Cultural differences around the age of getting married

[nickymanchester]

I just had a very interesting chat with my DH where he was telling me some of the things that his work colleagues had been telling him about what the expectations of marriage are where they are located.

I just had no idea that there were such differences. Am I naive to not have realised that these attitudes still exist?

By way of background, DH works for a large engineering company that have operations throughout the world and he was talking to some colleagues in the USA (specifically in the southeast US - that is North & South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi etc).

One colleague just mentioned that his daughter, who is in the final year of university, had just got married. My DH expressed surprise about that, with her being so young and still studying, but he said that this was quite normal in that part of the world.

Apparently their zoom meeting then got side tracked into a discussion on this and a couple of them said that in the Southeast USA, there still seems to be familial/societal pressure for girls to be married by the time they graduate college.

Another colleague also mentioned that his daughter had got married in the summer before her last year of college as well and since then had attended over 25 weddings of friends in similar situations over the last two years.

Another colleague, who is based in the midwest (places like Nebraska, Kansas etc) said it was a similar situation there with loads of weddings in the first year or two after college.

Perhaps I should have put this in AIBU, but AIBU to be surprised that there is still this sort of pressure or expectation in a western country in the 21st century?

Elsewhere in the US, things are obviously very different (or, at least, I presume they are) as the US Census Bureau says that the median age for first marriage for a woman is 27.9.

The average age for first marriage for a woman in the UK is 32.

Now, obviously, a lot fewer people are actually getting married these days and there is less pressure on people to get married.

However, for there to be a four year difference in age of first marriage between the UK and the US shows that there are some real cultural differences.

It's even more stark when you look at individual states. In many of the states in the southeast and midwest the median age of first marriage for a woman is 25 or 26.

Whereas in places like New York or Washington it is about 30 - a lot closer to the UK figure.

When my DH mentioned this conversation to me I didn't think much about it, but the fact that the age of first marriage in those states is so much lower than in the UK (and other parts of the US) show that, yes, this is actually still a thing in those parts of the US - an expectation that women are to be married off as soon as is reasonable.

Are we (or, at least, some Americans) still living in a world like that?

That's what I was thinking. The more m/c friends of mine tend to the traditional marriage before kids. But so many people (esp those who have kids young) near me dont have the (financial/legal) protection of marriage. Where "saving for a wedding" or "not bothering about being married" has become more normalised I don't see that as a good thing at all.

I don't think it's a bad think but I thank God I didn't get married to the guys I was with in my late teens/early 20s!
#1 Was ok but a bit annoying and was my first serious boyfriend, I would not have been happy with him.
#2 (who tried to convince me to ttc) was abusive and a generally awful person. I met DH at 25 But could have settled down earlier with him if we had met earlier.

Marriage shouldn’t be synonymous with a loss of independence.

Divorce rate in the US is about 50%, and I'd say divorce is easier to obtain there. It varies by state, but I find the UK system, which I think is still lacking a reasonable no-fault option, really backwards TBH. That said, I'm not an expert in US divorce law and have only been through the one UK divorce myself!

I live in northern England, not posh by any means

I got married at 19, had children when I was aged 19, 22, 25. I definitely would not want children when I was any older than that, it was hard work when I was young there is no way I could have managed with young children when I was older.

Been married 34 years. I have no religion so that was not a factor. I think most of the people I know here got married very young.

If anyone's interested, I listened to a good podcast with the historian Carol Dyhouse recently where she explained they marriage age is one of those things (like lots of things in history) which we expect to move in a linear way across time - i.e. people have got married later, but actually there was a brief period post war where for a variety of reasons people tended to marry very young and this was a bit of a blip.

Obviously there are massive class and regional variations in the UK in marriage age. Actually I never really wanted to get married and changed my mind in my early 30s, partly as a result of reading a lot of mumsnet. @iamcracking I get that it's possible to have your children early and do things independently in your 50s, but for my friends starting out as parents in their early 30s means 10 years of socialising with friends, holidays, high disposable income and generally just a good life which we wouldn't have given up. It depends on your social group as well - it's very hard to have young children I imagine if literally none of your friends have them and social opportunities are really limited.

I'm not really that tired - as I've got older I've slept less, not more!

In Georgia, my native state, there is a tendency to marry right after college.

This depends on what you mean by "right after." The average age for first time marriage in Georgia is 27.4 for women and 29.1 for men. Those ages are not "right out of college." Of course being averages, that does mean that some people are marrying younger, but it also means that quite a few are going to be in their 30s and older.

I'm also from Georgia. The coastal region. I'm there right now. Nice to see a fellow Georgian on MN.

I think my cousin and his wife are fairly typical. They both graduated from the University of Georgia at the age of 22, got married at the age of 26, and at the age of 28 still do not have children as they are both focused on their careers at present. They also just recently bought their first house. They are both church members, but not fundamentalist, and I don't think religion really had anything to do with their decision to marry when they did.

About the "right after college" I think if you look at stats that can be skewed.

Lots of people who don't do a four year type of degree but instead go into a trade will marry a little earlier, so that can bring the number down.

I moved last year from a working class urban area. It was interesting to see who made offers to buy our house - it would have been considered a starter home by university grads but more working class families tend to move into the homes for 30 years or more. Anyway, there were two offers by unmarried men under 25, both working and making good money in trades. University students aren't anywhere near buying a house at that age.

Lots of posters saying it's a non issue.

From my post earlier

'
EG
'The youngest wedded were three 10-year-old girls in Tennessee who married men aged 24, 25 and 31 in 2001. The youngest groom was an 11-year-old who married a 27-year-old woman in the same state in 2006.'

'Children as young as 12 were granted marriage licences in Alaska, Louisiana and South Carolina, while 11 other states allowed 13-year-olds to wed.

More than 1,000 children aged 14 or under were granted marriage licences.'

'A 14-year-old girl married a 74-year-old man in Alabama, while a 17-year-old wed a 65-year-old groom in Idaho.''

I think that is an issue.

The link to the report is in my earlier post.

The 17 yo one could happen here i of course

I'm surprised that posters aren't surprised or anything by this. I was very surprised when I learned about it.

Thank you for finding all that specific information, NiceGerbil. It is very shocking that there are so many seriously under age.
If religion sanctions it somehow, that is wrong too. It is strange to think this can happen in modern America where, my guess is, people would think it terribly wrong when they hear of the same thing (children being married off) happening in foreign countries with other religions.

@BlackForestCake

In the UK posh people seem to get married younger than the rest of us. It seems quite the thing in some circles to graduate from university and then immediately get married.

You can't get much posher than the royal family, and most of them - or at least the current generation who are marrying at the moment!- seem to marry and have children in their late 20s and 30s.

@NiceGerbil

Lots of posters saying it's a non issue.

From my post earlier

'
EG
'The youngest wedded were three 10-year-old girls in Tennessee who married men aged 24, 25 and 31 in 2001. The youngest groom was an 11-year-old who married a 27-year-old woman in the same state in 2006.'

'Children as young as 12 were granted marriage licences in Alaska, Louisiana and South Carolina, while 11 other states allowed 13-year-olds to wed.

More than 1,000 children aged 14 or under were granted marriage licences.'

'A 14-year-old girl married a 74-year-old man in Alabama, while a 17-year-old wed a 65-year-old groom in Idaho.''

I think that is an issue.

There’s a big difference between what you’re describing here and 20-25 year olds getting married to people of a similar age.

@NiceGerbil

The 17 yo one could happen here i of course

I'm surprised that posters aren't surprised or anything by this. I was very surprised when I learned about it.

Maybe people knew this happened before your posts. But it's not what the OP is about. These kind of instances aren't part of the general culture in the way the OP means, they are highly controversial.

I would say that child marriage being legal in some states was a pretty massive culture difference personally..

If you really want to feel sick, it used to be until fairly recently (and I'm not sure if it still is) legal for a rapist to marry his victim (even if they were a child) to avoid prosecution in the USA.

www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/opinion/sunday/child-marriage-delaware.html (obviously distressing content). Nothing to do with getting married at 21, of course.

They still can I think.

Yeah, the OP was not talking about child marriage which is pretty clear if you read the OP.

Most of the laws in the US that have fairly young ages for marriage are based on older laws, and they are controversial on the occasions when it happens today. Like, tv movie controversial, so no, not a widespread cultural difference. The Op's husband's colleagues are not getting married at 13 or even 17.

As far as the laws themselves, it's weird they've never been changed, but not so weird they exist - marriage laws in most places tend to skew towards when fertility emerges and the need for accommodating pregnancies comes into the picture. It was in the same in the UK at one time. Arguably we aren't really more enlightened now, just have more options to control and deal with sexually active young people and pregnancies.

Agree with SmokedDuck (phone just tried to correct that to "smoked fuck," apologies....). Those laws obviously need to change, but I don't think that's what the OP was talking about and people making a free choice to get married in their 20s is a very different matter.

Many locations in the US have weird old laws (I remember when South Carolina finally overturned laws against interracial marriage, I think around 2000?). They are very rarely used, so I have to admit I haven't been aware of child marriage there before (aside from Jerry Lee Lewis) as my energy was focused on protecting abortion rights and lobbying for same-sex marriage. As in any society, there are many improvements yet to be made.

Interracial marriage has been legal in all states since 1967 when the Supreme Court decided Loving v. Virginia (by the way, the best named court case in US history).

South Carolina and some other states left such laws on the books for some years, but they were unenforceable after 1967.

Ooh thanks Seneca. Would be interesting to see in future years if the child marriage statutes could have a federal-level challenge.

I just remember noticing the results of the vote (I was living in Texas at the time) and a disturbingly high number of people voted NOT to do away with that law...

I married at 20, our eldest married at 21. My mum was 21. We all are university educated with careers.
It’s the norm where we are from (well we are a little older maybe) and it seems the young here in the community have followed. I’m not sure it’s so much a pressure, but it’s made easy. Big family networks, on tap childcare whilst studying or working. There’s not the worry of having to sort out a house or funds before children, often there’s multi generational living. I didn’t have to struggle balancing nursery drop offs or the anxiety of being a super mum who could do it all like I saw friends doing. Maybe I’d have been less impulsive if I did?
My niece was only just turning 18 at marriage/ first child, but she seems happy with a job and good supportive and 4 years on has planned another.
I honestly didn’t feel pressure. We were young and a little reckless and everyone was happy for us, no doubts were really cast from family.
With our eldest she was happy, he was very pleasant so I had no urge to stop her. I’ve been genuinely happy. I’ve still travelled, worked, studied and I’ve loved doing it with children.
I completely understand it shouldn’t be forced and to some it’s a nightmare. However when you are surrounded by a community and family that support it it can be fun.
Only as I got older, with my younger children, have I really met a wider circle of mind who got married a bit older than I did. It’s different, but I’m not jealous, nor do I think it’s bad.
Total ramble I know, just sharing my own experience and no more!

The problem with child marriage and federal laws is that marriage is one of the matters that is constitutionally left to the states. Loving v. Virginia involved another part of the Constitution so that gave grounds for a ruling with national application.

More states are passing laws against child marriage. But if you want to compare to the UK; 16 year olds can marry without parental consent in Scotland; I don't think any state in the US allows 16 year olds to marry without parental or judicial consent. The problem is that a few states allow people under the age of 16 to marry.

It can be a good thing to marry at that age. I was 21 (in the UK). It meant we built up a family and both worked full time and by 31 instead of years wasted going out drunk I had developed a great career, had lovely children, bought a house etc (and not slept around). What is not to like in that? My neighbour married at 19.

On the other issue of age of marriage (and consent) I think England has it about right - sex at 16 and marriage at 16 only with the consent of the parents. That does not stop some teenagers having sex before 16 in England but it does help to have a reasonable age/rule about it.