Early Marriages

The BBQ Pit
61

Why are you trying to stick your specific opinions and logic on other people? It’s like trying to make a square puzzle piece fit into a triangle space.

Its perfectly fine that you don’t want to marry the guy you’re with - and its still perfectly okay if you never get married. Its cool that you don’t want kids, and whether or not that changes doesn’t matter. Your parental and marital choices have zero effect on me, and everyone else posting here. It goes all ways, too - whether or not I’m married or have kids doesn’t do anything to you, and whether or not these fine board members are married with kids or not isn’t going to change your life in anyway. In fact, you are the only one here who doesn’t seem to grasp that.

If you think its stupid that people in this world choose to get married young, then so be it - but its none of your business. It doesn’t involve you. Perhaps you should devote your anger and frustration to things that do effect you in some way, and can actually do something about.

62

I was 26 when we bought our house. We paid the entire thing off in five years. You’d be hard-pressed to find an 1800 sq. ft. apartment that rents for $300/month (which is what our property taxes + insurance come out to, which are the only payments we have to worry about right now).

I usually suggest people do what’s right for them.

Wait, you’re suggesting we mind our own business? What a novel concept. I bet there’s a Doper or two who could use that advice.

63

I hate it when I catch redundancies when its too late to edit. Oh well.

To add, I’m 24 and am engaged to a man I’ve been dating for a year and half. Hell, I would have been perfectly okay with marrying him last Christmas, but he wanted to live together first. I thought that was fair. We’ve been living together since March of his year and now he wants to get married. We’ve decided to spend all of our “wedding” money on the honeymoon, so the date of the union will depend on when we decide to go on vacation. We will be a married couple by the end of 2008, though. If that’s too soon for you, I couldn’t care less.

64

I can’t believe no one has said this yet: “Grow up NightRabbit!”

You’re 25, not 15. Not even 19. At this point in your life, you should either be done with school or heavily invested (financially and in every other way) in graduate or other schooling. You should be gainfully employed to either pay for that schooling or to pay your own way. You have been educated, nurtured and groomed to be independent–go be independent. That means making decisions that have long term effects on your life and the lives of people you care about. No marriage or kids for you? That’s great.

It does not mean snarking on those who have made different decisions than your own. Perhaps you are happy in this arrested development–others aren’t. Why should they be? Not everyone wants to stay in the playpen–which has its own downsides, which I note you have neglected to mention.

Is this about your best female friend getting married or something?
I got married at 24. I was one of those who thought it would all work out. It hasn’t. I don’t blame my age at marriage for that, though.

My SIL didn’t find a man she wanted to marry until she was in her 30s. They waited to have kids. She is now 44, mother of a 6 year old Kindergartner and twin 4 year olds. Her husband (aka Dave the Dickhead, but that’s for another thread) is 10 years older than she is (she married her boss).

Let’s do some math: when their oldest (and btw, these kids only came about via expensive fertility treatments) is graduating from HS (and they held her back a year–to give her “advantage”)–her father will be 67; 69 when the twins go off to college. I do hope that college is LESS expensive in future (hah!) and that he has saved well all these years of singlehood–he’s going to need every penny. They didn’t buy a house until she was pregnant, so that mortgage (actually 2 mortgages) won’t be paid off, either.

This is adulthood. Grow up. If the thought has never crossed your mind re kids (wanting or not wanting them) and you’re a 25 year old female, you’re developmentally delayed. No one will judge you (here) if you don’t have kids–for some, like mothers and grandmothers, it can be a very big deal–but to criticize others for getting married and having them while in their 20s seems a bit over the top.

Dangerosa is quite correct re the biological clock. You may be a Bright Young Thing, having fun and going places in your mind, but your body has moved on. That’s just the way it is.

65

For what it’s worth, a discussion of the other side this of topic took place here:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=440464&highlight=married+young+comments

Really, it’s just a dumb idea for you. And it might be a dumb idea for your friends. That’s nice. That doesn’t mean it’s inherently a dumb idea. You won’t be the same person at 30 that you will at 50 or 60, either. Should we all wait until then to get married? And living together and getting married are separate things. Living together is a practical commitment, and marriage is more of a ritual commitment. (Leaving out the advantages of inheritance and such.) Sometimes both are important to people.

As long as you leave me off yours. I just don’t understand the rage about other people doing things you’re not ready for. You’re not ready to get married, or buy a house, or have kids. Ok. Don’t. Doesn’t mean we’re all unprepared idiots for doing it, and if you really think that, well, suck it.

66

I love a good train wreck, and you guys can pile on the OP and kick her ass all you want, replete with anecdotal evidence of personal success for your youthful marriages… and maybe the OP has gone about her topic the wrong way, but she has a bit of a point about marriages of those under 25:

Thus, those who wait until the are over 25 have a much better chance of making the right choice of marriage partner. Impulsivity is much higher in people under 25, and the ability to make good lifetime decisions definitely increases with age, at least through the 20’s. I’d say it plateaus after a while, though :wink: .

This is just one cite, but there is ample evidence to support this point, and so far in this thread, only the anecdotal to refute it.

My overall point is, you might not like what the OP is saying or the way she’s saying it, but there is a legitimate point in there. Your personal experience may be contrary to her thesis, and far be it for me to inject facts into this emotional screamfest, but getting married in your teens or early twenties is a negative predictor of marital success.

As a woman of 36 who kept putting off marriage and kids, I might have screwed myself over, because I have no idea what my fertility will be like when I do try to have a baby. My mother was 39 when she had me, and she never got to see me become an adult. However, I made an informed decision to wait until I was married, had a career, a house, and a husband to consider having a child. No regrets. Having a kid when you have no idea what you want out of life is a bad idea, generally.

67

Life is full of regrets–every choice is a path you didn’t take. Maybe it’s because I’m one of those people who knew at 25 that I didn’t want kids, but I don’t see regrets over not having kids as the worst thing that could happen. I have regrets about choices I made when I was 13. I have regrets about choices I made when I was 17. I have regrets about choices I made at 22. I have regrets about choices I made at 28. And yet, somehow, despite all those choices and all those regrets, I’m pretty happy with my life now, at 30. Eventually, you have to make the choice and live with what comes.

If she’s planning on delaying even making a choice about whether she wants kids until she’s 30 or 35 or whatever, and not prepared to live with any regret, she better be prepared to dump her boyfriend and immediately start finding a new one who does want kids, and wants them with her, and is otherwise compatible with whatever other decisions she might one day come to regret on the day she finally does decide, because by then, she’ll be seriously running out of time.

68

I suspect this, or rather a series of good friends, male or female. And it can suck, because marriage is basically saying “you are my friends, but now he/she is my family and this relationship, if it comes down to it, is my priority.” This is how it works. My husband needed to move to go to school, it never even occured to me to chose my friends over him and stay in our hometown. Marriage means family. This can hurt, especially when it’s someone that your best friend has known only a short time–after ten or fifteen or twenty years of knowing someone, after a year they are putting someone ahead of you, they are closer to someone than they are to you. It’s a normal angst at that age.

69

It also hurts to watch your friends get married and/or have kids in their twenties, and then witness them getting divorced/splitting up, dealing with separation of assets, custody and child support, often acrimoniously. I’m in my 30’s, so I’ve seen it more than a few times. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion, over the course of a decade. Invariably, they say, “WTF was I thinking, marrying/having a kid with that asshole? I hate him/her now!” And their lives are messed up, their kids are affected, their finances are totally screwed, and they are statistically less likely to get it right the second time.

This isn’t all about the OP being jealous or immature, IMO. It might be that she’s actually concerned that her friends are making premature, bad decisions. Of course she doesn’t have the right to tell them what to do, but forming judgments is human and we all do it. The Pit is a good place to vent those thoughts… erm, maybe not, if it’s not a popular view, eh?

70

This is true, and I, personally, acknowledge this. I really think it’s beside the point, though. There’s no way to prove how many people who married under 30 or so just rushed into it and how many thought about it and took those stats into account. Car accidents are common too, but that doesn’t mean it’s always stupid to drive.

What it seems most people are taking exception to (and what I personally take exception to) is the fact that NightRabbit is being unnecessarily condescending and making blanket decrees about what is best for other people. Which is fine in the Pit, and maybe she’s right about the people she knows and just needs to blow off steam. Doesn’t mean I’m not going to call bullshit on the idea that it’s always a horrible choice.

71

I just want to thank you for being, perceivably anyway, one of the only voices of reason in here that hasn’t succumbed to knee-jerk anecdotal stories of how getting married at a young age was the best thing they ever did.
Your analysis has been appreciated.

72

With a divorce rate of over 50 % , it is logical to think seriously before jumping in. You are absolutely correct that the person you are at 20 is vastly different from who you will be at 30, 40, or 50. He will also go through huge changes. To think that you will grow along similar avenues the rest of your life is foolhardy. Adjustments will have to be made for both of you. Some refuse to make changes.
I married at 37. It was too young. Kids now 27. People who say they want kids young to play while they are young and healthy are wrong. I play racketball with my son now. It keeps you younger longer.
I believe in living together over marriage. Without the legal , and binding aspects of marriage ,the participants try harder.

73

Oh, I could have offered a counter point to my own story. My parents were married when my mom was 19 and my dad was 20. They were divorced when my mom was 37. Now my mom is stuck in a weird, lonely limbo, and my dad has basically moved on to his new life and his new family and that’s that.

What I object to is the notion that there is some sort of minimum age requirement to get married and start that portion of your life. For some people, it’s a mistake. For other people, it’s not. It’s a big world with lots of options. Why castigate people for making an intensely personal decision at any age? Just because when they’re 35 they might get a divorce? Well, they might die when they’re 34. There could be a nuclear holocaust when they’re 37. A comet could strike the earth or aliens could invade. All sorts of things could happen, including divorce. No point in avoiding risks (and sure, getting married at any age is a risk) just because you’re afraid that the negative consequences will outweigh the rewards at some point.

Plus, if she wants everybody to agree with her ranting, the Pit is not the place for it. She should get a blog or join a MB or a LJ community where everybody hates marriage and kids and whatever else has her panties in a twist. Some people will attack you in the pit just on general principle.

74

Your driving a car metaphor does not work for me. It is a negative predictor of marital success to get married under 25. It doesn’t matter WHY you got married-- I think the idea is, younger people make worse decisions, in general, and about marriage, they are twice as likely to be wrong about their choice of spouse than someone older than 25. This is a fact. The OP seems to be ranting about people she knows who are getting married and who seem to her like future divorce statistics. Odds are even, she’s right. All the name-calling, taunting, and shouting at her won’t make her point any less valid.

She didn’t say it ALWAYS was. About half the time it is, though, really. You don’t like her tone, OK, whatever. I’m not defending that, and I don’t care about it either way. I’m saying, her point is a good one, and it sucks to watch people you love making bad decisions. That’s the sum of my defense of the OP.

75

I would prefer to think of myself as having analyzed both personal experiences and approximate probabilities to come up with a conclusion of overall caution, not having succumed to a “knee-jerk anecdotal story”, personally.

I would also like to add that, if everyone who is posting in here genuinely wishes to have NightRabbit listen to their reasoning and take it into consideration in her life, the best way to go about doing that is probably not to constantly tell her she’s being “immature” or by telling her to “grow up”. It’s my personal observation that treating people with that kind of disrespect tends to make them disregard what you’re saying as valid.

76

It may well be that her friends are making premature, bad decisions. Sometimes all your friends go crazy the same way at the same time. I had a rash of teenage pregnancies among my friends in high school. And of COURSE she should judge them. Judging others is how we learn what we think we should do. But she doesn’t need to make a blanket statement about all young people being married. If it had been pitting Suzie for marrying her first real bf and Jenny for just getting married in order to have a wedding and Rob for only marrying Betty because she wanted to and he had no backbone and Jill for marrying because she needed help with the bills, no one would have said anything. She’d have gotton parallel stories and sympathy. It was the extending it to the very idea of marrying in your twenties (your TWENTIES) as being crazy that encouraged the rancour.

I also disagree that just because a marriage ends in divorce that it automatically means it was a bad idea. Two people can be very very good for each other for a period of time and then grow apart. That they didn’t grow old together doesn’t subtract from whatever happiness or wisdom they gained together.

And your stat compares people who marry under 18 to people that marry over 25. 18-25 numbers aren’t in there at all.

77

Warning, the link below is to a .pdf file, and this quote is from p. 15 of the document.

It seems that 25 is a significant age, because a 3 year cohabitation is about 15-20% more likely to fail if you are under 25 than if you are over. In fact, there is science to the idea that people under 25 are biologically less capable of making sound decisions because of frontal cortex development.

This is not to say that no one over 25 is capable of making a good decision; that’s absurd. But there are solid reasons for saying that people under 25 have more trouble with decision-making and are less likely to make good ones than someone older. I know it’s hard to apply this to an intensely personal decision like whether or not to marry someone you’re in love with. No one takes statistics into account when they are having strong emotions. I realize this. There are good reasons for waiting until you are older, though.

78

It’s doubly absurd because I meant to write “no one UNDER 25.” :smack:

79

You say tomato, I say tomahto. I had a husband and a mortgage by the time I was 25. I felt lucky, not burdened. I’d found the man I wanted to spend my life with and the community I wanted to settle in. I didn’t have to keep searching for those things. I didn’t need to marry or purchase a home, but I wanted to. I’ve changed somewhat in the years between 20 and 30, but my fundamental desires–a loving partnership, deep roots in my community, meaningful work, and intelligent conversation–haven’t. It sounds like your path to happiness may be different from mine, and that’s cool. Just don’t assume that marriage and family life are hardships anymore than casual flings and transient wanderings are.

80

But, I, for one, care not in the least what NightRabbit does with her life-married or single, kids or none–doesn’t matter to me one bit. I didn’t come into this thread thinking to sway her or change her mindset. I came in here to criticize that mindset. She’s not ready for marriage etc at 25. It’s good that she knows that. Too bad she seems to think she knows what’s best for the rest of us as well.