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.

Yes. I was in my 20s then, I had several friends who couldn't admit to their parents that they were living with their partners

Having lost babies and been told by a gynae it is better to have them young, I'd guess that's a reason, plus in some ways it's easier-while I know some great older parents, they do say they found it easier when they were younger with their first kids. Plus you're more likely to have grandparents alive if you're under 25, and there's a lot of people who think if you're going to marry, you want to do it when you're under 30. No shade on people in their 60s who do, two women at my work did and it was amazing, one of the happiest weddings I've seen (they couldn't have married when they were under 30 though).
A lot of young people would like to get married but it's stacked against them now. Am sure they'd prefer it to be stuck at their parents' at 30. Don't see the point in waiting because "people mature and change", because while that is true, we change throughout our lives, not just in our twenties. Kind of wish I'd done things earlier, so family members I've lost could have seen us married and our kids.

I’m 45. When I started working, many colleagues about 5 years older than me had waited until they were married to move in together. Most people my age moved in together first (unless they were religious)

I’m 53, me, my sister and all my friends lived with partners before marriage

This is nonsense. .
I got my first bank account in 1971,aged 16 when I started work, and was buying drinks in pubs 2 years later with my female friends.

For myself, I was forced to leave home at 17 with no help from parents. Not even a lift to a bus station. Living together was absolutely frowned on and had real consequences for finding and keeping employment that was not sex work. Access to benefits was harder and violent crime rates were much higher.

As a lone homeless teenager, I was safer with a boyfriend and marriage was more secure socially and financially than being one of many girls & baby mamas a single man may have. Marriage meant exclusive/monogamy and financial support or at least a serious attempt at it. Living together was casual sex territory and god help you if you lived in a house share with several men, it was always assumed you were sleeping with at least one of them. (Editing to add if you were lesbian it was even more dangerous)

The difficulty fully supporting myself at 17 also meant I was much more mature at 20 than later generations have been. I started working at age 12 (under the table ofc as this different time also included a bit of old fashioned child labour never hurt anyone attitudes much like the smacking debates of today). School absences were not really paid that much attention to, which meant working was more feasible while a schoolgirl.

I married at 20.

Yes, you’ve reminded me. In 1997 I had friends who rented a two bedroom flat and when they parents came to visit they pretended they were in separate rooms.

It was definitely frowned on. I was the first person on either side of my family to live with my DP without being married - that was 2002. My mother was not impressed even then.
In the 80's most people left school after O levels at 16 and got a job.
I think we were seen as adults much sooner than today's young adults, with many more now staying in education for 5 years longer.
My parents got married at 21. Both had been earning from age 16,and also waited to have sex until marriage.

In 1990?

I always remember that in keeping up appearances hyacinth is scandalized that Elizabeth's daughter lives with her boyfriend at uni 😁

1989 aged 23. Been in the workplace, lived away from my parents, completely financially independent for 4 years. We had been together 4 years with a couple of breaks. He stayed at mine and I at his, no stigma about sex before marriage ( in Kent). It seemed the next logical step to get married. Certainly no-one in our peer group or at work or older friends and family or either of us had any inclination that we were too young. It just wasn’t a consideration.

It was 1987 Anne Diamond made headlines for being Britain’s most famous unmarried mum. It was felt being pregnant and popular breakfast tv show was incompatible.
Not denying young people were having sex but there was a lot of fudging and pretending so older relatives weren’t upset.
I lived with boyfriend (now dh) my postgraduate year and pretended to his mum we didn’t and my mum told relatives I was sharing with a friend. Neither family particularly religious.

I got married in 2006 when I was 21. I never went to university, we both had good well paid jobs, had bought our house and our dream was to spend all our free time travelling and have a child that we could take with us. We loved each other then and we love each other now coming up to our 20th wedding anniversary. Other than shagging other people what exactly did marrying young prevent us from doing?

Most of my friends weren’t either. My parents were the exception rather than the rule in my social circle because they didn’t have an issue with it. FIL still doesn’t know that I stayed over with DH at their family home before we were married. Even when we lived together, we couldn’t officially share a room at DH’s house until we were married. And that was in the early 00s.

Rubbish. I was married in 1973. We lived together before we were married, as did most of our friends. Where do people today get these ideas? The 1960s was when the contraceptive pill came out and everyone I knew were at it like rabbits.

Im 8 years older than you and i know loads of people my age and older who lived together before getting married

Aberdeen had 3 men only bars in the early 70s Freelands,The Bridge bar and the Grill.
There was a protest at the Grill so women could get served
To this day the Bridge bar doesn't have a ladies toilet

People had got married in their early 20s for generations, centuries - it does take time for social norms to change.

It was different times, also, living together was still a bit judged in those days.
in those days?😂
The 1990s??
I can assure you I recall no stigma at all attaching to cohabitation in Britain then.

I was living with my bf on 1984. I was 19 and we had been together since I was 15 and he was 17. We broke up when I was 21 and live with my next bf when I was 25. He became my Dh and we are still together.
No stigma at all even in the 80s for a many communities

Rubbish, me and my mates were all sexually active in our late teens in the early 80's and it was normal. Lots of my mates lived with their partners and it was jokingly referred to as living in sin. It wasn't looked down upon except for the puritanical likes of Mary Whitehouse!

We holidayed with our boyfriends and I would say we were the first generation who could do this without being considered morally lose. And many of my friends married in their late teens/early 20's as that was what our parents had done. But things were changing. Being a single mum was still slightly frowned upon but it was more widely acceptable.

Its true to say that my Mums (working class) generation couldn't get a mortgage without a male guarantor until the mid 70's. In fact when my parents divorced and split the equity form the sale of our home 50/50, my Dad was legally required to sign as guarantor for my mums mortgage which was very demeaning for her.

Sex

With respect, It's not nonsense.

The Sex Discrimination Act in 1975 gave women in the UK the independent legal right to open a bank account, apply for a credit card, or take out a loan without needing a husband's or father's permission.

Before then it was a bank manager was well within their rights to ask for a male guarantor, husband, father, or relative to co-sign or provide permission for women to access credit, get mortgages, or manage certain financial transactions.

Not all bank managers did - but they could within law.

Same with pubs. I too was happily drinking in pubs before 1982 but if the landlord chose not to serve you because you were a woman, that was that. The case that changed it was brought in 1982 by Anna Coote and Tess Gill after they were refused service at the El Vino bar in London. The landlord had told them he would only serve them if they sat at a table, not at the bar.

Just because your experience was different (as was mine) it doesn't make it nonsense.

People forget how much has changed.

I was at uni in the mid nineties.

it was a time of lots of drinking, plentiful drugs and much clubbing and casual sex.

i am WILDLY amused by the idea that people married to have sex in the 1990s.

My grandparents were Elders in the Church of Scotland, so yes very conservative!! Even after we married we weren't allowed to share a bedroom in their house and had to stay in a b&b!

I totally agree, in the early 80's it was quite acceptable to be having a sexual relationship prior to marriage. I think perhaps the Jones generation were the first to be able to do that openly in the mainstream.