In Defense of Marrying Young(ish)

There are so many advantages that are rarely, if ever, mentioned

Full disclosure: Our daughter is getting married next June. She and her fiancé will be 25 when they tie the knot. I personally think it’s a great age to get married, but of course I’m biased.

Another interesting tidbit is that I married for the first time at 23, and my then-husband and I were divorced four years later (no kids). You might assume I wouldn’t support marrying on the younger side due to this experience, but you’d be wrong.

Still, this is not an argument to suggest getting married young(ish) is right for everyone. It is an argument in favor of the reasons why doing so is not the mistake many people seem to think it is.

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It was the Boomer generation, originally, that ushered in the novel idea that marriage should come later in life, rather than be a goal or an achievement of young adult life. (Keep in mind Boomers also introduced divorce en masse, which is not unrelated.) Their message to young people—young women in particular—was to prioritize education, career, money and even travel over getting married and settling down. Subsequent generations quickly followed suit, and eventually a new narrative about marriage took hold.

It goes something like this: When you’re young, you need to take the time to figure out who you are, to “find yourself,” as they say. You need to finish all your schooling, no matter how many years it takes or how much debt you incur; you need to travel to get the wanderlust out of your system; and you need to get settled professionally and financially (as if the average person could possibly settle all that debt in time) prior to getting married. If you don’t do it this way, you’ll make a poor choice in a partner or wind up divorced.

There are so many potential problems with this plan.

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Marrying young(ish)—let’s define that first. It is true that marrying prior to age 22 is riskier than over age 22; and prior to age 25 should give one pause. But there is no “right” age to marry. There is only being wise with one’s decision and making sure you’re making it for the right reasons—and that can happen at any age. I didn’t do either when I married the first time, which is the reason that marriage failed.

There’s also this not-so-little nugget: It turns out that marrying young, without ever having lived together with a partner first, makes for some of the lowest divorce rates. “Waiting too long [to marry] has its downsides. It often means accumulating relationship baggage—including a list of exes from cohabiting unions—that can weigh down their marriage once they tie the knot,” write Brad Wilcox and Lyman Stone.

There’s also the fact that people mature at different rates for a whole host of reasons: personality, upbringing, culture, religion, family dynamics. As a result, some know what they want earlier than others. It is crucial, of course, that both partners are similar in this way. They should be clear on what they want, agree on where they’re headed, and make sure to take premarital classes prior to saying “I do.” (All things I didn’t do the first time around…)

One thing is indisputable: Whom we marry is the single most important decision we’ll ever make. If we agree on this point, what sense does it make to put this decision at the bottom of the list, as though it were an afterthought? As though it were only something to consider once we’ve accomplished an entire list of outside objectives?

Our twenties are a critical time for most of life’s major decisions, and our relationship choices can be at least as important (I would argue more important) than our choices in work. “The twenties are an inflection point,” writes Meg Jay in The Defining Decade, “a time when the experiences we have disproportionately influence the adult lives we will lead. Even a small shift can radically change where we end up in our thirties and beyond.”

It is my belief that Americans have de-prioritized marriage not because they don’t want to be married—research shows the opposite is true: Among adults ages 18 to 34, 69% of those who have never been married say they want to get married one day—but because so many of them have never seen or experienced a marriage that works.

Don’t forget that many young people are products of divorce. In addition, they receive constant negative messaging about marriage in the media and are told to put it off as long as possible, to stay focused on themselves and their careers. It’s okay to cohabit, they’re told. But marriage can wait.

A Dramatic Departure from the Past

This narrative has been so effective that as of this writing, fewer than one-in-five U.S. adults now believe marriage is essential to live a fulfilling life. A larger share (54%) say being married is important, just not essential. They do, however, view the pursuit of a career to be “essential” for a fulfilling life.

This is a dramatic departure from the past. For the first time in history, Americans value work over family.

And why wouldn’t this be the case? Half a century of feminist propaganda, coupled with rampant materialism, has flipped America’s priorities. The clear, but false, message is that the pursuit of money and career can fulfill us in a way marriage and family cannot. Relationships can fail, whereas work is a sure thing. Work is therefore a better return on your investment.

And so, unlike years past, young people (again, we’re talking about young women in particular, since they drive the boat when it comes to dating for marriage) began to put marriage out of their minds. They stayed focused on career and became proficient in learning how to live exclusively for themselves.

And this is supposed to better prepare them for marriage how exactly? Seems to me one would get very set in his or her ways. It’s much harder to combine two separate professional and financial lives than it is to start together from scratch.

Marriage is also crucial for growth and development. It demands responsibility and sacrifice, two things that are missing from a life lived alone. Which means the longer people wait to marry, the longer they take to grow up. That can’t be a good thing, and in fact it has turned out to not be. We now have a generation marinating in extended adolescence—and delayed marriage is a big reason why.

Another other problem with the “delay marriage” narrative is that it ignores that this message lands differently on women than it does on men. All too often, for women, marriage delayed is marriage foregone.

As uncomfortable as it may be, men, as a rule, become more—not less—marriageable with age since the older they get, the more financially settled they tend to become. When women become more financially sound it’s not a feather in their cap for marriage.

That’s because men and women aren’t looking for the same thing. Men still look for youth and fertility in a wife—they’re not focused on a woman’s bank account (if they are, watch out!)—whereas women look for security.

That women are now self-supporting doesn’t change this fact of female nature because once a woman becomes a mother, her priorities change—and her desire for security ramps up. If she’s unable to rely on her husband’s salary for a season, she’ll become a reluctant breadwinner mom—which will create resentment and undermine her marriage.

As a society, we must stop pretending that delayed marriage doesn’t affect women differently than it does men. Not only do women have a harder time finding a husband later on, they face the probability of fertility problems.

Why would we knowingly saddle women with this entirely preventable and excruciating reality? Do we value money and career that much? That it’s worth purposefully causing women to become physically unable to bear children?

Debt Is a Dumb Reason to Delay Marriage

But by far the greatest benefit to marrying young(ish) is the one we hear the least about: wealth building. Married people build wealth at a much faster rate than single folks do because pooling one’s finances allows people to go farther faster. And the younger you are when you marry, the more time you have to take advantage of this fact.

Most married couples start out as dual-income earners, and the decisions they make from that point on can build upon this strong start.

So let’s say, for example, a newly engaged couple agrees they want to live a relatively simple life in a rural or suburban area when they have children, and the wife wants to stay home for a season. (Yes, I’m only going to refer to the wife because this is far and away the more likely scenario.)

This plan is far more easily accomplished by working alongside one’s spouse to achieve this goal. This couple can put the wife’s income aside for months (or even years) so that, when it comes time to slow down and step back, they have the reserves they need to get by.

Or, if they have debt, they can use the second income to pay it off prior to having children. The trick is to not get accustomed to living on two incomes so it isn’t a shock to consider one-income when the baby comes.

So many of the problems I see in my coaching business come down to poor planning. And that poor planning is a direct result of young people being encouraged to delay marriage indefinitely, to “shack up” instead, and to live a life free of commitment and sacrifice.

But ultimately, most people do choose to marry. And when they do, they suffer in trying to navigate new territory for which they are terribly ill-prepared.

For the record, if you’re one of the folks, or the parent of one of the folks, who didn’t get married until later in life and things worked out great, more power to you. But that doesn’t change the fact that delayed marriage has been hugely destructive for many, many people.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that the choice to marry young(ish) has so many benefits—a better dating pool, strong fertility, the opportunity to build wealth faster—that it’s shocking to realize how misled Americans have been. But that is the power of social influence. Say something often enough, and with enough gusto, and people believe it to be true.

And yet, there’s another way to do life for those who dare to be different—and it boils down to this: Don’t be afraid of love when you’re young. Be open to finding your person no matter what stage of life you’re in. If you and your person are on the same page and there are no glaring red flags, don’t break off the relationship solely due to age. That is not a wise move.

The truth is, there aren’t “plenty of fish in the sea,” as people used to say. That may have been the case once upon a time, when the majority of Americans were marriage-minded and when boys were raised to be purpose-driven providers. But it doesn’t land well in the era we’re in today. There are far fewer marriage-minded people than there were in the past.

One last thing. The idea that people should “find themselves” before getting married always makes me chuckle. As if that were possible to do by age 30. I’m 56 years old, and my husband is 60—and we’re still learning new things about ourselves and each other after twenty-six years of marriage.

Life is a long journey. You can take it alone, or you can grab a great partner as soon as you can and hold on tight. If you’re waiting for a magical day when your finances are in order and your identity is intact, you’ll be waiting forever.