To wonder why people used to marry so young

[estrella167532839]

In 1990 the average age for getting married was 24. I know couples who got married when they were 21/22 and had only just graduated from uni. I can’t imagine being married that young.

At the moment, it seems like most people get married in their 30s, if at all.

I got married at 24. I don’t really know why. It just seemed like the next thing to do.

I got married aged 24, we are still happily married 20 years later. There was no reason other than we wanted to, we had been together for 8 years by then and we wanted children which we had in our 20s as well

Remember lots of people didn't do uni. I think that might have been a difference between people living at home and those who had moved out for uni.

My dad spent most of his retirement researching our family tree so I know more than I want to about this.

civil registration of births marriages and deaths came in in 1836. So before that no centralised government records and marriages were recorded in a records book held in each parish church.

there are projects under way to digitise most of these for family history purposes but if you want to research family history and marriages most of those books are now held at county records offices.

there was a period from about 1650-1660 where the records are really bad due to the English civil war and the republic before the restoration of the monarchy but that aside in general the records are pretty good.

my dad managed to get our family tree back to about 1700.

I'm another 8 years older than you and most of our friends and colleagues lived together before marriage, some didn't even have marriage on the horizon.

In my upper middle circle, people were at it like rabbits.

I don't think uni is the deciding factor. When I got married at 18, I was at uni. So was my husband. That was in the 90s. Our DD got married at 23.

Women had no means of making a living or owning a property and were infact seen as property. They passed in ownership from their father to their husband and in both houses were essentially domestic servants.

Unmarried fathers only got parental responsibility for their children if they were put on birth certificate 2003.

No 1990 was still a very hedonistic promiscuous time, no one gave a monkey"s who lived with who or what they did, 1970"s maybe depending where you lived there might be comments about "living in sin" or whatever.

Glad I lived in an area in the UK in the 80's where no one bothered about judging others who lived with a partner 🤣 All my friends were having sex and doing what they wanted to do. & loads were living with their boyfriends. A few got married but most didn't. I also think you can get married at what ever age it suits you & have whatever type of wedding that makes you happy.

"For women they had to be married to get a bank account or mortgage."

That changed in 1975.

Not in the 90s or even the 80s. Probably not even in the 70s.

I misread as 1900.

In 1990 though it had been less than a generation from women being allowed their own bank accounts etc. Takes a while for the misogyny to get ironed out

No need to be rude. I am telling you what it was like for me and how my family viewed it.

Not in the 1990s though.

Also, working class womem have always earned their own livjngs and always needed to. For hundreds of years.

In 1990?

1890"s maybe.

No I know, I was around in 1990 😂 I just don't have my reading glasses on and read as 1900

I was 27 when I got married and seemed to be the norm.. now divorced at 39 and have been to 6 weddings this year (first time) of people my own age!

I was living with my girlfriend in 1980, when we were 18. 😀 We didn't give a hoot what anyone said, and tbh nobody really said anything.

Ha ha fair enough 🤣

Not rubbish at all, very much frowned upon in my experience.

There's no need to be rude because your experience is different to mine.

This has never been true in England.

even in medieval times women could be a femme sole and trade and act in their own name legally.

the idea that women had no way of making a living in the 1990s is just mind boggling. I was on a grad scheme then, my mum worked as a teacher for most of her life.

Lots mentioning at uni but that was only a small percentage of us. We weren’t the norm.
The norm was to leave school at 16 and work full time and most likely live at home.