Is it becoming trendy for young (rich) kids to marry right after college?

[Anonymous]

We are not rich but our children are in some affluent social circles due to private high school and selective colleges. So many of their 22 to 24 year old peers are getting married and engaged. Ivy Leaguers, even kids in law school and medical school, several private high school kids engaged to classmates! It seems like a half dozen just got engaged in the last week or two - kids who just graduated from college in the spring! Young love is beautiful to see but I’m not sure if I’m seeing it just because our kids are this age or if it is actually a broader trend bucking the whole wait until you’re around 30 to settle down young professional thing?

[Anonymous]

There's always a bunch of college sweethearts who get engaged and married shortly after graduation, and then it tails off. It happened when my husband and I graduated in the late 1980s and 1990s.

[Anonymous]

I think it's cyclical. Many don't want to start families as older parents like their own.

When I got married in my late 20s, many of my friends were in their 30s. Most of us had kids in mid-late 30s. There is now a trend (which I'm seeing with my nephews) of kids settling down younger. My oldest nephew married 1-2 years out of college and his wife was just starting med school. A lot of their friends were getting married at the same time (this was 2 years ago).

Also, the workplace has become much different. There is WAH and much more flexibility. I worked in the Office 10 years before my agency went to WAH. My firstborn was a baby when they added full-time telework. This enabled me to continue full-time work and have someone come in the home to watch him so I was around when he was a baby. I could see him during the day. Many of my co-workers that both WAH staggered schedules so they needed little if no childcare.

It was very much a 9-5pm world (and longer hours) 20 years ago with little flexibility for parents, zero paternity leave and limited maternity leave. It's still not great, but much better than it was.

[Anonymous]

My daughter is in medical school and her social circle is pretty much all K-MD (so early-mid 20s). She always seems to be at a wedding or celebrating an engagement.

[Anonymous]

I think this is a great trend, if true. Once our kids graduate college, their chances of meeting someone organically go down, and it becomes a dating app world.

[Anonymous]

It’s funny to me you are shocked that 22-24 year olds are getting engaged and married. It’s normal! The average age of first marriage for college educated women is 27 —so half of them are younger than that.

[Anonymous]

I don’t think it’s new. A lot of my med school classmates were married or got married during med school.

A lot of people get married when they decide to relocate for a BF/GF and are making major life and financial decisions together. It doesn’t necessarily mean that they are planning on having children soon.

[Anonymous]

They’ll be the first to get divorced, too. This has been my experience with everyone I know who married right after college.

[Anonymous]

Not even kind of.

[Anonymous]

Nope

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s funny to me you are shocked that 22-24 year olds are getting engaged and married. It’s normal! The average age of first marriage for college educated women is 27 —so half of them are younger than that.

That’s not what average means. Median is the mid-point.

[Anonymous]

Maybe in more conservative circles.

There is typically a handful of college sweethearts but most wait until they are older to get married.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They’ll be the first to get divorced, too. This has been my experience with everyone I know who married right after college.

I've seen the EXACT OPPOSITE. I'm 52 and everyone I know that married young is still going strong. The ones that 'settled' in their 30s and immediately popped out kids with almost no time as married couple first--imploded midlife.

Love marriages vs "My time is running out, this one will do'.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's always a bunch of college sweethearts who get engaged and married shortly after graduation, and then it tails off. It happened when my husband and I graduated in the late 1980s and 1990s.

+1. We got engaged right after college and married a year after that. We'd dated for four years in college, and it was a time to get married that made sense; we were moving away together, I was starting law school, it was a normal time to start our formal life together, plus we were (and are 20 years later) madly in love, so why wait? Plenty of people meet their spouses in college and getting married around that time makes sense. In my life with my friends there was a bump in the years after college, a bump in the years after people finished grad/professional school, and then a long steady drip of marriages of people who met other ways. That seems pretty expected to me.

[Anonymous]

Yes, it is. When I was young no young hot celebs were getting married and having kids young unless they were a train wreck (Britney Spears). Young rich celebs no longer think they’ll stop getting casted just for becoming moms and it’s changing the culture.