Xu Ge (Zhanjiang Evening News): Nowadays, many youngsters around 18 may fall in love with someone, but they are far from being mature in intelligence and personality and they are emotionally unstable and incapable of managing a family. Worse still, they do not possess even a penny. They can't get employed without college diplomas. Without jobs, how can they manage to raise children?

Huang might say, in this case, they don't need to go to college and should get a job immediately after graduating from high school. Ok, but when a young couple whose combined wages are very low, how can they raise a child? They even won't be able to support themselves.

Huang said if young people are allowed to get married at 18 they will not choose cohabitation and this will help to protect the health of women and children. However, she seems to have neglected some bigger problems. For example, the young couples might have to depend on their parents. They might rob banks when they have no money to buy an apartment and they might ransack a supermarket because they can't afford their babies' milk powder.

Yeyubajiao (www.xinhuanet.com): Most 18-year-olds are not mature in personality or character, so they are generally unable to undertake family responsibilities. When the man and woman get married they are still incapable of taking care of a family. They may well think their choice to get married was wrong. In this case, the divorce rate will greatly increase and social problems will rise too.

A more serious result of the lower marriage threshold is that China's traditional moral bottom line will be overthrown, because when more and more people get divorced, resulting from inconsiderate marriage, the whole society will no longer cherish marriage as much as before. Premarital cohabitation actually has already led to de facto marriage, and irresponsible marriage will lead to more family tragedies.

Is the current marriage age threshold really too high? What exactly are the reasons for such a large number of single women and men? In most cases, it's not that young people don't want to get married, but they can't afford marriage or are even afraid of getting married.

For some young women, their targets are men who possess houses and cars, and have a good job as well as good family background. However, the reality is, such excellent males are not easy to meet. Most females will not settle for men who do not have the mentioned possessions, and they wait and wait and in the end miss the best time to get married.

The reform of the Marriage Law must be based on careful consideration and discussion. In this case, the age threshold is not the fundamental reason for the social problems mentioned by Huang. The priority is not to lower the threshold, but to improve the Chinese people's livelihood, because when people are living a rich and satisfactory life, they will naturally choose a way of life that conforms to human development.

Han Jing (www.hkwb.net): China's Marriage Law stipulates that males are allowed to get married at 22 and above while the age for females is 20. This is an article that has been implemented for decades. However, Huang argues this highest legal marriage age in Chinese history has resulted in rising social problems.

Recently, the news that two college students dropped out of school to get married is spreading fast among the public. The two students were both born in the 1990s. At 18 years old people are still at the stage of growing up. It is a time for them to study hard and learn more experience. They don't have stable incomes and thus if they get married at this age, they will still depend on their parents after wedding.

Huang said that the high marriage age threshold has resulted in illegal cohabitation, which is de facto marriage, and not protected by law. This composes hidden danger in society. However, many couples who got married when they are older have to end up in divorce for many reasons.

As for the large number of single men and women, pregnant women over 35 and premarital cohabitation, it is more of results of people's values and their own choices, which has little to do with legal marriage age. Although many countries in the world have low legal marriage age threshold, they are also plagued by rocketing divorce rates. Thus, it's too ideal to assume that a lowered legal marriage age will reduce social problems.

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