Karl Altenburg
Married undergraduate college students are in the minority at universities and colleges across the nation. According to the National Center for Education Statistics in 1999, approximately one fifth or roughly 22% of undergraduate students were in fact married.(1) Choosing to be married, as an undergraduate, is a major commitment. Marriage comes with a lot of responsibilities and the need for an overall higher maturity than required of unmarried undergraduate students. While marriage may bring happiness and joy to the couple, it does not come without sacrifice. Married undergraduates have to set their priorities differently from non-married students and because of these married students tend to be less involved in extracurricular activities and they also participate less in social activities that occur outside of school.
An example of a married undergraduate student that was not as involved in as many social activities is Karl Altenburg. In a 2013 interview he was asked if he noticed anything different about his college life after being married. His response was “… I guess one of the things that might have been different is that [I] put a little more seriousness into [any]thing about getting a career after graduating… and maybe I still saw some of my friends still kinda doing some crazy things… where I was probably doing that a little bit less.”(2) Based on Mr. Altenburg’s comments he has shown that marriage did in fact affect his experience at Concordia. Although Mr. Altenburg was able to maintain participation in the orchestra, his comments do suggest that he did not participate in as many of the social activities as most of the unmarried students.
The trend of married students being less active in social activities is not only found in Mr. Altenburg’s case. In a 2003 article written by Meehan and Negy, they found that married undergraduate students would often find greater gratification in their respective disciplines than in extracurricular activities or social activities. They found that married undergraduate students did not find the same gratification in those activities because of the additional roles that may exist due to the marriage.(3)
The findings of students being less involved in extracurricular activities found by Meehan and Negya is also backed up by a study done by the National Council of Family Relations in 1966. Oppelt, whom did a study for the National Council of Family Relations at Michigan State University, found on average married male undergraduates had a smaller participation rate than unmarried undergraduate students in all types of extracurricular activities except for student organizations.(4) In the same study Oppelt also found that married undergraduate students also participated in half the amount of off-campus activities, otherwise known as social activities, as the unmarried undergraduate students.(5)
These findings of this study also coincide with another study done for the National Council of Family Relations by Chilman and Meyer at a different unnamed university. They also found that both married men and women undergraduate students significantly spent less time doing “recreational activities” as the unmarried students.(6)
Married undergraduate students on average are involved in significantly less extracurricular activities and social activities than the unmarried students. The significantly less participation is seen in both Mr. Altenburg’s case and Meehan’s study for social actives, the multiple studies that were conducted by the National Council of Family Relations show the cases where married undergraduate students are less involved in extracurriculars. It's not that the married undergraduate students don’t want to be involved, it is just that they have to have a different set of priorities. These priority changes are what cause married undergraduate students to be involved in fewer activities then the unmarried students.
Essay by Austin Storm
(1) Laura Horn, Katharin Peter and Kathryn Rooney, Profile of Undergraduates in U.S. Post Secondary Institutions: 1999-2000 (Washington, DC: 2002), 73.
(2) Karl, Altenburg, “Karl Altenburg Oral History, 2013 (Part 2),” interviewed by Emily Brietbach, Concordia Memory Project.
(3) Dawna-Cricket-Martitia Meehan and Charles Negy, “Undergraduate Students’ Adaptation to College: Does Being Married Make a Difference,” Journal of College Student Development (2003); 672, Accessed December 10, 2014, doi: 10.1353/csd.2003.0055.
(4) William H. Marshall and Marcia P. King, “Undergraduate Student Marriage: A Compilation of Research Findings,” Journal of Marriage and Family (1966); 358, Accessed December 7, 2014, http://www.jstor.org/stable/349887.
(5) Marshall and Marcia, “Undergraduate Student Marriage,” 358.
(6) Marshall and Marcia, “Undergraduate Student Marriage,” 358.