"The risk of chromosomal abnormality increases with maternal age. The chance of having a child affected by Down syndrome increases from about 1 in 1,250 for a woman who conceives at age 25, to about 1 in 100 for a woman who conceives at age 40. It is possible that risks may be higher as many statistics only report live births and do not take into account pregnancies with chromosomal abnormalities that were terminated or ended due to natural pregnancy loss."

https://www.chop.edu/conditions-diseases/pregnancy-over-age-30#:~:text=The%20risk%20of%20chromosomal%20abnormality,who%20conceives%20at%20age%2040.

Anonymous wrote:Most people graduate college by 22 so there is plenty of time to marry before 28 , remember you don't want to be a old mom because of pregnancy risk and being slow and overwhelmed as you are aging into geriatric pregnancy which is 35.

Its also an option to marry young but not have kids until you are ready or have kids early but not marry until you are ready.

Most people graduate college by 22 so there is plenty of time to marry before 28 , remember you don't want to be a old mom because of pregnancy risk and being slow and overwhelmed as you are aging into geriatric pregnancy which is 35.

Anonymous wrote:It is cultural. Plenty of people in the south are still getting married straight out of college. I'm from NY in my early thirties and a good 1/4 of my perfectly good catch friends are not yet married, with at least half of them still single. The single ones are single mostly because a prior relationship didn't work out.

+1

Not common in my affluent, educated circles in the NE and CA.

20-25 yes but rare more common for military/religious/unplanned pregnancy
26-32 common

From my anecdotal perch, most of my friends or acquaintances who didn't meet their future spouses in 20's, ended up making hasty and fear based choices in 30's.

Happily married, emotionally healthy and financially stable parents play a large role in children's views about life, love, marriage and family.

Their children are more likely to be, find and keep loving and supportive partners. They are more likely to commit if they find love and grow together in personal and professional lives.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If marriages in 20's aren't going well, its easy to divorce and move on. If marriages in 30's and 40's aren't going well, there is too much to loose hence people stay trapped.

My friends who married in late 30s and 40s are more unhappy. Their marriages weren’t necessarily love matches. They married quickly because the clock was ticking and they wanted kids. They’re glad they had kids but many of them divorced quickly too.

Friends who married late 20s/early 30s dated for several years prior to marriage. They also grew up more together (things like supporting each other in grad school, buying first homes together, starting first jobs together). I actually don’t have any friends who married in that range that divorced. A few divorced who married at ages 22-24.

This is what I think helps younger couples together. They grow together.

we have friends going through divorce, and my pragmatic husband said to me recently “there is no way I could move on after you. Because you know me and everything about me and love me for me and I don’t know how I could build that with anyone else at this point”. And I’ve seen posters ask on this board “those happily married to millionaire husbands, how did you find him ” …. well he was broke at the time

But now We share and laugh about When we lived in that one roach-infested apartment, when we bought our first house, the birth of our kids, when we each realized we wanted kids, what we ate when we couldn’t afford much, how low his first salary was, college graduation, his mindset when he got the first job, how we’ve grown, thoughts of our future and what became of it, etc.

Our kids are 20-ish and we parents met at this age, dated, and married a few years later. My 25yo DS is not even close (no girlfriend) and that’s okay, but he has been there for the best of our 28 year marriage and says this is what he wants… one day.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are we so concerned if they’re getting married in their 20s? Statistically they are much less likely to divorce if they marry at 30+.

DC is generally populated with highly educated intelligent people but these recent threads really belie that - parents, grab a brain and stop thinking it’s a negative that your kids aren’t getting married and procreating under 30. if they do, you’ll be on here in 10 years, lamenting their blended family situation with the grandkids because the marriages won’t last.

It’s a lot harder to find a good spouse once you leave the college/grad school lifestyle. Yes it happens for some, but it’s basically OLD or colleagues after that. There will never again be as many academic/intellectual peers in your life again once you leave school. So even if you don’t marry then, it’s still good to have found the person by then.

Disagree. I was living my best life in my early 20s and did not want/thought about settling down until my late 20s.

At 28, I met the one, got married at 30 and had a our first kid a year later. We've been together for over 20 years.

I encourage young adult (and my teen) to live life and settle around 30.

But I think the key was meeting your partner while you were still in your 20’s. I met my husband at 28 also and married at 31. I was similar in that I wasn’t mature enough for a commitment in my early twenties. However, I did see a difference in the caliber of available men for my friends who stayed single and unattached throughout their thirties. A couple married divorced men with kids-good guys, but challenges parenting step-children in their mid to late thirties. I think at least one wanted more than one child of her own, but husband had enough children. Also, some settling in terms of lifestyle.

If one wants it easy, college guys are a waste of a decade before they attain wealth. They have no maturity, no income, plenty of debt, urge to cheat and some hypothetical potential that may never materialize or at least take a decade. By that time women can be far ahead in their own careers. If one wants to avoid struggle and attain a life of leisure, probably far better to marry someone older and established.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why are we so concerned if they’re getting married in their 20s? Statistically they are much less likely to divorce if they marry at 30+.

DC is generally populated with highly educated intelligent people but these recent threads really belie that - parents, grab a brain and stop thinking it’s a negative that your kids aren’t getting married and procreating under 30. if they do, you’ll be on here in 10 years, lamenting their blended family situation with the grandkids because the marriages won’t last.

50% of women who turn 30 without a child will remain childless.

And? 50% is a coin toss, for one thing. And, having children is not for everyone, nor dies it define a woman’s worth nor value of her life experience. Have we not come further in society that we value women as more than breeders, and assume that’s all they want to be? I guess not, based on this thread. It’s all “lock down the high earning and good looking men early.”

It honestly doesn’t sound much different than it would have if internet message boards had existed in the 1950s — “better lock down those doctors and lawyers while they're in grad school girls, or you’ll have to settle for a poor, ugly, crazy guy once you’re in your 30s or GASP you might not have children, and then your life will be meaningless.”

Sad that it’s 2024 and this is still the message young women are getting. It’s a lot of what’s wrong with society.

Most childless women did not plan to be childless. Most childless women are childless because they could not find a partner before their fertility window closed. If you are 30 and unwed you are really cutting it close to the wire, unless you're ok with single motherhood by choice.

I feel my anecdotal data is skewed towards affluent and educated who mostly married between 24-28 after 2-4 years of relationship so success rate is very high.

It is cultural. Plenty of people in the south are still getting married straight out of college. I'm from NY in my early thirties and a good 1/4 of my perfectly good catch friends are not yet married, with at least half of them still single. The single ones are single mostly because a prior relationship didn't work out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If marriages in 20's aren't going well, its easy to divorce and move on. If marriages in 30's and 40's aren't going well, there is too much to loose hence people stay trapped.

My friends who married in late 30s and 40s are more unhappy. Their marriages weren’t necessarily love matches. They married quickly because the clock was ticking and they wanted kids. They’re glad they had kids but many of them divorced quickly too.

Friends who married late 20s/early 30s dated for several years prior to marriage. They also grew up more together (things like supporting each other in grad school, buying first homes together, starting first jobs together). I actually don’t have any friends who married in that range that divorced. A few divorced who married at ages 22-24.

There is something to be said about the shared struggle of finding your way in your 20s. You share each others highs and lows and become a team that understands each other.

It can go that way and it sounds nice, but my anecdata is that everyone I knew who thought they would do that was in a mulligan marriage that ended around 27. Remarried their forever partners and had kids in early 30s.

I have 8 nieces and nephews in their 20s and only one is married. Two are in long term cohabitating relationships and seem to have no desire to get married. One might be in some sort of amorphous open relationship situation—hard to tell and I’ve stop wanting to ask. I guess three are still in college or recent graduates so possibly will have more interest later.
It does definitely seem like more of a trend away from marriage but I can’t say I disagree. If you don’t have kids, what’s even the point? Lots of people married before for the health insurance but the ACA made that less important.