To be 100% honest about kids/marriage intentions on first date?

[GentleOliveFatball]

My oldest daughter is only 20, however even on first/second dates with men she is honest about her intentions of "dating to marry" and is clear about not wanting to waste her time/setting firm boundaries. She also tells me she has conversations about wanting children in the future. (She is not going on blind dates, more like dating friends and friends of friends so they won't be complete strangers meeting for the first time.)
She has told me all of this herself as we are close. She finsihed college last year and is working full time, she wants to travel at some point and I believe that's what she's saving up for. She currently rents a flat with two other girls.
None of her friends or her are on dating apps (which is good I think)
I'm impressed that she knows who she is and what she wants and I hope it works out for her... however it so far doesn't seem to be very successful as I don't think boys her age are very serious or want that level of commitment.
How are your older kids meeting their partners and going about dating?
I know she's an adult so I'm not getting involved/asking her too many questions, I'm just curious to know if her approach is normal/common nowadays as it is quite different to when I was her age!

I mean good for her but it does seem very young. At 20 I feel you should be having fun, working out who you are and what type of men you like, travelling, partying etc. I know everyone's different and not all young people want to travel or party but it seems so young to settle down. Barely an adult.

I'm torn on this one! I don't believe everyone needs to "have fun and go on dates". I also think the best sex is with someone you love and trust so I did laugh a little at the person who said she should be off having great sex! 😅 I agree with her that there's no point in her wasting time with someone who just wants a few casual dates and no relationship.

But at the same time, it seems very full on. I think she can be honest about not wanting something casual without having to get someone's entire life plan before deciding if she'll pursue it. I'm engaged, 2 kids, forever job, and I would still cringe and struggle to answer if someone asked me about my thoughts in my 80s!

Life is ever changing, people change their minds and opinions and values, and bumps happen along the way that means not everything works out exactly as we have planned.

This question is very intense for a first date. I would have been put off by such a question when I was young and dating.

Dating is your 20s is supposed to be fun.

I hate this phrase "at 20 you should be having fun".... who are we to decide what's fun! Some people love partying, some people hate it. Some people are happy to have one night stands or casual flings, others aren't. Some people want to travel the world, others don't want to leave their home country. There's no right or wrong, and there's no "I've lived a better life than you" just because I didn't live my life exactly as you did!

Yes, of course people meet people at university and stay with them, as it’s a great time to encounter lots of different people on your wavelength, for friendships as well as partnerships, but happening to meet someone you like that happens to turn into a lasting relationship is entirely different to dating aged 20 with the declared intention of ‘dating to marry’. Why is she so fixated?

Ok, aged 20, regardless of what constitutes ‘fun’ for you, you shouldn’t be closing down your life before you’ve had a chance to discover who you actually are as an adult.

It's very intense, it sounds like a job interview or one of the questions that people at tedious networking events think are really clever.

With those kinds of questions she's going to end up with someone a lot older than her.

I only had one proper relationship before meeting DH. Like you I was picky and knew what Iwas looking for. Was 28 when I met him. Been married for 35 years this year.

I can't see the problem in asking at 20 if marriage and children are something you would want at some point in the future. That doesn't mean you want them right now at all, but at 20 many people know whether or not they see a future with those things in it.

Dating a man who says adamantly that he would never want children is very different to dating one who says the thought of having them now would be awful but in ten years time he would see himself wanting marriage and children. Your daughter would presumably get rid of the first and date the second. I'm assuming she doesn't want marriage and children straight away herself but knows she wants that in the future.

My children (boys and girl ) would run.

They look for monogamy and 2 of them are in longer term relationships for their age (2 years and 3 years) but aren’t looking for more than that from a partner.

If she’s dating much older people in their 30s then it might be less of a problem but people in their 20s aren’t as serious about dating unless their cultural expectation of marrying in their early 20s and many have to date approved people anyway.

She is still very young so I think she needs to relax a bit and just enjoy life. Most men in their early 20s would be put off by such an intense conversation on a first date
I can understand that approach if she was in her late 30s but at her age she should be exploring life not thinking about getting married and having children

I have a very strong maternal instinct and knew I wanted kids from a young age. I think if your goal is to fall in love, get married, and have kids, there’s not much point in wasting time on people who don’t want that.

But stating it all upfront in a first date is a bit much, and probably intimidating. Just have fun going out a few times and then mention in conversation how much you love kids. Also? An easy way to weed out the guys who are interested in you as a person from the guys who just want something casual is to not have sex for at least the first few months of a relationship. The “casual” guys will get bored and go elsewhere.

I think it's fair enough for her to set her own standards and boundaries in whatever way she chooses tbh. She can always reevaluate if she finds that her current approach isn't working for her.

20 is very young to be thinking about marriage and kids, though. Does she have other aspirations alongside this?

Fair play to her. It will effectively end 99/100 dates immediately.

“Dating to marry” sounds very serious for her age.

But if she absolutely knows she wants children, I think it’s sensible to not get into a long term relationship with someone who knows that they definitely do not. That conversation doesn’t need to be on the first date, but equally no point being 2 years in and finding out the relationship either needs to end or you’re going to hang around hoping he changes his mind.

Are you male? Because many women will find it hard to concieve by 40. I know lots don't, but as a general rule it's not something women can afford to put off until then.

Well, at the ripe old age of 52, I can look back at the 18 year old me and say categorically I had me right the first time. It was the fannying about in my 20s and early 30s pretending to be something that I'm not that made me miserable. I would have been so much happier if I'd just been 'allowed' to get on with it instead of being pressured to look, act and dress a certain way by people telling me that I needed to be 'having fun' at my age.

I agree. It's limiting to say everyone should be living their 20s the same, whether that's the 2020s potential "ideal" of travelling, dating lots of different people etc or settling down straight after uni. I've zero regrets about doing the second (or that we started our family in our 20s).

I think it just puts unnecessary pressure on what is a young relationship between two people who are just learning who they are as adults. A lot of men, in particular, that age don't know if they are going to be wanting to have kids 15-20 years down the line and would be put off by the seriousness of it if that is the expectation. I don't think my DS or his friends could say for sure that they will want to have kids at any point, but they might. They are mainly focussing on making sure they can support themselves and they are very aware of what the world looks like now and what it might look like when they get to a stage of potentially wanting to have kids. If OPs DD doesn't want to have kids in her near future then I think she will be scaring a lot of perfectly nice men away that might at some point want kids.

Ds1 is this age, I too wouldn't want him being asked this on a first date. It's too intense.
However, no point dating anyone unless they do want a serious relationship, if you do. She might he best dating a man a few years older say 23, 24?

Let her do what she wants
if it doesn’t work she’ll have to adjust her approach

I think that's up to her, though. So what if she "scares off" perfectly nice men who aren't yet sure about whether or not they want kids? If she knows that she definitely does want children, then it's entirely her prerogative to decide that she doesn't want to waste time on relationships with people who aren't on the same page as her.

Of course, people can change their minds and opinions over time, and that could apply to the OP's dd as much as it might to any men that she may date. But if she feels right now that she isn't interested in dating anyone who isn't sure that they want children, then that's her choice. And she might not be in the slightest bit bothered about missing out on relationships with "perfectly nice" men who don't want what she wants.

My dd is 19 and has been with her bf for the last 3 years. I never imagined at the outset that it would last into adulthood, and of course, there is no way of knowing what might happen in the years to come. They both acknowledge that they're very young and that things might change. However, they also both feel that they wouldn't want to stay in the relationship if they knew now that there was no future in it. And they have both talked about the various "red lines" that are non-negotiable for each of them. I think that's pretty healthy tbh. Better to discuss those things upfront and establish that you're on the same page than to find out later when you're heavily emotionally invested.

If she is dating to marry she should be restricting herself to only dating men who are about 8 years older. Those her own age are almost all of them definitely not ready to consider marriage and she will be putting them off by being so up-front. Dating is the process through which you find out whether you are interested in a long term commitment to someone, and it takes a few months at least to work that out. She's trying to skip the stage of having fun with no commitment. It's not going to work.

Yea, you are right actually. As long as the rejections aren't getting to her then I guess she should continue with what she believes in. Since she is only dating people she knows or friends of friends it won't take her too long to have exhausted the dating pool and then she will know if maybe she just needs to wait a few years until the men in her age group are ready to consider marriage/children.

At 23 I'd spent two years wit someone who it turned out didn't want marriage and children and bought me a shut up ring. At the end of the first date with the next one I asked if he wanted to get married and have children. I said he didn't have to marry me but I didn't want to waste any more time. I did marry him and have his kids but I wish I hadn't.

Fair play to your DD.