On the author's reflection of his book Little brother

When children learn, in their English Lit class, that Romeo & Juliet were teens, that people in that epoch married at such early ages, they become flabbergasted. That's how my friends and I reacted to this realization.

The concept of marriage, while I was growing up, came to be chastized as being synonymous with shotgun weddings because I didn't have money to for engagement rings, weddings, or housing costs. Maybe American culture has defined some kind of formality in which the parents of the female help out in the wedding festivities, but involving parents in teen love causes more friction in the lives of young people when they're too busy coping with the harsh reality of impossible love. If this is the way the young experience their first dose of in-law syndrome, then who can blame a society that discredits the unifying institution of marriage by cheating, divorcing, wife-wapping and marrying their partners out of convience?

http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2009/11/cory-doctorow-teen-sex.html#comment-form