<p>Interesting thread! My DH & I met when I was a freshman at college; he was a grad student five years older than me. We lived in the same dorm. We got married three years after I graduated from college; last week we celebrated our 24th anniversary. Our daughter heads off to U of Chicago this fall. Time FLIES!</p>
<p>I want to get married by or before I turn 24 , 25 or 26 years old!!!</p>
<p>if i don’t i will be VERY sad and depressed 
and feel like a major failure</p>
<p>I hope college will help.</p>
<p>just curious futurnystudent: you wouldn’t happen to be a sophomore would you? :)</p>
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Having kids at 30 isn’t postponing, it’s basically the norm; isn’t the average age for marriage about 26? </p>
<p>I personally think 20-23 or so is weirdly early to have kids. I think my ideal would be 30-35. With demanding careers that require extensive time and training, it gets harder too; like if I decide to become a physician, I’ll finish school at 26, then do residency for 3 years (70 hour weeks and getting paid crap). I don’t think there’s any point having kids if you don’t get to see them, so if I choose that career path, I’ll definitely wait until at least 30.
No offense, but I think your views a little unrealistic. In the 50’s it was typical to have a kid by 22 or so. These days, people generally get married later and most women don’t want to be housewives - I can’t imagine most of my female friends would be happy sitting at home for 16 years! More women are getting college degrees than men, and most want careers and lives outside of childcare; plus men play a more active role in childcare than they did back then. I think in the future, housewives will become an exception rather than norm. My mom is a housewife but most of my friends have working mothers, so even for our generation being a housewife isn’t the norm I think.</p>
<p>My Two Cents as an Old Person (nearly 50 ha! 
:)</p>
<p>There is no such thing as a “perfect time” to have children. When I was younger, I kept waiting for that “perfect time” which is sometime in the future. Time marches on my friends. The biological fact is a woman’s fertility has a shelf life and decreases with time. If you wait to have your kids until “after” your career is “established” etc…even in a high time demand career like medicine…just be aware when you decide you do want to have kids it may be too late. That is the dirty little secret that nobody bothered to tell us early on so I’ll just go ahead and share it with you so maybe you can benefit. Obviously, don’t have kids before you find a partner you dearly love and wish to have children with, but don’t delay too long or it may be TOO LATE to have kids. Just some food for thought.</p>
<p>OMG, stop with the whole “if you wait too long, it may be too late…woman fertility” stuff.</p>
<p>we’re not saying we’re going to to wait till our golden ages.
just in our 30 or so.</p>
<p>since when was 30’s considered old?!!
30’s is still young and fresh geez.</p>
<p>Well if you don’t believe me you can always check with your ob/gyn … a woman’s egg quantity & quality starts to decline in the mid to late 30s and does so significantly faster in the early 40s. You can’t change biology. :)</p>
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<p>My Mom quit her job to put my father through grad school! Not only that, she wanted to be a full-time mother. Different circles, I guess.</p>
<p>@ ThriftyMom - We all realize we’re not going to be young forever, but having kids at 30 is the norm now, not postponing. I’m saying having kids at 23 is unrealistic - imagine being a recent college grad up to your eyeballs in debt with no job - not a great time to have kids lol! It’s not just people in high demand careers who have kids at 30; the average age for marriage is 25-26 so 30 seems to be a typical time for having kids. </p>
<p>Personally, I’m not planning to wait until my career is “established” - let’s say I become a doctor, I might not even get to practice medicine before I have a kid! If I end up becoming a teacher or something, that makes life significantly easier 
Not really, this was pretty common in our parents and grandparents generation. My mom is a housewife as well; it might be a generational thing. Personally I’d love to be a stay at home mom when my kids are young as well.</p>
<p>If I won the lottery I’d have my first kid at 23. Husband or not lol. :)</p>
<p>30 may be the norm but the “ideal” age is still 26-27ish. The thing is, life expectancy and edu expectancy have gone up, but the ideal age to have children hasn’t. Being in your mid/late thirties and running to invitro places all the time doesn’t do much for your career either y’know? Plus it IS harder, and riskier for both you and your child. I can’t imagine life without children so I’m probably going to marry in mid 20’s or so and see what I can do with my career before kids and see about picking it up again once they start school (ie, 5/6, NOT 16).
futurenyustudent does have some extreme views but then again, NYC is known for materialistic people who care more about money 
(no offense but it is the prevailing stereotype)</p>
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<p>Hmm. I haven’t noticed that, really. But I think my friends and I are stuck in the 50s, so…</p>
<p>Not gonna lie, I’d be very happy to find my significant other in college. Better than some other places I can think of. ;]</p>
<p>That thing about “50% of marriages end in divorce”…</p>
<p>h t t p : / / d i v o r c e r a t e . o r g/</p>
<p>That’s totez not entirely true.</p>
<p>Well, once again I don’t think it’s a good idea to plan things out too early and get stuck in one mode of thought, like “Oh, I have to have 2 kids spaced 3 years apart and blahblah” because you never know. For example, you don’t know if your future spouse will have a demanding career or be a stay-at-home parent, you don’t know your future financial situation or if you’ll have difficult having kids or god forbid if you had a parent or sick child you need to take care of or something, or if you’ll get pregnant out of wedlock much earlier than you thought.</p>
<p>All I know at this age is: I would like to have kids (2 or 3?) someday and i’d want to be married for a few years before popping one out. Also, I want a dog.</p>
<p>My husband and I met at UC Berkeley in 1983, were RAs in the dorms together in 1985, began dating in 1986, and married in 1988. This fall, we’ll send our oldest off to college – at UC Berkeley. Of course, she’s not allowed to date until she’s 30. I did not expect to marry so young – 24 – or have kids early-- my first at 27. It was not the norm back then, and I don’t think it is now. It’s hard for kids to get settled enough to be financially able to have kids until late 20s. But, some of us do dumb things. Both my husband and I were unemployed when we got engaged, and our family turned out OK. BUT we have never been able to put a lot of money away for college, so now my daughter has to rely on grants and loans.</p>
<p>Hubby and I met Freshman year. We both transferred from a small liberal arts school to a large state school and got an apartment together, since we couldn’t get on campus housing as transfer students. We got engaged junior year, married in September after graduating (and celebrated our wedding reception in the campus hotel restaurant). I was 21, he was 22. Our son was born a year and a half later. Our daughter followed four years after that. </p>
<p>Our son heads off to college in the fall. We are still happily married (almost 20 years) and are each other’s best friends. We will be empty nesters when I am 45 and our daughter heads off to college. It hasn’t always been easy, but good marriages aren’t!</p>
<p>Go to school and have fun! You never know when you will find the right person!</p>
<p>Eh. I have nothing against couples who find their spouse in college, but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen for me. I have no interest in settling down right out of school and am actually looking forward to the fun nightmare of trying to date in a large city (most likely LA or NY, maybe Toronto, depending on where work takes me). I certainly wouldn’t want to get married until at least my early 30s, if at all… I often get the feeling that I may never end up marrying, which is fine.</p>
<p>my parents had me and my brother in their early 40’s. The risk of catching any defects is high no matter what the age. I think having children when the parents are more then able to support them in the right manner is essential. </p>
<p>I have lived my life unselfishly as i could supporting myself and my family. Settling down is far from my mind and i would love to enjoy my twenties and payoff any debt.</p>
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<p>No, where did you get this idea? I graduate in 2 weeks.</p>
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<p>Where do you get the materialistic thing from? I just have different views about marriage. Marriages theoretically work best when neither party needs to be married to the other, and neither party needs to make great sacrifices for the other to maintain the relationship. I also believe that neither party to the marriage should have to make great sacrifices (i.e. taking the job opportunity of a lifetime that requires relocation out of state). I assure you I am most definitely NOT materialistic, just territorial. I have no desire to control the spouse (with power comes responsibility and I want no responsibility for her career, nor her life), but I expect her to absolutely respect the choices I make regarding my life, and I will hers. In the job example, if my spouse wants to take a job opportunity out of state or even overseas, and it’s a very good opportunity, I will not stop her from taking it-in fact I’ll encourage her to take it. Her career is just as important as mine and just because I don’t want to relocate shouldn’t mean that she should give up this great opportunity. And likewise for me, just because she wants to relocate to take this job opportunity doesn’t mean I should have to give up my career to relocate with her.</p>
<p>When the relationship doesn’t work, you terminate it, just like any other partnership. I don’t see what’s so special about marriage that it must be held sacrosanct. And I believe absolutely in contingency planning. Not expecting failure, but planning for it. And with a failure rate as high as 50+% and rising, it’s imprudent not to plan for it. The plan is separately held assets and equally (or proportionally) shared expenses-however asset-related costs such as property tax and broker’s fees are to be paid separately-such that in the event of a divorce the divorce is clean, and we don’t spend 3 years in family court litigating and racking up legal bills. In the event of a divorce, kids-joint custody, kid-related expenses such as tuition and the like-paid jointly. There’s no such thing as an amicable divorce, but one can make divorce as painless as it can be (and as not expensive as possible).</p>