Passage 2

Questions 6 to 10 are based on the following passage.

  Since the Second World War, there has been an obvious trend, especially among the growing group of college students, toward early marriage. Many youths begin dating in the first stages of adolescence青春期, “go steady” through high school, and marry before their formal education has been completed. In some quarters, there is much shaking of graying heads over the ways of rebellious叛逆的 youth. However, emotional maturity does not grow with age; it does not arrive automatically at twenty-one or twenty-five. Some achieve it surprisingly early, while others never do, even in three-score years and ten.

  Many students are marrying as an escape, not only from an unsatisfying home life, but also from their own personal problems of isolation and loneliness. However, any marriage entered into as an escape cannot prove entirely successful. The sad fact is that marriage seldom solves one’s problems; more often, it merely worsens them. Furthermore, it is doubtful whether the home is capable of carrying all that the young are seeking to put into it; one might say that they are abandoning one idol only to worship another. Young people correctly understand that their parents are wrong in believing that success is the ultimate good, but they themselves are wrong in believing that they have found the true center of life’s meaning. Their expectations of marriage are essentially unrealistic and therefore incapable of fulfillment. They want too much, and tragic disillusionment is often bound to follow.

  Shall we, then, join the chorus of those against early marriages? One cannot generalize: all early marriages are not bad any more than all later ones are good. Satisfactory marriages are determined not by how old one is, but by the emotional maturity of the partners. Therefore, each case must be judged on its own merits. If the early marriage is not an escape, if it is entered into with relatively few illusions or false expectations, and if it is economically feasible, why not? Good marriages can be made from sixteen to sixty, and so can bad ones.

The phrase “go steady” (para. 1) can be replaced by _______.