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.

People lived together in the early 90s with no judgment. Re women with a bank account and mortgage this was more like the 70s not the 90s.

I got married at 23 in 2016. We actually bought a house in the May and then got married in July. My DH was 23 also & both at the very beginning of our careers.

We paid for the house & wedding ourselves. Both modest in size but we absolutely loved them both and felt extremely lucky. Had our first DC at 27 and last at 31. All planned around our careers/house moves and health situations (again exceptionally lucky)

I will say I don’t think social media played a part in any of our choices. I think people buy into the pressure & expectations of the internet to have these huge affairs. I don’t recall 2016 being as Social media obsessed as it is now. For example we didn’t have three wedding dresses or four different variations of stag/hen dos.

Ten years, three kids and two house moves later (many job promotions) and we are still happy in our own little bubble.

I got married age 21 in the late 80s. It’s what you did. None of my friends lived together.

I feel I must have lived on a different planet to many posters on here.
I went to uni in 1972; the first thing we all did in Freshers week was sort out current accounts at the banks on campus and then we had lectures on STIs. (Antibiotics were available and HIV didn’t exist then so we were fortunate). We could get the pill if we said we were in a steady relationship and most of us were at it like rabbits. My parents were appalled about people ‘living in sin’ but they were staunch Catholics - most other people didn’t care.

Same - I was at uni and in my twenties in the 90s. I had a few long term boyfriends, a few of whom I lived with, and I definitely never felt frowned upon! My boyfriends also came to stay with me at my parents' house, even though they were pretty old fashioned. It was certainly not unusual at all to live with your boyfriend in my circles.

Okay so thinking about it some more.... we lived together with boyfriends in our droves in the 1990s, and there was a lot of casual sex as well.
Some people's parents were totally cool, some were more uptight and conservative, and obviously the older the demographic, the more potentially disapproving.
But for actual Gen X, we were probably about the most sexually permissive and enthusiastic generation ever.

It really wasn’t….

We are talking about 1990, not 1960!

No, but co-habitation was. My parents definitely frowned upon it. They still think a woman (if the less wealthy of the couple) is a fool for co-habiting without a wedding date.

Definitely not in the early 90s where I lived and nobody called it ‘living in sin’ unless they were joking.

The mid 70s were also the first time girls could be given oral contraceptives under the age of 16 without informing your parents - before then contraception was a matter of hit and miss.

Unmarried pregnancy was very frowned upon, and viewed as “ruining your life” and bringing shame on your family. Those views on sex and pregnancy certainly influenced young marriage.

As the freedom from the risk of pregnancy began to be taken for granted, so came the opportunity for young women to start challenging the “glass ceiling” that held women back from careers in areas which previously might have been viewed as for men only.

Finally women could continue working for as long as they wished, free of the fear of pregnancy and having to devote their lives to the family and home as had been previously expected.

It was wonderful to have that freedom, only equalled by passing your driving test! Our crazy times in the early Eighties of being young, free and single came to a shuddering halt with the arrival of AIDS. That you could die as the result of unprotected sex - and it was very much flagged up as a risk for both sexes - stopped that liberal indulgence that we’d so enjoyed. And once again it seemed there always was a price to pay somehow for thinking you could have it all.

We're talking about the 1990s, here. Of course women had bank accounts and mortgages.

I had my first current account aged 15 in 1983. Granted marital rape was still legal though….make of that what you will.

Reading through this thread, there seems to be little understanding or regional/local/societal/class variations.
we all have our own memories of this time. I can categorically state that none of my contemporaries lived together before marriage. Shagging in cars and anywhere else was rife.
boyfriend/girlfriends would absolutely be in separate bedrooms .

but friends in different areas had different experiences.

girls at school who got pregnant in the late 80s would still give the baby up for adoption which is unthinkable now.

Not in my world it wasn't. In fact it wasn't even in the 1980s.

I got married at 23, that was in the noughties. We'd been living together, buying a house for 3 years. It didn't feel too young at the time. Felt totally normal and the next step.

My parents, in the 1960's were (according to my mother) virgins until their wedding night and didn't move in together until after the honeymoon, they were also in their early 20's. Conversely an Aunt cohabited with her eventual husband before getting married, and that was seen as quite scandalous.

This threads very interesting as my mum was so heavily involved in the campaign to open up banking to more women..

She's took a case to the high court, won and lots of women benefited. I think she'd be a bit sad to hear so many women saying that it wasnt needed as they easily had an account so therefore all women could eaaily have accounts.

Yes many women had accounts but the banks could and very often did discriminate. Whilst they might have liked university students they were less keen on single mums for instance or low paid work thst more women did. They put more barriers up for women than men, asked more questions, women often needed permission or a guarantor, especially if you needed a cheque book, they could even offer less preferential interst rates, refuse credit when they would give a man credit with thst income.

Obviously this is pre 75

I think NI was particularly conservative

@RafaFan that tv show is a good example. The whole premise was they were a modern couple but relatives disapproved, when are you getting married type jokes.

They also used to die about 10+ years younger….

In line what others are saying, I know people who married on the younger side in the 80s, 90s, and 00s due to pregnancy. Some of this was shotgun/religious wedding pressure, some because they were in love and wanted to get married either before the baby was born or soon afterwards. I also know some where that was the best option to getting away from bad home situations, or simply made the choice because they wanted to do so. When I married young during that time, I had people outright ask me if pregnancy or home issues were part of the situation.

Costs and wedding expectations also plays a part. I know young adults who are getting engaged in their early/mid-twenties, but aren't getting married and don't plan to for several years because of the idea that weddings are so expensive and wanting to have solid careers, buy a house, and so on first. With costs rising as they are, it's not surprising, it's similar to a lot of historical patterns, even if it's risen at a faster rate than we've typically seen.

I think another big part of the social shift - marriage becoming optional for couples and for having children in many communities has over the last few decades moved marriage to being a capstone. People are still happy being a young struggling cohabitating couple building a life together, but marriage for many of the young people I know is left until they feel they've made it enough. Even the very devout ones I know who don't cohabitate, where parents are heavily involved in choosing potential partners, I still hear it discussed like a capstone after many other milestones/life events.

I recall it was unusual / commented on to live together in the early / mid 1990s

Or they left school, got a job and moved in to a house share and had as much fun as the blokes were having. I don’t recognise some of these recollections from the late 80’s/early 90’s. Yeah it was still very sexist in the workplace and some men never change, but as a woman I had more freedom to do my own thing than my mums generation and arguably more than many women now as we seem to be going backwards with women’s rights.

Today young people want to travel, have fun and build their careers before they marry. In any event buying somewhere to live is very expensive.
In the 50's, when my parents married you might be able to afford a holiday in Cornwall or Wales but that was about it. There wasn't lot to do except for local events and getting married was your key to more independent living. Don't forget you would probably have left school at 15 so by the time you were 22 you would have been out in the world, though probably living with parents for quite a few years. I'm 70 and had a modern upbringing with university followed by a legal career, I got married at 28, which was viewed as very old. Many of my friends met their husbands at university, and married soon after graduation. Housing was relatively cheap - I paid just over £23,000 for my house in Walthamstow - and most of my friends who married young wanted children as soon as possible.

Yes.
I g.ot married in 1987 and there was still a lot of stigma attached. My parents would let me and dp share a bed in their house until we were married.