Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Reflection 2

After narrowing down my issue to” Should we raise female marriageable to 18? ”, I’m determined to be for it. I searched for information from different aspects such as psychology and physiology to support my point; in addition, I used a real case to oppose teen marriage. However, after the teacher-student conference, I found out I forgot those who are really influenced by the modification of law.
Women who want to get married at very ages are mostly lack of education, financial basis etc. The reason that drives them into marriage is not merely about love. Now that she is hard to make a living by herself, and happens to have a baby with a guy she thinks he is nice, why not she settle down with him? Marriage seems to be a good choice. In fact, teen marriage still has many difficulties that I mentioned in my annotations they need to deal with. When facing those problems, they may feel stressful, and even suffer from the marriage, but the plight is, there is no other choice left. So the fundamental way to avoid unhappy marriage is to give those marginalized young people help.
The modification of female marriageable age to 18 is the main law; however, there must be relative laws to support. Our government needs to offer enough welfare. They have already had maternity leave and parental Leave. In addition, government should further provide some allowance for them to buy baby stuffs and send kids to kindergarten. With these helps, teen moms can finish their studies; so that they can find jobs more easily in the future. They are no longer to rely on men, and still have ability to raise their babies and themselves. Although, undeniably, it’s harder for them to live lives than normal family, it can stop avoidable tragedies, like those ones I mentioned in my annotations, from happening. Of course, if a guy is right for her, others have no rights to oppose them, but under the premise that they are at least 18 years old, and both their parents agree with their decision.
Society should not blame on teen couples once they suffer from their marriage, or something bad happens. Instead, what we need to do is to give them a hand. People, who argue about the modification of female marriageable, are usually not the very group facing the problem. Ironically, those who are really in need seldom speak for themselves. Thus when discussing the problem, a sympathetic point of view should be in place of critique, and political struggle.

Revised Annotation 4

Source:
PTS Evening News-“Teen Mom Killed Her Two-year-old Daughter”(Recorded Aug 20, 2010) Retrieved from YouTube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ijs5XyMTro
“In Taitung County, the method of a young mom to discipline her 2-year-old daughter is to grab her head to hit against the wall. The next day, unfortunately, the poor little girl died.”(PTS) When it comes to teen marriage, many people hold opinion against it because they doubt that if teen couples or maybe teen parents have the ability to make enough money to support their own family, and that if their mind is mature enough for a family. The mom in the piece of news is just 19 years old. She gave birth to her daughter at the age of 17. Although she is at such a young age, she has already had two marriages and 3 children. Their home’s economic situation has been bad for a long time. Her husband is a laboring worker, and spends most of his time working instead of accompany his kids.
This tragedy is an epitome reflecting a corner of our society. People get married so early that they don’t even have financial base to raise the family. Thus, miserable consequences come about. Many of them can only earn very little amount of money, or rely on their parents. Some worse cases choose to rob people. If young couples live in this way for a long period of time, they must feel a lot of pressure and their emotion must be bad and down. Arguments and conflicts, then, take place the love they once had.
When children are involved, things will go more complicated. First, parents may be too busy doing odd jobs to teach their kids. They may go astray in the future and form a vicious circulation. Second, parents may vent their stress and anger on them. When they cannot control their feelings, domestic violence happens. If things go worse, a young life may be sacrifice for his or her parents’ impulse. Last, if parents end up in divorce, then who should raise a kid in the condition that both of them don’t have enough financial bases? Who can pay enough attention to a kid, at the same time, he or she needs to make money and take care of the home alone?
Underage couples have many difficult problems to deal with like making a living. They need to give up studying to support their family. In general, however, it is more difficult for the underage to find a stable job. First, their education is relative low than those who graduate from colleges. In addition, even a graduate has problem finding a job in Taiwan, not mention those who only have high school or junior high school educational background. Second, many jobs, even part-time, require a minimum age requirement of at least 18, which is another restriction for them to get one job. Without a stable salary, it is extremely hard to maintain a marriage. Delaying the marriageable age can give young people more time to think twice if they are really ready to get married instead of just from an impulse.

1. I changed my words to explain why teenagers have difficulty making living to avoid misunderstanding(In the original one, I said employers are reluctant to give them jobs; however, it’s not what I want to convey. Thus I change the way to express my thought more clearly)(response to Flora)
2. I shorten my sentence to make it more precise and clearer.
3. I added the source.

Response to peers’ comments:
1. To Annie: about your comment that the problem is also referring to poor family, not only teen couples, yes, you are right. However, I want to focus the problem on teen family. Because not most adult couples have economic problem making a living, but the majority of teen couples do. Besides, my topic is” should we modify female marriageable age to 18?” so what I need to concern is teenagers. Just like your topic is about euthanasia of street dogs not about euthanasia of other animals like mice or street cats.
2. To Sue: you said” Because if the young couple want to stay together with each other, I think they will not really care about how the law regulate them.” Law cannot stop teenagers from having lovers, sure. However, girlfriends and boyfriends are very different from husbands and wives. The latter have to take more responsibility. They cannot leave the other at will since marriage forbid. In addition, law can protect both husband and wife. So the modification of enhancing female’s marriageable age can give them more time to think twice. The purpose is not to stop them from loving each other but to help them to know their feelings more clearly.
3. To Jim: you suggested me keep my personal opinion for research paper instead of annotation. However, I want to build the connection between my annotation and my issue so that peers and professor can understand why I choose the source as my annotation.