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.

That's a valid point. When you are younger you tend to more flexible and less " set in you ways"

I only ever had older boyfriends when I was at school and was never interested in boys my own age. The only time I ever went out with a boy who was the same age was when my mum set me up with the paper boy. We had a horrible night out - he was incredibly immature and it was the closest I ever came to being raped. Thankfully I managed to knee him in the balls and screamed loudly enough for half the people in the church hall to come running out. I always made a conscious decision about who I went out with and there was never the slightest suggestion of grooming or abuse by any boyfriend I had - I knew exactly what I was doing. I looked much older than my age and was always able to get into pubs and bars without being questioned from when I first turned 14, and I usually lied about my age when I met a new boyfriend. I would never have gone out with anyone younger than 18 and only ever had one boyfriend who was still at school.

another poster mentioned above that people who married younger in the 1980s tended to stay together more often amd I think that’s because we generally took marriage much more seriously than some people do now, and in my case, and virtually all of our friends, marriage meant that you were going to spend the rest of your lives together. It was harder to get divorced then, and people knew that they had to be fairly certain that they were committing to the right person.

Not everyone had houses and babies just because they got married. When my parents got married ( age20 and 27) they live in 2 rooms in a shared house for years. Even when I was born 5 years later we had the bottom half of a house.

The buying house and mortgage etc came later

Pre-marital sex wasn't invented in the 1960s either.

It always went on.

People forget about different generations alive at the time though. In 1990 a lot of WW2 veterans were still around and even those who had lived through two wars. War babies were only in their middle years and boomers on the younger side.

Gen X coming through at the time may have had more socially relaxed ideas but older generations may have felt very differently.

Like in the 1960s, it wasn't swinging for my parents as they were already married and in a working class community in Manchester not in an arty set in London.

There was a lot more homophobia and endemic sexism in the 1990s, it was rife. People forget so quickly how it was. I largely remember the massive pearl clutching about young people and raves and drugs.

Where are you getting your information from? We are talking about 1990 not 1920 😂

See my post above. Attitudes varied. Were you there at the time?

I think it was swinging for my parents and their friends by the 60s and they were northerners.

Yes! I was an adult.

Jesus Christ, this is ridiculous. This was not the prevailing social attitude in 1990! And yes I was there.

Were they married though? My parents got married in 1962 and were both working full time in factories so it was very different from someone say, still in education or single.

You've just unlocked a memory. In the early 2000s when staying for the weekend at my (uptight and quite religious) late mils she would make us sleep in separate rooms irrespective of the fact we'd lived together for years and were in our early 30s.
She didn't seem to consider that just her presence was a nature contraceptive 😂

I'm not sure how she would have coped if we'd not got married before having children !!!

They were married mid 60s. Both graduates.

I got married in 1999 first time round age 26. Most of my friends/cousins were around the same age. We did live together and bought a house before we were engaged. It was quite unusual then to get married in early twenties, though most of our parents did so (in order to have sex, seems to be the general assumption)

In what demographic did 1 in 4 people have HIV? Was it even that high in the gay male community?

And I was at Uni 1990 - 95 and don’t remember any of these scare mongering campaigns. Yes safe sex was a thing as we knew how HIV was transmitted and free condoms were widely available but people really are just making things up on this thread.

My parents got pressured into marrying in 1993 because they were "living in sin" and depended on money from my grandparents. Working class northerner. I really did feel the stigma of being from a divorced family, only kid in primary school apparently and it was brought up all the time!

I was the first in my family to go to uni. I do think that's somewhat relevant.

The whole post is nonsense. I remember the 80s and 90s well and it was nothing like that.

Well, for starters being students and even being a few years younger would mean they experienced things differently from someone who left school at sixteen, went to work then got married in their early 20s. My inlaws were slightly younger and both went to university where they met and there was quite a difference in how they experienced the 1960s between them and my parents.

It was very much less liberal than now. Society was not made up of people who were exactly the same age as you and had exactly the same ideas as you.

Same. Why people are making all this up I have no idea, but they are.

Sexual health clinics were grim and dirty, you would be treated like a sex worker.

I went to one in 1984. It wasn’t grim or dirty and I was treated very kindly.

Society is never made up of people the exact same age. That’s how societies work

Exactly. It's not made up of people with the same views either! That's my point.

There were a huge number of older people very Conservative - big C and small c views about sex and relationships in the UK.

@EmeraldDreams73 Yes, and like you, I was one of the first of my friends to get married (one had married earlier that year), most people waited until late 20's/early 30's. We went to loads of weddings in 2003/4.

Children came afterwards in our 30's, and as I said upthread, I think that's one of the major social changes that's occurred. Having children first and then getting married is what's changed IMO.

I was aged 17 in 1990 and remember the decade well. You and many others are confusing the 1990s with the 1920s and are spouting absolute bullshit.