

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

(135 Posts)
CogitoErgoSometimes Sun 07-Jul-13 10:56:45


chickabilla Thu 11-Jul-13 09:31:55


chickabilla Thu 11-Jul-13 09:24:58


TheRealFellatio Thu 11-Jul-13 09:11:09








Cerisier Thu 11-Jul-13 00:31:32




BellEndTent Thu 11-Jul-13 00:14:22


Nornironmum Thu 11-Jul-13 00:09:39


Bumpstarter Wed 10-Jul-13 23:01:33



Weegiemum Wed 10-Jul-13 21:12:25

Well maybe we disprove the rule.


It works for some people - it's working well for us!

charleyturtle Wed 10-Jul-13 20:56:31



Leavenheath Mon 08-Jul-13 14:33:59




missbopeep Mon 08-Jul-13 14:11:38

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.

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.

CogitoErgoSometimes Mon 08-Jul-13 13:56:36

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.

cory Mon 08-Jul-13 13:46:17

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. grin

BangOn Mon 08-Jul-13 13:42:44

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.

peteypiranha Mon 08-Jul-13 13:40:38

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.

peteypiranha Mon 08-Jul-13 13:38:20

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.

Aetae Mon 08-Jul-13 13:35:49

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.

CogitoErgoSometimes Mon 08-Jul-13 13:32:12

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.

peteypiranha Mon 08-Jul-13 13:25:00

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 Mon 08-Jul-13 13:23:28

" 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 hmm

Chattymummyhere Mon 08-Jul-13 12:49:01

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

missbopeep Mon 08-Jul-13 11:13:18

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.

parisandnewyork Mon 08-Jul-13 11:03:50

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.

ithaka Mon 08-Jul-13 10:02:35

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.

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