For pre-boomers, it was the norm for women to get married shortly after high school, often to men 5 or more years older than them. Then of course they would start having families almost right away...often having 4-6 kids.

For boomers, it was a little later. It seemed early to mid 20s was the average age to get married. My parents, who were born in '56 and '58, were 25 and 23 when they got married in 1982, and I remember my mom telling me that 25 and 23 happened to be the average ages for men and women respectively at the time (no clue where she got that statistic). Many waited a few years before having kids, and families were a little smaller too, like 2-3 kids being average.

During the 90s and 00s, the trend seemed to be for people to wait until they were in their late 20s/even early 30s to get married when they were financially secure and thought to be completely mature and responsible.

Recently, I feel Gen Y is pulling it back to the mid-20s range again. It seems a lot of people get married at 25ish these days.

Thoughts? Am I onto something or is it just my own perception? I realize people get married at all different ages throughout time, but these are just averages I noticed.

Never mind, looks like my perceptions are off!

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005061.html

Just from my personal (German) observations:

It depends a bit on what kind of job or education you have. In Germany there are people who go to school for either 9 (to get the lowest) or 10 years to get a 'mid' graduation. After that, you can't directly start an academic education at a collage or university. People with that kind of graduation mostly start apprenticeships with the age of 15-17 and get into the working-life pretty soon. Once they are in their late teens/early 20's, they earn money, start to buy houses and - they also tend to marry earlier.

And there are those (including me), who went to school for 12/13 years (until they are something between 18 and 20) to reach the highest level of school education. With that kind of graduation it is normal to study at a university which lasts at least 3-5 years. You don't have a lot of money during your studies and you will mostly be already in your mid 20's, maybe late 20's when you get a university diploma. It tooks maybe one or two more years to get everything settled in your life, so it is no wonder that those people rather tend to marry in their late 20's/early 30's.

Don't know how relevant it is, but I read in the United Kingdom, a country which for many years in the '80s and '90s was thought to be having children in such low numbers that the British would die out, is increasing in fertility again, and it's not because of immigration because native Britons are having children at the same rates as foreign borns.

While there isn't any evidence that Gen Y is starting to have children earlier, it does seem society in general is becoming more family oriented in many ways compared to the late 20th century. You see this with the celebration of celebrity pregnancy. I wouldn't be surprised if by the time it's 2020, 2025 and the kids born in 1995, 2000 are 25 years old, they might marry earlier than their older siblings.

Marriage/childbirth stats also vary from region to region (in the United States, that is).

I live in the south, and I see a lot of my former classmates (late teens/early twenties age range) already getting married and/or having children. That is more common in the south than it is anywhere else in the U.S., as is my understanding.

In the old days if she got pregnant, you got married. Now kids don't bother to get married.  I think this is a factor in pushing up the average age for nuptials. 

In the old days you could go out and make a living at the age of 18.  Nowadays young adults are going back for the second masters degree at 28 and $80 grand in debt because their first career didn't pan out.  A lot of people can't afford to have kids in their peak reproductive years.
::)

In the old days if she got pregnant, you got married. Now kids don't bother to get married.  I think this is a factor in pushing up the average age for nuptials. 

In the old days you could go out and make a living at the age of 18.  Nowadays young adults are going back for the second masters degree at 28 and $80 grand in debt because their first career didn't pan out.  A lot of people can't afford to have kids in their peak reproductive years.
::)


Yup.  Although it varies from region to region, it's slowly creeping upwards.  That's actually a good thing.

At the risk of sounding like I have an onion on my belt, it's nice to see the next generations having more options than mine had.  (Mine was split between people who wanted to find Mrs. Right before graduation - most of them stayed together, but there've been several divorces.  Biggest causes were women who were really only in it for their "M.Rs degree" all along, guys who couldn't keep it in their pants, and couples who found, sometimes too late, that only one of them - sometimes the man, sometimes the woman - ever really wanted to be a parent. 

There's also a significant portion of the population eschewing marriage altogether, and I think we're all better off for it; those who want to marry can do so, those who want to put their careers ahead of their kids can choose to get married or have a long-term live-in relationship without having kids, and those who want to put their careers ahead of their marriages can simply avoid marriage altogether.

There's not much of a demographic shift when it comes to partners who stray, but the rest of the demographic trends are looking up.  There aren't as many women looking for the M.Rs degree anymore - because with a degree and career of their own, they need men like a fish need a bicycle.  Childfree men and women are now a big enough portion of the population that the couples that broke up over children would never have gotten to the point of marriage in the first place.  We didn't have any LGBTQ folks come out of the closet post-marriage, but those folks also have options unthinkable 20 years ago.

The average age for marriage is increasing, not decreasing.

More people choose cohabitation over wedlock.

The a resident boomer on this page I will say that most of my friends had at least one marriage, most of those first marriages failed.  There are some who successfully married a second time, but once bitten twice shy.  I never married and have been told many times that I had the right idea, and am told that by people who are currently married.  I think it is more the exception than the rule that people find a person who they live with every day for the rest of their lives, when it happens it is good, but it is rare.  I am in a long term relationship(20 years) but this queen has her own castle, and I assure you, if that wasn't the case it would never have lasted this long.  ;)

Do you guys think marriage will eventually go by the wayside? Become an archaic tradition? I mean it certainly wouldn't happen anytime soon, but as others have pointed out, society is becoming more and more content with having families without being married and stuff.

Do you guys think marriage will eventually go by the wayside? Become an archaic tradition? I mean it certainly wouldn't happen anytime soon, but as others have pointed out, society is becoming more and more content with having families without being married and stuff.


I don't think so actually. I'm sure people said that 40 years ago, but marriage isn't any more endangered now than it was when divorce began to be common, imo.

Do you guys think marriage will eventually go by the wayside?


I'd have to say no to that, but I think the % of people getting married will go down, perhaps slowly, gradually. But people who get married because of their religious beliefs will continue to do so.

For myself, out of all the friends/peers I know, (who are approx the same age as me) I've been married the second longest, in # of years.