Reply to Spin off: Young Marriage

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "Spin off: Young Marriage "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Not to say that different people don't have different experiences, but the OP doesn't reflect my experience at all. I'm from the midwest, but went to college in California and have lived on one coast or the other my entire adult life. I'm in my mid-40s now.

Almost all of my women friends (~80-90%, I would guess) are married with kids. Almost all of us got married and had kids in our 30s. And almost all of us have advanced degrees, most of us have one or more degrees from an elite (i.e. T20) school. These are people living in different places across the country, but mostly big metro areas that people are saying are hostile to families (DC, SF, NYC, Seattle, etc).

I never had the sense that marriage and kids were discouraged or looked down upon. I wouldn't say were "dating to get married" in our 20s, but marriage was not anathema.

I guess the point of this post is to ask whether it really is common for people to experience marriage being discouraged and frowned upon. It doesn't match mine at all, so asking.[/quote]

Yeah, I agree. I’m from the same general area, but grew up and went to college in NYC. I’m a little younger in my late 30s and pretty much all my friends from high school and college are either recently married with kids (like me) or getting married, pregnant, etc. I never felt like it was discouraged and there were a few people in my circle who got married mid- to late- 20s and had kids soon after and we were all very excited for them and went to their weddings and baby showers. I really don’t feel like weddings and babies were seen as horrible in any way, just something that we didn’t have to do right away unless we found the right person and wanted to.[/quote]

To add to my previous post, I think a lot of us were freaking out a little bit when our first friends and colleagues started getting married in their 20s. We wanted the same thing, at least eventually. But the cultural expectation wasn’t that you needed to get married or you were an old maid, so we didn’t settle for someone we didn’t absolutely want to be with just because we felt that the clock was ticking. My husband is from the Midwest and a lot of his high school friends seem to have rushed to get married once the first few high school or college sweethearts did. A few of them definitely settled, especially the women. Many of them are now divorced with older kids and getting remarried in their late 30s and 40s, and several of them have been pregnant at the same time as me having my first because they want to have at least one child with their new wife or husband, who also has older kids. I think the important thing is to jump on it when you find a person you click with, whether it’s in your early 20s or later. And it doesn’t do anyone any good to settle. I’d rather be alone. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics