Not necessarily; see the post about Jane Austen. Also, I’ve read that historians have church records going back centuries, and if one looks at them, you can see that the average age of marriage has only increased slightly, for most people.
I married at 21, and we’re still married 24 years later.
Yes, we were very young. In many ways, we grew up together, and our early years were not always pretty. But what would I change? I wouldn’t be who I am otherwise.
My children understand that we expect them to finish college before they seriously contemplate marriage. We’ll see how well that goes over the next decade or so.
A hundred years ago, I would have been married, and not due to love but due to finances. I recall a Boston Globe letter from a woman in 1893 who wrote why woman’s prospects was so limited. Simply, the lack of education. Most of my peers are married and in my community married/eventually settled. It was a mixed bag…some happy and some just making it with the confession that they didn’t want to be single parents/wanted children and it was just plain easier to find an adequate partner that they could be parents with…Oh, and the hilarious story I read in Dear Abby where a young newlywed was talking to her coworkers about what they would do with a lotterly win and majority of them said get a divorce!
Another thing: The supervisors/higher professionals are married w/children in my dept. but the technicians/clerks who are parents are single parents.
Back to the Jane Austen story…I’m read a bio on Berthe Morisot. I picture Marion Cotillard playing her if her bio ever went to film. If anyone knew, Morisot was a painter and was considered old maid by age 30 in the late 19th century. The man she truly loved Eduoard Manet was already married. Manet made a suggestion to Morisot to marry his brother. She actually did, and was pregnant at 33 but lost that baby, but did have a daughter when she was 38. The key was did she love him? I guess in a sense she did because her husband actually supported her wish to paint as a career so she didn’t have to stop that to simply become just a wife. As an aside, Morisot died in her 50s of pneumonia and wrote a regretful letter to her daughter Julie that she wished she lived longer to see Julie have her own family. The impressionists Degas, Monet, Renoir…all become her honorary uncles who looked after her.
Austen was part of the gentry and thus at a higher socio-economic level than the vast majority of her fellow women. The wealthier the woman the more options she has, that has always been true.
For the poor, there was also a difference between pairing off with a man and having kids and being formally married in a church. “Common law” type marriages have been pretty common in history, as well as other variations on marriage.
Yes, there have always been women marrying late and having first kids at 30, that doesn’t mean it was either the norm throughout society or the ideal society held up.
I think that many people mature emotionally at different rates , while they may be at the same level when younger they then go on to develop ,or fail to, when older , and this causes a breakdown as years pass that can make their marriages more of a trial then a case of ‘Happy ever after’ .
For men particularly , sexual attractiveness often , usually even, makes them believe that they’re head over heels in love and the character failings of their spouse are at first ‘cute’ and lovable , but after a couple of years little things like a failure to take responsibility for their own actions or spending money that they don’t have , no longer seem quite as lovable .
Women IME often mature more quickly then many men and their aspirations change .
The Jock that they found such a turn on when younger becomes boring and irritating as time passes when grown up decisions and actions are required .
And then of course there’s the baby factor .
Some women simply MUST have children , and have them now .
But a few years down the road , they start feeling that they’ve missed out on careers , or simply just going out and having fun .
Which can lead to breakups when they decide to catch up on what they feel they lack in life .
Of course theres no set age when peoples characters have settled into what they’re going to be like for the rest of their lives , but IMO it’s likely to be when they’re older , not younger .
By older , I don’t mean when they’r ready to collect their pension .
This doesn’t apply to everyone , but I think that it does apply to many .
Any advice regarding what ALL women should do seems silly. We’re a diverse group.
Personally, I’m not legally married now at 30 and may never be. But I’m happily cohabiting in a LTR. I like being in serious, healthy relationships but I’m also fine with the idea of being childless and alone, so I don’t get too worked up about the future.
I was engaged at 17 and married at 20 and it was the best decision I ever made. However, I am incredibly atypical, having been making adult-level decisions since I was 13 when my father died and my mother basically checked out on life for the next 10 years.
Had I had a daughter, I would not have advised she do the same. My older son married at 30 to a 26 year old girl and so far, so good. No. 2 son is planning to get engaged this Christmas. He is 31 and his fiancee to be is 28. I think both couples are solid from what I can see.
I think as a society we’ve extended ‘childhood’ a bit over recent years. I rarely see good things happening with young couples marrying directly out of high school. There seem to be more impediments to their success than there were even 20 years ago. Of course some of it is economic, but I think there is more involved.
Dear gods, no. I would’ve been a terrible partner in my 20s. I was impatient and selfish and self-centered. I was also busy establishing the groundwork for my career and having fun.
I was ready to get married *and had met the right person *when I got engaged in my late 30s.
Marrying “late”, BTW, is not at all uncommon in the socioeconomic group I know socially and through work. Women and men both go to university, then get established in a career, and then go to grad (or medical or law) school, then marry in their 30s. It’s a socio-economic indicator in a certain group.
I completely agree. And I think that’s ok. There’s plenty of time to be middle-aged; if you’re 24 years old, have a decent job, and want to spend vacation doing shots of tequila and partying in Mexico, I say do it. Don’t get pulled into “marriage-and-children” expectations right away.
Diogenes of Sinope was once asked when the ideal age was for a man to get married. His famous answer could apply equally well to females, I’m sure.
I’ve always considered marriage to be a “nice to have” rather than “necessity”.
n/m
Some men have seriously bad cases of biological clock, too - but in their case, the person who’s expected to put her career on hold is not them.
I got married in my 20’s and wish that someone had advised me to wait until my 30’s. I put their life & wishes above my own and regret that now.
I don’t know, I think that a lot of people who wait until their 30s to get married might never get married or have kids. If you are financially stable and know you can get sex and companionship sans marriage it becomes less of a compelling case for men unless they are focused on making a family, and also less of a compelling case for some women as taking on kids and a husband after 30 years of freedom might not be as attractive as when your hormones are rushing though your body in your 20’s.
Honestly, if I waited until my 30’s to get married I might never have gotten married or had kids. From the 20,000 foot view perspective I only developed into my 30’s. it was evident to me that there was nothing marriage gave me that was worth putting up the various emotional and psychological issues of my ex.
My marriage ended after 10 years but my (now adult) kids are the very world to me. Would I be happier or wiser if this didn’t happen? Overall I think not. They are worth traversing the gauntlet. If there was a universal law that you had to wait until your 30’s to get married it would be most effective means of population control ever devised.
Children were never in my plans, so that part of it didn’t matter.
Nope. I didn’t want to get married then. I still don’t want to now.
This isn’t exactly an endorsement for marriage in your 20’s, though. Ideally, people should start families when they want them and have the wisdom to handle the responsibility. Very often with young marriages, one or both of these components are missing. So you end up with divorces and other problems.
I’m 38 and just got married this year. Will be trying to start a family soon. My desire to have a husband and kids is pretty much the same as it was when I was in my 20’s, to be honest. Except then, I was much more distracted with school and career planning. If for some reason, I had married and had kids in my 20’s, it’s quite possible I’d be content with my family but discontent with my financial future. Someone might not think that’s such a bad deal, but honestly, I disagree. Having money never gets old to me, so I’m very glad I didn’t prioritize romance during my 20’s.
I get your point. I guess my general point which I admittedly did not make clearly was that if you wait until you are wise enough to assess the situation maturely kids might seem like a lot less of a good idea in many cases.
I did get married in my twenties, and it’s been fine so far. I certainly don’t think it’s better than any other option, though. I do wish I had waited longer on buying a home and having kids. While I love my kids, a few more years of less responsibility would have been nice, in retrospect.