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.

No of course it wasn’t. Whoever said that doesn’t really remember 1990. Absurd. Everyone I knew in 1990 was living with someone!

No, but a lot would have still be influenced by wanting the approval or to avoid the disapproval of their families.

Another chipping in to say that women had bank accounts in the 1980s (and quite a bit before, I think, I did in 1979) I was living with my partner later DH in 1988 and noone turned a hair.
I do think there is some mix up between decades going on.

"The OP asked about 1990, not 1909! Of course a woman could have her own bank account and mortgage in 1990! We were even allowed out after dark on our own!
I was 20 in 1990 and I don’t recognise the OP’s scenario from my own life - one of my uni friends married just after we graduated but she was very much a minority. A work friend married at about 26 and again, hers was the first of our cohort. All of my other friends married late 20s to mid-30s, like me. We all lived with our partners before marrying. About a third of my school and uni friends didn’t marry at all but stayed living together."

@KnitOneSlipOneKnitOnePassSlippedStitchOver - totally agree. I turned 21 in 1990 and my experience and that of my friends was very like what you describe. Most of us didn't start settling down until late 20s/30s and nearly all of us lived with our partners before marrying them (we did actually all eventually get round to marriage but I was in my early 40s and we already had 2 DCs by the time we got round to it...).

I’m laughing at the notion that pre marital sex was frowned upon in the 1990s. The decade of More magazine and position of the fortnight…

My friendship group all married late 90s in their early- mid 20s. Living together before marriage was still frowned upon by all our parents generation. I only know of one couple who moved in together at that time, and there was "talk" in the golf club!!!!

I hadn’t really thought about it, but I got married at just turned 26 in 2019 and bar a couple of friends who got married younger, we were one of the first - which may have seemed old a good few years ago!

24 isn’t that young.

i got married at 23 (& a half) met at 19, graduated at 21, house bought at 22 then married a year later & had my first baby at 25. Married nearly 19 years.

We called it 'living in sin' as a joke...

I think this is probably a class thing. In my WC community, where most people started work at 16yo, where teenage pregnancies happened a lot and hardly anyone went to Uni, people got married to live together, and couples who got "caught" were expected to marry before baby arrived. Single mothers were very much stigmatised.

Perhaps it was different in a middle class world where people had gone away from home to university.

Absolutely - because in those days being pregnant outside of wedlock was very shameful - it was still the time of forced adoptions.

This is a very weird thread.

I was at university in the early 90s and plenty of couples were living together. It most definitely wasn't unusual. Couples may have got married younger, on average, but they quite often lived together first. None of my friends who had been to university married until they were at least late 20s, but I'd say 30s was more usual. I'd guess that those who didn't go married younger. I had my children in the early 2000s without being married and that definitely wasn't unusual. Most other parents were about my age too.

One thing I notice with younger women at work, is that they tend to get married younger (mid-late 20s) than my age group did and also have massive weddings!

Not in the 90s!

Was your average pearl clutching grandma reading More though?

She was probably reading Women's Weekly and frowning at living in sin.

Amongst our contemporaries it might have been ok, but there was definitely disapproval from an older generation at a time when many people were more fearful of upsetting the auntie mafia.

I got married for the first time when I was 30, in 1989. Some of the previous comments here have me laughing - it was perfectly normal to live with your partner before marriage in the 80s. I first lived with a partner in 1977, and no one batted an eye.

My parents, on the other hand, got married in the early 50s when they were in their early 20s - before the pill it was risky for women to have sex outside of marriage. I think that's what made the most significant difference to marriage age.

No one is saying that there is anything 'funny' about it. The OP is just commenting on a seeming societal change in marriage age to prompt discussion.

It was the 1990s, not the 1950s! Having sex before marriage and moving in together was pretty normal, like it is now. I certainly did as did all my friends!

I got married as soon as I graduated. I knew I wanted to be with him for the rest of my life so why not. I also thought I’d look good in the photos - I do.

I lived with partners starting from 1994, it was perfectly normal.

Not really, apart from your DGM, in my case!!

We didn’t get married until 28 because it took us ages to save up. We paid for our wedding ourselves. Quite a few friends married at 23/24/25 because parents helped out and they felt ready.

I fell in love and married at 23 (engaged at 22) against my late mother’s wishes. We have just celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary 🍾

Money.
Getting away from parents.

When do you think we are talking about?

Did you live in a big city?

fwiw I married young but people saying marriage at a young age caused them to be financially free now is ridiculous. The price of houses in the 1990s and salaries that could easily afford these houses are the reason for that. My parents earned in the high 20s / 30s (including bonus) each in the 90s and bought a house for £80k that is now worth x4/5 that. I earn double what they did yet definitely couldn’t get a mortgage on their house (without a hefty deposit!)