I don’t know about marriage per se, but I definitely think we should encourage women to have children younger.
The average age of first child is 25. And breathless scaremongering aside, most healthy women will be able to have children when they decide to.
Doesn’t strike me as completely crazy to note that the pool of mates narrows as you get older - not only because lots of people have already gotten married who wanted to, but also because the people who have remained single are more likely to have gotten used to that state and to prefer it.
I know lots of folks - men and women both - who have, essentially, entered the “confirmed single” category in their 40s. Which is of course totally cool - if that is what you want to do. If you want to marry, it makes a certain amount of sense to do it when you are younger.
It all depends on your goals. Want to marry, have kids perhaps within a marriage? Then it simply makes sense to do it when you are younger, when both activities are easier to accomplish - finding a marriage partner (because it’s a larger pool to choose from), and having kids (easier to do in your late 20s early 30s than in your 40s, less chance of fertility issues, complications, etc.).
This advice though isn’t aimed only at women. Nor is it advice that is phrased in absolute terms. It isn’t like you can’t get married later - and for some folks, that may be preferable.
Which is the biggest reason TO marry older.
A couple developing so that their identities are built around each other is no guarantee they’ll actually be compatible long-term, but it is a guarantee that singledom after a divorce or death (which will happen, even if they do develop into a fully cohesive unit) and any attempt to build a relationship with a new person later will be far worse than it has to be. I used to volunteer at the local seniors centre, and the number of people I encountered/heard of there still having trouble years, or even decades after being widowed was ridiculous. (Especially women, who had ‘dependent upon their husbands’ on top of it, but even men who didn’t know how to handle life as an individual.)
I think what the OP’s advice was trying to say is that in your early-mid 20s, there’s a huge number of interactions with the opposite sex, and that declines pretty drastically somewhere in the late 20s/early 30s, due to people pairing off and/or having children, and that by the time you’re in your mid-30s, the signal to noise ratio decreases (where “signal” = potential partner and “noise” = weirdos, losers and all the other flotsam and jetsam of the dating pool).
I mean, when I was in my 20s, there were LOTS of single women who weren’t crazy, outright strange (think crazy cat lady), morbidly obese, or who have some other mental issues (issues with committment, paranoia, etc…) to choose from. As I get older (I’m 42), the proportion of single women I’ve met that don’t fall into one of those categories has gone way, way down.
And I suspect it works the same way for women. If I had a sane, kind, attractive woman with no kids whose husband just spontaneously combusted, and I had to try and hook her up with single guys I know, I’d be at a total loss. All the single guys I know pretty much are weird, have commitment issues, and are set in their ways and unlikely to be willing to change their lifestyles enough to accommodate a partner if a relationship became long-term. I’m sure there are guys out there who aren’t that way and who are just unlucky, but I also suspect that a lot of the “good” ones have already been married off by the time you hit 40.
That’s what the advice was trying to point out. It’s not a pattern that you see coming as a young person, until you’re in the midst of watching it happen, and by then it may be too late for you.
The average age people marry varies more by region in the US, as GrumpyBunny suggest.
I personally think that most people should wait at least until they are in their late 20’s before they even consider marrying. Having been married twice, my current wife refers to my first wife as the practice wife.
I agree - I think the OP’s quote is phrased in such a manner as to annoy the maximum number of Dopers (making it an absolute statement, directing it to “daughters”, the use of the “reject bin”, etc.). 
Yeah, because they all married in their 20s before they were ready and now they’re divorced.
In general, there are legitimate reasons to getting married younger. Less chance of birth defects. Longer time to spend with your family. More energy to deal with raising children. And yes, there is a certain truth that as you get older, the good ones tend to pair off and get married while a lot of the remaining single people are perpetual adolescents, players, workaholic careerists, socially awkward or otherwise emotionally damaged.
OTOH, waiting until you are a bit older allows you to get more financially stable and make sure you found the right person.
But making blanket statements that everyone should do something is stupid.
This is true, but it’s also just as likely that the couple will grow apart for the same reason. With age, our sense of self becomes less malleable, more steady. Wouldn’t a relationship be more secure and solid if the people within it aren’t going through developmental fluxes?
To emphasize income again, the average income of college educated women who marry in their 20s is around $30,000. For those that marry in their 30s, it’s $50,000. That’s an enormous, life-altering gap.
For men, getting married earlier is associated with higher incomes.
Kind of implies a screwy dynamic, huh?
Thing is, people who are older and single have their sense of self developed as a single. Many of my friends in this position mentioned how hard it is to them make the sort of compromises that married people have to make, simply to live together.
Do you have a cite for this? I’m not doubting it, I’m interested in reading about the study.
Even if we accept that what you say is true (decreasing signal-to-noise ratio with age), I see little wisdom in encouraging people to accelerate a major life decision because of fear of what could happen if they don’t accelerate that decision.
Ideally, people get married because 1) they feel ready to be married and 2) they have found someone whose positive attributes seemingly make them a desirable long term mate. It would make me sad, quite honestly, if my fiancé’s decision to marry me had anything to do with the quality of his dating pool as time stretches on. That would suggest he’s pretty much settling for the best he can get now rather than grabbing on to the best person who has walked into his life.
I agree with even sven that this advice always seems to come from someone with an ulterior motive. My mom has given me lots of annoying bits of “wisdom” through the years, but I have to thank for her never making me feel like I was doomed to being involuntarily single simply for not marrying in my early 20’s like she did. I suspect if she had to do it all over again, she would delay marriage until she’d had a bit more living under her belt. This, even though, she’s still married to my pops.
This is the sort of thing that is very dependent on what culture/subculture you live in.
That was the point my friend was trying to make.
And yet older couples get divorced less frequently than younger ones. Which tells me compromise can be difficult for both young and old, and it’s hard to say which camp you fall into unless you’ve lived both sides.
In my mid-20’s, I lived with boyfriends and found it fairly easy to make the necessary compromises to keep the peace with them. But marrying them would have been BIG mistakes. These relationships ended because we weren’t compatible. They were unhappy marriages waiting to happen.
Now, in my late 30’s, I anticipate going through a big adjustment period as I leave behind my lengthy period of singlehood and merge my life with his. And I admit, compromise may be more difficult because I’m so use to making decisions independently. But on the other hand, because have taken the time to find a mate we really really click with, and have established that we share the same values, there hasn’t been that much of a need to compromise to begin with. With age, we’ve learned how to disagree without having a conflict.
We’ve never had the inane kinds of arguments that I used to have as a young adult. I think this has as much to do with our maturity as it does our compatibility.
From National Lampoon: A smart man marries his second wife first.
That’s a very big if, IMO.
I don’t know that “get married in your 20s” is the best advice, but “stop thinking you have forever, and if marriage/kids are something you want, start thinking about it now and be open to the possibility” is.
I think too many people buy into this “oh, there’s plenty of time” script, and by the time 33 rolls around all of a sudden you can’t find anyone, or you do find someone and then it doesn’t work out and by the time you get divorced you’re 47. I think there is a lot of very bad advice being given *against * marrying in the 20s, and I think it’s worthwhile countering that.
No, it seems quite straightforward common sense.
A woman getting married later generally means she prioritized her career, and so we would expect her to make more. A woman getting married young is more likely one that is prioritizing motherhood and family. A guy getting married later might have been career-focused … or he might just have been screwing around. A guy getting married in his 20s – which is statistically much less common – suggests a guy that is especially focused, disciplined, mature etc. Moreover, since marriage often means kids, young married men are more motivated to work hard to earn more and provide, whereas young married women might be working outside the home less or not at all.
So no, not “screwy,” just men and women having different situations, motives, and thus outcomes.