Get Married Young
February 11, 2026
Lillian, a senior at the University of Virginia, is taking a step that has scandalized her parents, peers, and professors. It has nothing to do with her performance at UVA. Lillian is killing it academically. She is a dedicated volunteer in Charlottesville, and looks primed to make her mark on the world. In these ways, she is a typical student at Mr. Jefferson’s university. But what makes her really stand out from the crowd at UVA is that she is planning on getting married this year, in November, at the age of twenty-two.
Her early marriage plans did not go over well with her parents, at least not initially. When Lillian told her parents, they “weren’t immediately supportive”—in fact, they were “angry, maybe heartbroken.” She added, “They want what’s best for me, and they defined that as seeing the world, working for [awhile], and ‘realizing my full potential’ before settling down. While I understand the appeal of that [conventional] path—and sure, a random weekend trip to Spain sounds nice—it simply doesn’t measure up to the importance of marriage for me.”
