely unnoticed over the past half-century. As we finally climb toward multigenerational economic success, we advise our children to finish their education, to launch their careers, and to become financially independent, since dependence is weakness. "Don't rush into a relationship," we caution them. "Hold out for a spouse who displays real godliness." "First loves aren't likely the best fit." "You have plenty of time!" we now remind them. "Don't bank on a mate." Even those who successfully married young now find themselves dispensing such parental wisdom with little forethought.

Catch that?  His basic argument is that fundamentally, young people don't understand marriage and why it matters, and they act out sexually accordingly.  Get marriage right, and everything else follows.

But while Mohler affirm's Regnerus' implication that this problem fundamentally lies with men--or rather, boys--I am interested in a more evenhanded approach.  Fundamentally, while women may 'mature' faster then men, their understanding of marriage is no more healthy.   Both men and women, after all, are conditioned by the cultures in which they live. 

To laud them for tieing the knot more quickly is, I suspect, to make a virtue of biological necessity--women, after all, are different than men in that they only have a certain amount of time to marry before children become impossible, and these days the only reason for a woman to marry is because she wants children.  This is, as far as I'm concerned, a fine reason to marry someone, but Mohler and Regnerus are mistaken to think that women in this regard are any more virtuous than men.

Exit question:  are women today more virtuous then men?  And why does anyone get married anymore, anyway?