Men shouldn't get married before age 30...

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

... said a friend to me this weekend as yet another young couple in her family break up just a few years after they were being wished well with confetti and pledging eternal love. Sweeping, wine-fuelled and very sexist statement I'll grant you, but led to a really interesting conversation about the perils of settling down too young and the relative emotional maturity of men vs women. Being on the wrong end of a 'starter marriage' in the past I tend to agree but there you have it vipers. A controversial statement to be shot down or propped up at your leisure.

[CheerfulYank]

DH and I didn't discuss anything...we knew we wanted children at some point. That was pretty much it.

But then I found out I was pregnant so soon after our wedding and that decided many things for us. He needed a steady job, we decided we wanted to buy a house in a small town, etc. I don't know where we'd be or what we'd be doing if not for DS, honestly.

[Dahlen]

I don't know. While my natural inclination is to agree with you Cogito for exactly the same reasons (changed a lot in my 20s and outgrew my XH), I have noticed that the couples I know who are celebrating long happy marriages all got together in their late teens/early 20s. That would include my own parents.

I think that if you marry young, you either grow together or you grow apart. I also think you can influence which of those outcomes occurs. To do so requires a certain level of self-knowledge and maturity in both partners, but those things do not necessarily coincide with biological age even though it is more likely.

My own observations on life have led me to conclude that there are two types of marriage. There are those whose lives are defined by their marriage. They often married young and they build a life together. That's all they know and they are content with it. They are a unit.

Then there are marriages between people who have established their own lives and are fiercely protective of their identities. They are much pickier about who they will share that with and what compromises they will make. Assuming no major 'issues' this tends to make for a marriage with a lot of healthy boundaries and respect. It is an equal partnership between two distinct individuals. I see this in a lot of second marriages (the sort where people have learned from the first 'mistake' rather than being doomed to repeat it) or older marriages.

Between those two extremes, I seem to see a lot of conflict between what people want as individuals and what they desire as a relationship. In particular I see a lot of people in their late 20s/early 30s who have come out of one relationship and are experiencing a lot of dissatisfaction with their lives (maybe career has failed to take off or they have money worries, etc) and expect to find a solution and fulfilment through their relationship. Those sorts of marriages seem to fail quite a lot IME.

Ultimately, though, maturity can only take you so far. We all know people in their 50s who have the emotional depth of a 15-year-old when it comes to being in a relationship.

[Chandon]

Most of my friends are happily married to their first ( or second) boyfriends.

Splitting up every 2 or 3 years looking for someone better in your 20s is more " normal" but not sure it leads to better marriages.

It all depends on attitude imo, all marriages go through crap but some stay together as they fight for it. Others check out. This attitude is not dependent on age.

[missbopeep]

nooka might be a bit late to answer you now but I got the stats from the ONS page on divorce stats- search their website for divorce stats- and clicked on the stats for 2011. You have to scroll down the info then to find 'age at marriage/ divorce'. It doesn't hit you in the face :) you have to search!

I also copied and pasted the info on that page , which is why it doesn't include ages 20-30, as another poster asked, but it will be on their site if you search hard enough.

[missbopeep]

Surely the most basic and simple fact with this is that people change a lot during their early and mid 20s? If couples change together that's great- but often they outgrow each other.

And I do disagree with posters who say that men have a choice whether to be immature or emotionally juvenile! You only have to teach teenagers or undergrads to know that generally women in their late teens and early 20s tend to be much more mature- which usually starts with them hitting puberty 2 years before boys ( in general.)

Traditionally, women often married men 8-10 years older than themselves. ( Middle and Upper classes 18th and 19th century.) This was not simply to do with the men being established financially by then and able to provide, but also that men were 'expected' to sow their wild oats before settling down.

Of course much of that doesn't apply now BUT I do think that most men do lag behind in emotional maturity, and catch up late 20s - have seen this with my own DCs and their friends.

There will always be couples who marry young and have long and happy marriages. But you can't dismiss stats out of hand. It's great if you find 'the one' in your teens or early 20s and have a great 60 years together- but actually, the average age of marriage now is something like late 20s.

[susiey]

I disagree my DH husband and I married at 21 and 22 . Had our first child at 23 and 24 ( planned)

10 years later we now have 4dc and he is an amazing and very responsible and involved father and excellent DH.

That said his father died in his childhood and as a result he did grow up fast.

I totally think getting married and having kids younger has both disadvantages and advantages same with marrying and settling down later.

People are all different our life experience shapes us so its impossible to make such a general statement!

[Damnautocorrect]

I agree, I used to think it was 25 now I think it's 30

[ithaka]

The people I know best in life are me, my sister & my best friend. We all married before we were 30, to men younger than 30 - in fact, oddly enough, we are all older than our husbands!

Currently we have all been married between 20 - 25 years, plenty of children, losses & life changes in that time and the marriages are still going strong.

So in my closest circle - that statement is bollocks. DH & I were both 26 when me married (he is only 6 months younger than me), we met when we were 23. I believe we will be together until separated by death.

[parisandnewyork]

I don't necessarily agree; I think it depends quite a lot on your own personality and expectations. I come from a social circle/family where most relationships are established well before the age of 30, and almost all of them are still doing well, divorce is very rare amongst those I know.

I am a bit of a black sheep in that I married in my early 30s (considered late), but then I only met DH when he was 28. I dare say that if we'd met earlier, we probably would have married younger. He's always been a serious and responsible type, and certainly wasn't emotionally immature throughout his 20s, but just hadn't met the right person. I have never been a big partying type either. Neither of us fit the stereotypes of commitment-phobe young man or desperately keen woman, and tbh most of my friends don't either!

One advantage to marrying a bit later was that we were both well established in our careers, which meant we could buy a house as soon as we were married, and we can afford a good lifestyle with nice weekends away etc. Couples I know who have married younger have had to deal with poor quality rentals, struggle to get decent leisure time and pay for the basics, which puts a lot of stress on them.

[missbopeep]

I wonder why it is that so many posters here relate the question to their own experiences, rather than being a bit more philosophical about the question?

Several of us have said that there will always be couples who married young and think that is the best way, but sometimes to debate something you need to move outside your personal experience and that of close friends etc and think of the issue in wider terms.

[Chattymummyhere]

I don't think it's so much an age thing..

I think those that are now 50's+ where brought up when you got married then had children and never divorced

Where as the last 20/30 years has been a case of do what you want

If two mature in mind, same life plans etc people get married at 16 they will be much better together than two 40 year olds who are imature and marrying for the sake of it..

And as someone else mentioned the older people get the less they seem to even want to divorce even if their marriage is bad and dead in the water because what's the point? They just want company nothing more

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

" a bit more philosophical "

I think the philosophical point could be the dichotomy between the very modern concept of 'extended adolescence' as someone accurately put it up-thread vs the cave-man-style biological timetable of pair-bonding, fertility and so on.

(Dons flat cap and sucks thoughtfully on a pint of mild to elaborate)... when childhood stopped age 14 or 15 and ordinary people (rather than the Bertie Wooster set) were expected to grow up overnight, get a job, stop mucking about and knuckle down, the two would have overlapped relatively nicely. Nowadays, '50 is the new 40', 30 is the new 16 and, just when you think the whole grisly business of being a grown-up is left to people in their seventies, there's Jagger

[peteypiranha]

There are a lot of reasons I would hope my dcs dont wait until their 30s to marry. More chance of fertility problems, if they want children wont have a few carefree years of marriage before children come along, will have the stress of having to rush through the children with small gaps so more stress for their marriage, then if they do that more chance that the woman will quit work as wont be able to afford childcare for a couple of children at once, people are more set in their ways by 30 so it can be hard to adjust to marriage.

On top of this I am seeing a lot at the moment of people who havent got married by their 30s marrying any one at all as they are worried about their fertility.

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

Only your male DCs have to hold off until 30 peteyprianha ... the female ones will be able to handle the responsibility at a younger age. That's the proposal on the table.

[Aetae]

I think in addition to emotional maturity and a sense of self / independence there might be an element of peer pressure to it.

I know that as most people get older they care far less about what other people think, so I can see how younger people are more susceptible to marrying their serious boy/girlfriend at the time because that's what you do (relationship stages etc that kind of bollocks) so don't exercise fully free choice and therefore end up with the wrong person. I suppose men might be more prone to this than women as we're more societally conditioned to start dreaming about family and relationship permanence at a young age.

[peteypiranha]

I would never marry a man older than me. None of my peers seem to want to do that either, unless marrying for money.

I would be perfectly happy from age 18+ if our dcs got married.

[peteypiranha]

aetae - In your 30s there is peer pressure thats why a lot of people just end up marrying whoever is around at the time. I think if you marry younger then often its because you really love the person as its a much more rare thing to do and totally against what modern society expects.

[BangOn]

Not sure what magically happens to a man on the eve of his 30th birthday to make him marriage/fatherhood material? If that were true the relationships section wouldn't be chock full of tales of cheating, porn-addicted, soon to be divorced, men in their thirties & forties. Can't blame all this on their marrying to soon - they would probably behave like this at any age.

[cory]

I probably changed more between 30 and 45 than between 20 and 30. So should I not have been allowed to marry before 30 or should I have been made to wait until I was 46? And is it ok if you just live in sin?

To your feckless young man of 22, I raise you the spoiled bachelor of 40.

[CogitoErgoSometimes]

I agree that the initial statement was deliberately simplistic and therefore controversial. @bangon... Picking the age '30' was really a peg to hang the maturity hat on, if you will, rather than a strict cut-off.

[LittleSporksBigSpork]

You can find the numbers on the ONS website through a search of publications. The tables show that men are more likely to get divorced the older they are at marriage significantly (dropping after 45 due to fewer getting married then) while women's divorce rates decrease slightly as they get older.

So by the ONS stats, men should marry earlier and women should marry later though for women it has far less impact. Confirmation bias though tends to teach different things.

[missbopeep]

Cogito- I think I mentioned some of those points upthread about extended adolescence.

My parents married at 22 and 23 but each left school at 14, my dad was conscripted into the army, and by the age of 23 was more mature in many ways than youngsters nowadays.

However, even he says 23 was too young to be married. Don't forget either that for people of that generation, some people could only get regular sex if they were married and my parents say they were 'chaperoned' by their families until they tied the knot.

The over 50s now ( like me) often married young- the expectation on me, in a very working class part of the country, was that I'd be married at 21 to a long term boyfriend. Any woman who was still single at 25 was considered to be a lost cause.

But you need to remember that very few people- around 10%- went to uni, compared to 50% now. Some of my DCs friends have married young, but by and large they are all still single in their mid-late 20s.

[Leavenheath]

Obviously it's impossible to generalise about an entire sex because people are individuals and behind any set of statistics, there's an entire social and economic context missing.
Funnily enough though, in my circle the marriages that seem the happiest are the ones where the couples met and married in their early/mid twenties but delayed kids till their late twenties or early thirties. In my completely unscientific assessment based only on conversations we've all had, this is attributed to the individuals having had enough 'single time' for other relationships, then enough time as a couple and forging ahead with careers/travelling the world before making the lifestyle shift required to become parents. This was the 80s/90s though, when DH, me and most of our contemporaries went to uni at 18, lived alone or in flat shares afterwards and found it relatively easy to buy first houses on a 100% mortgage.

But one of the biggest factors seems to have been the initial chemistry between the couples, which has seen them through the trials and tribulations of family life and getting older. Whereas we've all known a lot of divorces or unhappy marriages in couples who left it later to marry and then had children soon after meeting or marrying. As a shorthand, these are best described as the 'settlers' whose clocks were ticking and after lots of unsuccessful relationships, decided to settle down with 'steady types' who would make good parents, if not lifelong lovers.

Because the social and economic context is so different now for our own kids than it was when we married in our twenties, DH and I have got an expectation that if they decide on marriage, they'll probably be older than we were, but might be about the same age as we were when we started having children. But they are all so different in terms of personality and maturity levels, who knows?