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 work in a competitive professional sector and when young female interns ask me for advice I always say that, if they intend to have children and a life partner, the biggest factor in a woman’s success is their choice of partner.

And that finding the right person earlier rather than later brings better life outcomes: professionally, financially, emotionally - and family life.

Friends who met at university, identified shared life goals, married young, leant into their careers together, young, took adventures overseas, together, young, bought their first house, had children young - tend to be doing better and are wealthier in their forties.

I appreciate this is only my experience and many will strongly disagree!

But there’s a lot to be said for meeting your life partner young, sharing similar ambitions and having fun achieving them and growing up together through your twenties.

Exactly. If she finds that her current strategy isn't working for her, she will need to adopt a different approach. But in the meantime, she's 20 and she doesn't need to date at all if she doesn't want to, so she is entirely at liberty to date on her own terms.

Jeez how young did you start on Tinder??

15 @carrotsandtomatoes pre-2016 it was 13+, not 18+

Good for her. She will do well dating men approaching 30 though. They don't grow up until then.

No, you actually don't need to do that. Social conservatism is on the rise amongst Gen Z - I would know, I am a 23 year old who has been married to my 26 year old husband for two and a half years, and am now trying for my first baby. Many of us have liberal parents who advocated for casual sex and dating, two income households, small families and delayed parenthood, but we are decisively rejecting the Millenial and Gen X way of life for a return to traditional family and lifestyles. OP's daughter will almost certainly be able to find a marriage and family minded man in the 23-28 year old age bracket if that's something she is actually looking to make happen soon, though I get the impression that she might just be declaring that as a life goal rather than something whe wants in the next two years.

I would advise all young women who are marriage and family minded against casual dating - there is absolutely no benefit of subjecting yourself to drama, heartbreak, sex outside of committed relationships, and time wasting. My personality, perspectives and marriage are deeply impacted by the fact that I have only ever had a serious relationship with, and slept with, my husband. Is it actually fun to cause yourself emotional damage over, and waste your energy on men who will be another woman's husband one day?

Op I did this when I was 21 at university. Told dh I was dating to marry and i didnt want to date if marriage was on the cards at some point. We married a year later and our first and only baby is due the same month as our 10 year wedding anniversary. I am a millennial.

You clearly have a very jaundiced view of a life you admit yourself you haven’t experienced and have zero knowledge of. If there is a ‘trend’ towards early marriage, it’s because yours is something of a broken generation, traumatised by Covid, missing out on normal developmental stages, afraid of the world, and retreating into the kind of apparent ‘safety’ represented by closing down as many freedoms as possible as early as possible. Good luck to you, obviously, but I think you’ll need it.

Hmm I married at 22 and have only ever had 2 boyfriends in my life . I have only slept with DH hence why I have basically gone through life without using contraception other than 1 year of condoms. Dh is getting his vasectomy next month so I guess I never will. I have only been pregnant once and yes I am that infertile and only got pregnant 9 years after marriage. I am a millennial btw.

But I wouldn't call myself traditional or conservative. I consider myself a liberal. I just don't see the point of wasting my time on men and marriage is fairly essential if you are an international couple subject to visa rules or if you plan to have kids . For me it's a pragmatic decision not a cultural one.

I was far more blunt. I said i don't go on dates unless marriage is on the cards at some point. You can tell me now lol.

Dating for fun (which, let's be honest, just means casual sex) and enjoying life in your twenties is what leads to a sad, pathetic, desperate rush in your mid to late thirties to find a good man (many of whome are already married) who wants to be a dad on an extremely condensed timeline so you don't end up needing IVF. Some people see that scenario, that especially many high-powered professional women find themselves in, and want absolutely no part in it.

Also, I enjoy being married. Getting to do everything with my life partner who made legally binding vows with me in a church and committed themselves to me for the rest of time, is amazing.

FAR too intense for a first (or 2nd, 3rd, ..... 10th) date.

I have 3 dc in their 20s and, like the first poster, they'd all be choking on their drinks if a person started interrogating them like that, on a first date.

It doesn't make sense in most cases either, as people's brains and people's emotions are still developing. If someone had asked me at 20 if I wanted dc, I'd have said no, but all these decades on, my dc are my proudest achievement in life.

So yes, I'd say SIBU, as you ask. Perhaps the fact that she hasn't got past the first dates into relationships, might back that up

I dated to marry. My Dh is 2 years older than me. He married me at 24 at a registry office , around a week before his masters thesis was due. Tbh he thought it was a normal age, he knew girls who married at 16 at his secondary school ! It wasnt common but it wasn't unheard of. Half my SIL's graduating sixth form class was married by 21.

It has pretty good results too and is one of the top ten comprehensives in the uk!

You don't need to be afraid of the world to not want to let men who you met while six drinks deep in a club put their strange penises inside you. Marriage is freedom from degeneracy, whereas I know many millenials and gen x-ers enjoyed the freedom to be degenerate in their younger years. Well, traditionally minded zoomers had the freedom to be degenerate and instead chose differently, and for me it's a choice I'm very proud of.

Though if we're talking about a broken generation, I would draw your attention towards the parallels between this phrasing and the commonly touted "daddy issues", which put the blame on a woman or girl for being emotionally impacted by abandonment, rather than perpetrator of said abandonment. Gen z had no political representation when decisions were being made to lock down countries and close schools, so if we have had our perspectives shaped and our goals and ideals altered by Covid measures, it is the fault of older generations. They have no place judging the ways we now choose to find happiness and fulfilment. My husband and I were enlightened by our experiences, not damaged by them - shown that the way our parents' generations lived and continue to live their lives were perverted and disordered.

Certainly at that age she is very likely just going to scare a lot of guys off.

I did this and got married at 20, but that’s in Christian circles with no sex before marriage. If she’s mixing in standard secular circles, she might struggle!

You don't need to be afraid of the world to not want to let men who you met while six drinks deep in a club put their strange penises inside you.

You have a very strange thought process if you think there is a binary choice between this, and interrogating every first date about their long term plans and intentions

I always made it clear that marriage and kids was something I wanted. Tbh come up naturally when first dating as kind of a how do you see your future? What the point in carrying in if you don't have have the same sort of vision of th future

I suspect it would very much depend on the chap she was on a date with. Is she giving them the third degree to check their intentions, or simply putting this info out there to make them aware that she's looking for a serious relationship?

I have a son is his early 20s and I don't think he'd be overly concerned by questions like that as he'd like the same, but I very much doubt a lot of his friends would think the same. At 20, your daughter might find that it's a little too early for people to be of the same mind set and perhaps consider it a bit intense - particularly on the first or second date. I appreciate she doesn't want to waste her time though, and do admire her openness. It wouldn't shock me if it scared some away though. She's also running the risk that some might just agree to what she's saying/asking because they think they're in with a better chance.

At what age though @Hankunamatata ?

As a pp said, at 34, I can understand it.

But at 20, the usual interaction would be to see if you get on / have a laugh / enjoy it's other's company / share some interests / think the other person would be someone you'd enjoy seeing again. Spending a few evenings or days with someone to see how compatible you are in terms of the big things that are important.
At 20, not many people are making decisions about starting a family.

I think it's a good idea to ensure that you have the same long-term goals early in a relationship. I would ask a few more dates down the line mind you. Sharing and asking about long-term desires doesn't mean that you're specifically declaring that you'll want to achieve them with the person you're dating. So many people end up dating someone that they love in their early 20s and end up wasting years dating them, only to find that they have entirely different goals. What a waste of energy. At least if you ask the questions and it goes to pot, you'll know you did everything you could.

I met my DH at 18 and asked the questions. We're in our 30s and married with DC now, for context.

My DD will be 20 this year and I don’t think she raises this topic so early on. Usually she’s just chatting and getting to know them during the first few dates and then they may start going out more regularly. She hasn’t felt serious about anyone yet though and lived anyone either. I don’t think she’s 100% sure whether she wants marriage or children.

It’s interesting people mentioning dating apps. DD and her friends don’t use them and they seem to meet ppl the old-fashioned ways, at parties, nights out, etc. Then they go out on a date the way we did back in ye olde 1990’s!

I wonder whether Gen Z’s are reverting somewhat to our tried and tested ways!

You didn’t have enough great sex then

I agree. I think it’s better to start planning in your 20s rather than end up having to compromise with a less than ideal partner because your biological clock is running out.

Nothing like that would have occurred to me at 20. But I always knew I wanted children. In my teens I imagined meeting my husband at university. I had limited dating experience though before I actually went and once I did, I just enjoyed meeting guys, flirting, partying etc. I had a few relationships, most short, one longer, but the longer one was more a convenience as we were in the same social group. I knew I didn't feel remotely ready for settling down and laughed at my former self thinking I'd meet my husband.

None of my friends at uni or from school married someone they met at the time, bar one couple, where we all knew they weren't doing the right thing - sure enough, they divorced a few years later. Another couple who'd met at 16, married at 24 and are still married.

I loved my 20s, met so many people and had fun. One of my dds is nearly 20 and has been in a relationship for over a year - she has talked with him re marriage and children but knows it's too early to make a decision (I hope!).