The average age of marriage is rising in many regions in the world, and the usual reasons given for marrying later in life (as has been the case in the West and elsewhere, with many people not marrying until their 30s or later) are usually the following: Finances, maturity/immaturity, education, career, not having found Mr./Ms. Right, etc.
So I wanted to poll/ask: If, hypothetically, all of these issues were addressed, then what would you consider to be the ideal age for someone to get married? (That is - the hypothetical person in question has found their Mr./Ms. Right, and both parties have their finances in great shape, are debt-free, are as mature (in every sense) as they ever will be, are ‘ready’ for marriage (in every sense,) are completely finished with formal education, have everything going right with their careers, etc.)
By the time you reach 25 you usually know who you are and what you want to do with your life. At 18 you are clueless, and by 35 you are already set in your ways.
IMO …
The OP’s conditions make no sense in terms of his question. The ideal age to marry is whichever one you’re at whenever you’ve managed to fulfill his very sensible conditions.
In my personal case it was 25-30 for me and 30-35 for my wife. In fact the gap was smaller than the OP’s categories makes it appear; we were just opposite sides of our 30th birthdays when we pulled the trigger.
Now if the question was “At what age will most people probably meet these various conditions as best they ever will?” I’d vote 25-30. As dolphinboy said so succinctly.
But that’s not the question I understand the OP to have asked.
Ideal age to get married is when you get married. There is no ‘one size fits all.’
I was 29, my wife 25. But my brothers were all younger than my wife was when they got married - and my cousin waited until she was 53. No difference to note in the quality of any of those marriages.
I went 25-30 ----- old enough to maybe know something about yourself but young enough to bail and have time for a good restart if you get it wrong.
(That being said, I was 19 and am still with the same person but I know we’re exceptional among our friends)
Which for one of my brothers turned out to be 25 for bride and groom, to the other 40 for the groom and 48 for the bride. When this second pair were 38 and 30 they were living on opposite ends of the planet; it’s difficult to get more “long distance” than Spain to New Zealand.
If I’d thought The Bestest Boyfriend and I would have done well, we would have been about 29 and 31 at the time of the wedding. But I didn’t believe that, so we didn’t get married.
If having children is a high priority for the two parties involved then the ideal age would be 20-25, as that is typically at a peak of health and fertility for humans.
Otherwise… I’m not sure there’s an “ideal”. As someone else said, it’s when the above conditions are met and various problems solved.
You’re right, I didn’t phrase it well.
What I meant was something like this: If you could create a The Sims-like hypothetical ideal couple, and maturity/education/finances/compatibility etc. are all green-lights, good to go - but the only thing you haven’t assigned yet is their age, what age would you consider best?
Maybe man 27, woman 25? Etc. .etc.
But that wouldn’t be the time to get married, it would be the time to make babies. Many people go years between the wedding and deciding to try for a baby, which would make the perfect wedding time earlier.
I went with 20-25, with the sweet spot being in the 23=25 range.
I say this because this is normally after college when it really helps to split living costs with someone, both are starting out in jobs and making little money and can enjoy just being married and happy. Then, after 3 or 4 years, you can think about having kids.
I thought peak fertility was in your teens. And the reason why teen sex is, indeed, playing with fire without adequate birth control! At least that’s what they teach in sex ed.
In my role as a reverend with the Universal Life Church, I solemnized the marriage of a 92 year old guy to his 78 year old sweetheart. They were wed for practical/economic reasons and remained together until he passed about a year later.
I went with over 60.
I got married at 36. I would say 30-35, for the purposes of this poll. I really couldn’t see myself married during my 20s, nor would I have wanted to be.
I think it’s a really bad idea to have an “ideal” age in mind. I’ve known several bad marriages that I really think were a matter of someone having an idea that a certain age was the “right” time to get married, so they married the person they were dating at the time.
My thoughts are this: Being thrifty-minded, I say save money by hiring the Preacher for only one day. He can perform the marriage right after the funeral!
We are talking ideal, and ideally the parents of a child are in a long-term commitment. “Marriage” would certainly qualify as such a commitment. The ages are young enough to have a few years between marriage and children, but since one people delay children is a lack of what they consider ideal conditions that shouldn’t be the case here.
That’s why I said HEALTH as well as fertility. It’s not an ideal thing for a still-growing woman to become pregnant, it’s really better for her to be physically fully mature first. that’s a few years after the start of her periods.
As would I. I (and all four of my kids) got married in the 20-25 range. Four of the five ended up divorced. The oldest son remarried at 31 and it seems to be a winner. I remarried at age 45 to the best person I could have ever found, and who had never been married. My daughter went through two husbands before age 30 and gave up on the whole idea. Another son has not remarried yet. The youngest seems to have a soulmate, but he’s the out-lyer.
If my family is at all representational, it would seem to belie the notion that by 25 a person has any semblance of having his/her shit in one sock.
I think the idea that you need to get everything lined up before you can get married is flawed in the first place. Some of that stuff, or all of it, you can do as partners. Think about it: 2 people, working towards shared goals. Crazy, right? If you wait until you’re perfect, you might never get married.
The right age might be when you find the right person. For some people, that happens early (I was in my early 20’s), for some people it happens late. Some people try more than once. The point is that there isn’t a one size fits all for this.
With something like current societies with available birth control - 25+. 25 is about when our brains finish physically maturing. Till then we’re still working with a pre-frontal cortex that isn’t good at inhibiting impulses or organizing our behaviors to pursue long term goals. Those sound like good mental abilities to have before making decisions about a supposedly life long commitment that has huge effects on all aspects of life.