I am religious and don’t have any expectations that my kids marry right out of undergrad. My hope is for them to find the right person and that they both be mature, financially stable, and love each other enough for a lifetime commitment. DH and I were in our mid to late 20’s when we married out of grad school. One kid is getting married this year only a year out of undergrad. I would ordinarily be concerned at their young ages, but both are mature for their age and are in lucrative and stable careers.

My husband is deeply religious and we joke with our kid that the rule is she cannot get married until she is 30. Plenty of people at our church have their kids getting married around age 22 or 23. Honestly, that wouldn’t be my personal choice for my kid. The statistics show that early marriage is less likely to work out. But we will also likely keep our mouths shut if she gets engaged early — she will be fully aware that we think working for a while and really knowing who you are and where you want to be in life are important.

There is a growing culture of infantilizing grown adults. Some of it is finance based because most fresh grads are straddled with debt, doesn’t have good income and parents doesn’t want an extra liability for their snowflakes or themselves. Also weddings are expensive and parents doesn’t want to pay or want kids to take loans.

Some is based in midlife crisis parents own unfulfilled wishes which they want their kids to fulfill by having tons of sex with lots of people, traveling the globe, becoming successful and living it up. They genuinely think their adult kids aren’t capable of making their own decisions.

You won’t see many parents accepting their young adults wish to marry unless parents are extremely religious.

Middle ground should be not encouraging or discouraging but being accepting and supporting if two young adults with jobs and degrees want to commit. Recommend a simple wedding and for saving six month emergency fund before tying the knot and to use family planning until they get their grad or professional degrees and get a bit more settled.

If they don’t want to marry early, let them wait. Basically, just treat them as adults because infantilizing them doesn’t change the reality that they are and entitled to make their own decisions.

Anonymous wrote:If you are religious, would you want/expect/encourage your adult child get married right after undergrad.

If I’m religious!

Want, expect, encourage? Yes.
Force, manipulate? No.

Anonymous wrote:If you are religious, would you want/expect/encourage your adult child get married right after undergrad.

I’m somewhat religious but anyone who is done with college (unless a 12 year old child prodigy), is a legal adult. I can’t access their health records without their consent so I sure can’t force them to marry or not marry.

Not my business if or when my adult children decide to get married. I raised them to be capable of making their own decisions without my input. It is not my job to police adults.

I'm 61 and still waiting for "the one!" My mom is 90 and hopeful for me.

I would encourage them to begin looking for a spouse during undergrad, but I wouldn't want them to marry until they felt they'd found the right person for them. Whether that takes one year or twenty or more.

I'm religious and marriage is a lifelong commitment to God to us, which is why I would prefer my kids wait till their late 20s/early 30s to marry, when they are more mature and fully understand what commitment means and what they want in a partner.

Anonymous wrote:I want my kids to marry when they've found "the one." Maybe that will happen during/shortly after college, or maybe that will happen when they are 40.

I don't think they need to wait a long time once they've found "the one" though. I don't understand couples who date, and live together for years before finally getting married.

+1

I want my kids to marry when they've found "the one." Maybe that will happen during/shortly after college, or maybe that will happen when they are 40.

I don't think they need to wait a long time once they've found "the one" though. I don't understand couples who date, and live together for years before finally getting married.

Absolutely not. I would encourage my DD to establish herself independently first before settling down. My parents had the same priorities for us. All of us siblings were married with children by age 30 so it didn’t take decades.

I think marrying younger is better than marrying older, but that a successful young marriage (even more than any marriage) requires profound devotion to the institution as well as the intended spouse. Marriage is tough. It requires huge self-sacrifice. Kids, financial issues, employment demands, possible relocation for more education or work all add additional stress. Maturity and life experience can make these stresses easier to handle, but not all experience is helpful. Some experience can reinforce attitudes and habits that are antithetical to a successful marriage. Shared religious/social values certainly make a marriage more likely to succeed, but they are not guarantees. One of the strengths of a younger marriage is that the partners come over time to have shared a larger portion of their time together, as compared to people who got together later.

No. My parents, and especially my mom, recommended that I work a few years before getting married. She specifically said “Work a few years and spend your money the way you want to before you have to consider anyone else”.

If you are religious, would you want/expect/encourage your adult child get married right after undergrad.