Anonymous wrote:Compact Magazine is religiously conservative, economically libertarian. Of course Wilcox would have to publish this in such a venue - I can't think of a peer-reviewed academic journal that would accept an article like this, which is totally lacking in mitigating data. Marriage in one's early 20s might be great for a highly educated, wealthy woman with strong financial safety nets from her family, but of course Wilcox does not even mention these mitigating factors.

I’m wildly liberal and a lifelong atheist and I think the article has some points to consider.

Anonymous wrote:I posted earlier about coming up on 25 years. I know several other people that also married just shortly after college and are still happily together. I don’t think it is as big a fluke everywhere.

Personally I think it is smart for women to be serious from college on about who they date. “Dating around” without the goal of finding a spouse is a risky route for those who know they want kids.

- Not religious, not MAGA, middle of the road Dem.

Well, the dating scene isn’t the same anymore in college. Especially if your daughter goes to a top 20 school.

I didn't read the thread, but as someone who married very late in life, had my first child at age 41 (naturally) and my second adopted at age 47, I strongly advise not going that route. I am now in my sixties with a kid in high school. My youngest will graduate college when I am 70 and my husband 75. Honestly, it isn't fair to your kids to have them so old. I may never meet my grandchildren. On the positive side, we are in a very good financial position and our kids were able to attend top private schools and universities. They will inherit a good fortune when we die.

I encourage both of my kids to find their spouse early in life. Sadly, my 25 year old doesn't even have a GF right now, so it isn't looking promising!

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Anonymous wrote:Women who actually care about other women will openly and candidly talk about FERTILITY issues when having this conversation.

If you want kids, don't wait until your late 30s to get married and start trying.

Yes, there are always the fertile myrtles who can pop out kids in their 40s, but for the majority of women and the majority of circumstances, there is a WINDOW of opportunity in your early 30s to easily have healthy kids.

You’re disgusting.

I certainly didn't mean anything negative with this comment!

It's just a fact that advanced maternal age pregnancies add additional health risks to mother and child. That's why they monitor you more closely.

Shame on you for assuming the worst when I wrote "healthy"

Compact Magazine is religiously conservative, economically libertarian. Of course Wilcox would have to publish this in such a venue - I can't think of a peer-reviewed academic journal that would accept an article like this, which is totally lacking in mitigating data. Marriage in one's early 20s might be great for a highly educated, wealthy woman with strong financial safety nets from her family, but of course Wilcox does not even mention these mitigating factors.

DH and I were both 26 when we got married after meeting at 22 and were both 27 when our first was born. Finished having kids at 31, and it’s been a great 10+ years of marriage.

Both dems for what it’s worth so not espousing a conservative agenda, but seeing many of my friends struggling through their 30s finding someone, I’d definitely encourage my kids to marry young and have kids young. So much more energy to keep up while we’re young.

We married at 24/25 after meeting at 20. We both say it was the best decision of our lives and we're now 40. We've changed a lot, but we definitely changed and grew together. We didn't have kids until our 30s which gave us a lot of time to enjoy each other and build the career/house/marriage we wanted to bring kids into.

I read somewhere that marriages like ours are "startup marriages" where we were both broke and didn't know what careers we'd land on. My friends who married later in life focused a lot on their future spouse's occupation, whereas I focused on compatibility and how hard working he was.

I agree in part with the premise. I married in my 30s and there’s nothing wrong with that. I had a fantastic time in my 20s.

But, financially, you may be better off joining forces at a younger age. You have more time to figure out the fertility stuff. You’ll have a 40+ life that looks vastly different than mine. I love my life and wouldn’t change it. But I’m over 50 with kids at home. Had I married earlier, the kids would be on their own and I quite possibly could have had more of them. I would be willing to lean into these high earning years more than I want to now. I don’t want to now because I want to hang out with my kids.

I wouldn’t change my life but I see value in starting this phase earlier.

Anonymous wrote:Not everyone cares about marriage and kids and that's fine, but if you know you want those things I think it's smart to start dating for marriage in college. The pool of eligible partners only gets smaller. I didn't marry my college bf but I did meet my husband shortly thereafter in grad school. Looking around at my social circle (which is mostly UMC dual-career couples, not MAGA or religious) most everyone met their eventual spouses in college, grad school, or first jobs. If you wait much longer than that, many (not all, of course) of the best catches of any gender are already off the market even if they live together for a time before marriage and/or wait to have kids.

High school relationships work out too!

My husband and I started dating when we were 15, in 10th grade. We went to college together, got engaged at 19, and married at 21. We had our first child at 22, followed by four more at 24, 26, 29, and 31. Now, our oldest is 25 and getting ready to get married.

Anonymous wrote:It's important to offer early marriage as a viable option to young adults and not disparage it. The dating pool is much better at that age. The ones that don't get snapped up by 25 have some kind of baggage.

LOL

Brunch granny types are adamant and yet so clueless.

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Anonymous wrote:How is this a post for the college forum?

Definitely relevant to young women considering UVA who expect mentoring from UVA professors.

+1

Red flag

Anonymous wrote:So many people that DH and I know who got married young got divorced and are remarried.

Omg I can’t imagine if I had married the ding dong boyfriend I thought I was going to marry in college.

The difference is -
If one is dating with the intention of marriage, you would not have bothered with the ding dong boyfriend at all.

I think our choices reflect our priorities.

There are people who approach high school with the long view - they do well to get into a particular kind of college. Or the are choosing a trade route. Either way, thet are creating a road map and not passively letting life happen to them. And their parents help with that planning.
Yet most people do not take the same long view about dating in college or in their 20s. They only start to date for it when the fertility window is closing - procrastinate.

And dont give me BS about maturity. The immature and petty people I knew in my 20s are still immature and petty in their 50s. People are remarkably consistent.

American culture has been pushing the message of prolonged adolescence into our 30s contrary to biology.

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Anonymous wrote:I thought this might be a researched article that provided facts and figures about why it may be positive to get married and have kids young. It’s really just a right wing thought piece written by someone who also happens to be a professor.

Who gives a shit about the young woman’s Christian faith…it’s not relevant to the article and it would be more compelling if the UVA girl getting married young was a raging atheist.

I would be interested in facts-based research on the topic…do married couples get ahead faster at work? Is it better to have kids earlier when you are more junior so you can better lean in to your career by your early 30s?

There's a lot of discussion of the data showing that married young people, especially those with kids, are happier and less lonely than single young people. There's not data about career success from marrying young, but are we more concerned about "getting ahead at work" than we are about being happy?

What data? Where?

You missed the forest through the trees. I thought this was some research article published by a UVA professor showing empirical support for marrying young. I was using career progression as just one example, but I couldn't care less what the research was trying to measure.

This was nothing more than a right wing opinion piece authored by someone who happened to be a UVA professor. Honestly, the author could have come from any career or walk of life.

It's not a research paper, but there's data cited. The fact that you missed it makes me wonder if you read the article with any attention.

Young women (aged 22-35) who are single like Elizabeth are indeed more likely to report that they are lonely and unsatisfied with their lives. Fifty-five percent report that they are frequently lonely compared to 36 percent who are married; likewise, 47 percent of unmarried young women say they are “not satisfied” with their lives, compared to just 18 percent who are married, according to the American Family Survey.

Young men (22-35) who are single and childless are also more likely to be lonely and unsatisfied with their lives. Unmarried young men are 23 percentage points more likely to be frequently lonely and more than twice as likely to be unsatisfied with their lives compared to their married peers.

the happiest young women (22-35) today are not footloose and fancy free, they are married moms. And the ones least likely to be happy are single and childless. Data from the General Social Survey indicate that 41 percent of young married moms (22-35) are “very happy” with their lives, compared to just 14 percent of their female peers who are single and childless.

young married men (22-35) who are married with children are almost three times as likely to be “very happy” with their lives compared to their peers who are single and childless. Only 14 percent of young men who are single and childless are “very happy” compared to 37 percent of their peers who are married fathers.

Not only are young adults who put a ring on it happier with their lives in general, the research also suggests they enjoy marriages that are somewhat happier and more sexually satisfying than those who marry later.

And the statement that the author "could have come from any career" is silly. The author is a sociologist who studies marriage for a living. You may not like his conclusions, but he's an academic relying on data to make his case.

22-35 is a pretty wide age range for the data. 35 is significantly past the national average. Young marriage should be an option in the right circumstances, but I do not believe in rushing people down the aisle.

It's meaningless...if the article is supposed to be about getting married young, then only data for people marrying say 22-26 is relevant.

27-35 is called getting married at a relatively normal age...with 35 actually being well above the median marriage age.

Agreed. And that American Family Survey happiness data was collected by a group out of BYU from 3000 participants. It’s very hard to collect data of this nature and control variables/account for bias. I don’t care enough to do a deep dive, but how were the participants selected? Were 3000 Mormons polled? Because you’re sure as heck going to get results that can’t be extrapolated to the general public by only surveying white religious people from Utah.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I thought this might be a researched article that provided facts and figures about why it may be positive to get married and have kids young. It’s really just a right wing thought piece written by someone who also happens to be a professor.

Who gives a shit about the young woman’s Christian faith…it’s not relevant to the article and it would be more compelling if the UVA girl getting married young was a raging atheist.

I would be interested in facts-based research on the topic…do married couples get ahead faster at work? Is it better to have kids earlier when you are more junior so you can better lean in to your career by your early 30s?

There's a lot of discussion of the data showing that married young people, especially those with kids, are happier and less lonely than single young people. There's not data about career success from marrying young, but are we more concerned about "getting ahead at work" than we are about being happy?

What data? Where?

You missed the forest through the trees. I thought this was some research article published by a UVA professor showing empirical support for marrying young. I was using career progression as just one example, but I couldn't care less what the research was trying to measure.

This was nothing more than a right wing opinion piece authored by someone who happened to be a UVA professor. Honestly, the author could have come from any career or walk of life.

It's not a research paper, but there's data cited. The fact that you missed it makes me wonder if you read the article with any attention.

Young women (aged 22-35) who are single like Elizabeth are indeed more likely to report that they are lonely and unsatisfied with their lives. Fifty-five percent report that they are frequently lonely compared to 36 percent who are married; likewise, 47 percent of unmarried young women say they are “not satisfied” with their lives, compared to just 18 percent who are married, according to the American Family Survey.

Young men (22-35) who are single and childless are also more likely to be lonely and unsatisfied with their lives. Unmarried young men are 23 percentage points more likely to be frequently lonely and more than twice as likely to be unsatisfied with their lives compared to their married peers.

the happiest young women (22-35) today are not footloose and fancy free, they are married moms. And the ones least likely to be happy are single and childless. Data from the General Social Survey indicate that 41 percent of young married moms (22-35) are “very happy” with their lives, compared to just 14 percent of their female peers who are single and childless.

young married men (22-35) who are married with children are almost three times as likely to be “very happy” with their lives compared to their peers who are single and childless. Only 14 percent of young men who are single and childless are “very happy” compared to 37 percent of their peers who are married fathers.

Not only are young adults who put a ring on it happier with their lives in general, the research also suggests they enjoy marriages that are somewhat happier and more sexually satisfying than those who marry later.

And the statement that the author "could have come from any career" is silly. The author is a sociologist who studies marriage for a living. You may not like his conclusions, but he's an academic relying on data to make his case.

22-35 is a pretty wide age range for the data. 35 is significantly past the national average. Young marriage should be an option in the right circumstances, but I do not believe in rushing people down the aisle.

It's meaningless...if the article is supposed to be about getting married young, then only data for people marrying say 22-26 is relevant.

27-35 is called getting married at a relatively normal age...with 35 actually being well above the median marriage age.

Anonymous wrote:It's important to offer early marriage as a viable option to young adults and not disparage it. The dating pool is much better at that age. The ones that don't get snapped up by 25 have some kind of baggage.

This is not true at all. Life happens and life doesn’t work on a perfect schedule.