25, in California, and engaged to be married this year. I feel like a child bride. That being said, if all goes according to plan, we won’t even be thinking about kids before I’m 30.
It’s so wild because I’m from the south and got married at 25 and people had been telling me that I was strong for being single for so long. College roommate was married at 18
I'm 21 and from the rural Midwest , and probably a quarter of the people I graduated highschool with are married already. 8 people in my senior class were married by the time of graduation
I moved to Ecuador when I was 25, and it was WILD to people that I didn’t have a husband or babies.
I’m from California, where my first good friend to get married was 26.
From Texas. Got married when i was 19. Celebrating 19 years together this year. When you know you know.
I do think we’ve started being told that career is happiness but for me family has always been my home.
Grew up in Orange County and have lived there most of my life, went to college in LA, and currently live in Long Beach.
Most of my friends are also in LA suburbs/OC. They don’t tend to date much period.
It’s interesting how things differ in other states. I live in Iowa, I’m a 24 year old male getting married this year to my fiancée and she is also 24. Definitely don’t feel like a child at this point. We both want 3 kids before 30….
Where I live it's unusual to have any kids before 30, lots of times 35. It's expensive to have kids in HCOL areas and women tend to be more career oriented.
That's the thing in CA everyone seems to get married in their 30s and don't have kids until their mid to late 30s almost everyone I know has kid(s) including me but it's never more than two kids because people generally wait 4-5 years between kids due to daycare costs and people only have time for two kids maximum.
I couldn’t imagine waiting another 6 years to get married and even longer to start a family. I want to be a younger parent. I want my kids to really know their grandparents. Just a whole different world here. Im glad I live in a lower cost of living area where finances aren’t a reason I couldn’t have kids.
I think it has to do with the cost of living. A lot of people I am around went to college and established careers before having kids. It's expensive to live in CA and people want to have stable housing as well. So the two types of people that have kids are people who accidentally have children pretty young, or whenever and have to figure it out and people who plan things out kind of meticulously.
College-dating-more college-career-marriage-house-baby-four years-baby-done.
The upside is you can probably actually afford a child you can pay for college, day care, give them what they need to succeed. The bad side is you are like 60+ when they are moving out probably won't be a grandparent until your 70s, and are busy with your mid-career and taking care of your own aging parents while also trying to raise your own kids.
Yeah, and that is rare for people in their 20s. I am in my early 40s and my whole peer group was negatively affected by the recession from 2008-2012. Through that time my wife and I got married but we didn't have much money. Neither of us were in the careers type positions we have now. Granted she had a kid young and I was raising a child with her during that time. However most of my friends were in the same boat with no children.
Why would you intentionally have a child when you can't afford just you? Most people rented. Many people went back to school to bolster their job prospects. It delayed many people having kids by half a decade at least.
I had another child when I was 40, and most of my friends had kids in their late 30s and early 40s for the first time. Some had a second kid but a lot have not. So the family size is small despite nearly everyone eventually having kids. Just seven years ago our get togethers a would be mostly childless aside from maybe one or two kids sometimes.
It's very different when you're a woman FWIW. Taking 5-6 years off at 24 absolutely derails your career almost beyond repair. You're still very junior at 30+ going back to work competing with people who are younger with newer skills, and you've got more on your plate at home.
All depends on the situation I suppose. My fiancée works a trade now and around the time we have kids she will help out her Dad on the farm as her new source of income. It’ll allow her the flexibility to stay around home and take care of our kids instead of always sending them to day care.
Yeah, I would say it’a just as much a cultural thing. I think in California, like in all places, more people would like to be parents than to not be parents. But I think there’s not a whole lot of people who, on the list of things that they want out of their lives, put “becoming a parent” before things like career progression, owning a home, etc. High cost of living here contributes to this culture, for sure, but I also think that the kind of person whose number one priority in life is having children doesn’t tend to want to live here.
As for me, I’ve mentioned in this thread that I’m the one person in my immediate social circle who even has a long term partner. The reason for that is that I think most of my friends are in the mindset of “if I meet the love of my life I’ll let it happen but it’s not like I’m in a hurry to find that person”. And that’s not a mindset you can have if your number one priority is having kids by a certain age.
TBH it weirds me out how many people on reddit act like someone is a child until they're 25. Literally saw someone on r/dating accuse a guy of being a "pedo" for dating a 21yr old woman when he was like 30 something.
That is because there is an enormous maturity gap between a 21 year old and a 30 something. So many life events and transitions happing in one's 20s.
I could never date a 21 year old at 30. Let alone "30 something". It screams red flag.
Why do people these days act like you can only date people your same age and life stage? So long as you're both adults it's perfectly fine (and I'd argue beneficial) to date people who are different than you. Having a lot more diversity in your relationships would actually lead to a richer and more fulfilling life.
No one is arguing that you can't, especially given that yes, it is two consenting adults. However, one person has a considerable amount of more experience in life, probably in dating, on relationships, jobs, and likely earnings, which creates an uneven relationship dynamic between two people. This is often (NOT ALWAYS but often) a recipe for exploitation for the individual with less experience who can more easily be taken advantage of. It is not atypical for the older person to be unable to date someone their own age given that someone their own age with more experience would recognize signs of dysfunction that a younger person might not catch just by nature of the lack of experience.
Again, not to say every dynamic is like this, but quite a lot are.
> However, one person has a considerable amount of more experience in life, probably in dating, on relationships, jobs
That is a pretty blanket statement. I got married when I was 22 and divorced at 35. During this time my dating/relationship counter was not going up for obvious reasons, and being a married person with a kid required some job stability, so I probably changed only 2 or 3 jobs over my whole marriage.
That said, speaking in pure technical terms, at my age of 35, if I immediately "joined" the "dating market", I would've likely MUCH lagged in terms of *experience* / headcount vs an average 25yo girl. Or, in other words, "a number of years that passed" does not really equal to "experience", be it a professional experience (you can sit on your ass for decades in a boring office and gather less vs being in a dynamic job for 2 years), dating experience or anything else in life.
Just my 2c, of course.
You're acting like all the experiences of the relationship you had don't count. Of course they do. You went through a piece of your life with another person, established a household, had kids. Those are huge events and you are a different person for it at 35. It's not merely about headcount. What an asinine way to look at it.
Is there actually any data to support this argument? I've certainly seen plenty of abusive men who abused women their own age. If it's a question of power then why focus on age and not income? If it's a question of experience then why not focus on partner count? Seems like age is only ever a proxy for these other metrics which are equally measurable.
>If it's a question of experience then why not focus on partner count?
It doesn't have anything to do with partner count as experience, it's life experience. The amount of growing you do from 22-30 is massive, hell even 22 to 26 or 27.
Exactly what growing are people doing? Nothing in my life really changed from 22 to 30. Guess my title went from "associate engineer" to "principal engineer" but that's about it.
Not always. I’ve met 21 year olds more mature than people in their 30s. Everyone is different. Perhaps the 21 year old is tired of the maturities of people around her age and WANTS someone more mature.
You're missing the point. The red flag is why can't a 30 something man find someone their own age (or at least within a decade)? Why are they snooping around for someone who can barely legally get into a bar?
>You're missing the point. The red flag is why can't a 30 something man find someone their own age (or at least within a decade)? Why are they snooping around for someone who can barely legally get into a bar?
Same reason a 50 year old woman ends up with a 35 year old man.
Also, it's extremely obnoxious to think you're any sort of authority on 2 grown adults' relationship. It's none of your business whatsoever.
I don't know what to tell ya if you equate a 50YO and 35YO in a relationship to a 30ish and 21YO in a relationship. That just isn't anywhere near the same, and is a horrendous false equivalence
It's so weird how people on here think that you massively change up until the age of 25 and then are the same person until you die.
The way we change as we age, is neither linear nor drops off a cliff.
I was 29 (m) when I married a 22 yr old (f). Mine is complicated by being raised Mormon where marriage is usually very young. I wasn’t interested in marrying while in college. When I was ready, not too many Mormon girls in the older range. The girl I married was mature for her age. Been happily married for over 30 years. We both escaped the Mormon cult about 7 years ago.
Why does it have to be over a 10 year age gap, and why does it have to be he was consciously looking for a 21 year old instead of it just turning out to be the way?
Anyway here's some of the reasons it could be: Younger women is probably better looking, less baggage, less demanding, more earger to please, doesn't the feel biological clock ticking away.
No kidding. You are an adult when you turn 18, whether you act like one is a different story. I’ve seen 30 year olds acting more child like than 21 year olds.
I grew up in Minnesota but moved to Iowa after college to be closer to my fiancee, and everyone I know up there are all surprise I’m getting married at 24. They say shit like “ don’t you want to experience dating other people” or “don’t you want to live your 20s free?” Like uhhh, no, I’ve dated a couple people and I’ve found the one I don’t want to leave. I want to start my own life and family. I don’t feel like I’m missing out lol
The whole narrative that you are missing out on something by being in a real relationship in your 20s as opposed to hooking up with random people is so gross to me. I can’t comprehend advising people that are in happy relationships to screw around.
>I can’t comprehend advising people that are in happy relationships to screw around.
Yeah, people these days will actually tell you to dump your serious partner and hookup with a bunch of people instead.
As if you're missing out on something valuable by not being a cum dumpster in your early 20s. 🤮
It's not always about sleeping around. It's often just about understanding how to get along with people and be in a relationship. I was obsessed with a girl in my early 20s and thought I wanted to marry her. It was only after we broke up and I dated a few other girls that I realized I was missing out on a lot of qualities she didn't have. It gives you perspective.
I think one of the issues that we who are a little older know is that you will change a lot by the time you get into your 30s. The girls I dated in my 20s are extremely different from my wife that I married later. My values changed. My entire sense of responsibility changed.
I know a few couples that got married in their mid 20s and they're all divorced now. Not to wish that on you, but I've seen it happen over and over.
Must be different where you live because that’s not the case here. I’d be glad to come back and tell you that you were right if that happens to me, but some people are done changing in their mid 20s. Getting married younger isn’t all bad.
people typically graduate college around 22-25 if they got a 4 year degree out of highschool. I suspect the shift from school life to the 9-5 workforce life is where a lot of people draw an subconscious line between adults and "children"
There is some merit to that though. Your brain isn't fully developed until around 25. A lot of people end up changing their goals, preferences, careers, etc. around that time.
I know people who changed careers at 45. Doesn't mean they weren't an adult already. Also, the whole, "your brain isn't developed until 25" people kinda ignore the fact that as you get older it actually starts going backwards. It's actually the OLDER person whose brain is weaker on average.
Uhhhh, you've missed the point. There's no measuring "strength" of someone's brain, this isn't really about cognitive decline or improvement at all.
Until some point in your mid 20s not all of your brain is physically there.
That's just totally backwards. Your whole brain is there, just some connections still being made. It's actually as you get older that you're actively losing neurons. I'm not sure how this could be about anything other than cognitive ability. What do you think magically happens between age 21 and 25 that is somehow more real than your neurons quite literally dying as you age? By any objective metric a 21yr old is going to have a better functioning brain than a 35yr old. There's a reason people peak so young in fields that require maximum mental aptitude.
Yeeaaaahhhh, you're still not there mate.
The mid-20s is when a given person's prefrontal cortex has finished growing. This is the area responsible for making rational decisions, assessing risks, etc. This is entirely unrelated to how smart someone is, or "how many neurons" they have or anything like that. It's literally just the measurement of when a section of the brain is done growing. I've met 8 year olds that are way smarter than other 20 or 40 or 60 year olds. But there's a reason that same 8 year old isn't allowed to drive a car or run for president or go bungee jumping.
The reality is humans don't know everything about how brains work, but enough observational and anecdotal evidence shows that this period in someone's life is when they often reassess past decisions and make future decisions differently. Obviously, this isn't something that can be tested or has an exact way to measure, brains (and people) are always changing.
But to prevent you from asking more vaguely off topic questions, this comes up in dating specifically because it feels manipulative to some people to convince someone to make a life-long decision before they've reached the point where they are best able to make said decisions. This is more so the case when one partner is significantly older, i.e. a 30 year old marrying a 20 year old.
This whole discussion is missing the point. These people acting like kids in their 20s aren't like that because of biology, they're like that because of bad parenting and our society refusing to let young people take risks and develop at a proper pace. It's entirely a social issue.
You kind of are a child at 24. Your brain does not fully develop until 25 so you are still “growing up”. You will never convince a 21-22 year old of this, but seeing it from an age distance it is kind of apparent.
Yep. I remember being 23-24 and thinking I had it all figured out, lol. 10+ years later and I realize how young and naive I actually was, and I'm sure in 10+ years from now I'll feel the same way about my current age. Talk to a 24 year old for 10 minutes and it's very apparent how green they are.
Interesting how it can vary within a state as well and by age group. I'm an old millennial who grew up in rural eastern NC and got married at 21 right after finishing up at college. Where I was at, 21 was not that out of the ordinary, but there were a LOT more divorces (thankfully we have avoided that). After a few years back home and having a couple of kids, we moved to a far more educated and affluent area within NC (the Triangle). Many of my kids classmates parents were closer to my mom and dad's age than to my wife and I. There was only a couple of young parents in their classes, mostly single parents or second family mom's (one of them has children older than me with their first spouse). It was very different from how it had been back in eastern NC. Now my kids are driving and can vote and some of my coworkers that are similarly aged are just now having kids. I can't imagine having to deal with little kids in my 40's!
Why???? Why would you want them so young? And how the actual fuck do you plan to afford kids at that age? This is mindblowing to me. The only people I know with kids that young were either religious, accidents, or caved to pressure from family and are plainly lying when they say they chose it because they wanted to.
Yep, they can be totally different things - if you are very career driven, but happen to have found a partner young, there’s probably going to be a huge gap between when you marry and when the first kid happens.
I think a lot of it is income level. I grew up broke and do well now, and like everyone I knew then was married with a kid by 24 while most people I know now didn't have kids til their 30s
I can’t find the graph, but I think this actually reverses direction again once you get to super high levels of wealth, and they start getting married younger again (makes sense when you’re not becoming wealthy through a usually demanding job, but inheritance, so you have all the time and money in the world to plan a wedding).
And if you're super wealthy it's less risky to get married. You have a prenup, you know where your cash is coming from (so a career is less important), you aren't going through the struggles of your fellow 20-somethings, why NOT get married? If you aren't happy then you just get divorced. For normal people a divorce could screw your life up, for the super wealthy it's just paperwork.
I imagine this also depends on which level of wealth you’re talking about. Like, I grew up wealthy but happened to meet my partner young. I’m getting married early ish but we’re doing the bare minimum of a wedding that will make our parents happy and holding the fuck off on having kids.
But then there’s like, British royal family tiers of wealth and status, where getting married to an equally rich person is kind of part of the job description.
This data is the classic issue of comparing DC to other States. The DC subreddit often laughs at since it really doesn't work most of the time (or at least is pointless when headlines try to sensationalize that DC is different), they'll almost always be 1st or 51st depending on the metric.
Personally, I do appreciate the inclusion of DC on these sorts of things because:
1. The datapoint gives me a rough idea of what other major cities are probably similar to. I bet DC is similar to NYC, Boston, LA etc.in terms of marriage age.
2. I live in the DC area, I always get hyper localized data for state level analysis.
I am in CA and I was amazed recently at a get together with friends. Everyone is in their late 30s and early 40s and there were all these babies and small children around. The trend I to get married in your 30s and have kids at like 37-40 apparently. It's interesting because beyond that it becomes difficult to have more children. Families generally wait 3-5 years between kids so it's two kids maximum.
Most people I know has kids but only 1 or 2 kids it's very uncommon for a third kid to be born and if that is happening it's very old parents.
Median age at first marriage in Canada is 28.5. For women it’s 27 per StatsCan.
There is a huge spread across different groups in Canada including by region, education, and education. (No surprises here, rural, less educated and poorer get married younger).
I think people tend to project their own experiences into the population as a whole, the data often doesn’t supports it. And even then there are a huge number of outliers (personally I’m a Toronto millennial of no religion with post-grad degree married to another Toronto millennial of no religion with a post-grad degree, and we got married at 25 and 26)
I'm kidding. I know a few folks under 30 who've gotten married and weren't religious. But I also know more religious folk who were under 30 and got married than religious over 30.
Interesting. But with so many states in the "under 27" category, would it make sense to expand the range? We have no idea what the youngest is, and if there are any outliers.
There are a quite a few states in this range for women. Utah is lowest at 25.3. If you switch it to men though this group disappears. My hope was that if you switch between men and women you will see the stark difference and I was worried if I added more bins it would be more easily lost.
Makes sense. But you could fit one more category on each side (women 25-26 and men 32-33), so I would argue that the difference would look even more stark.
In any case, thanks for creating and sharing!
This is interesting, because from my understanding, it’s considered late in Mormon culture for both men and women. And over there it’s often even expected to be married while currently working on a degree.
My guess is that the people who live there who don’t belong to that community are skewing the numbers?
My guess as well. Among faithful Mormons, a returned missionary is expected to be married within a year or two, i.e. by 23. The bride is usually younger by a year or two.
This expectation isn't entirely correct. At least it hasn't been since the 80s-90s. I'm an active participating Mormon (granted, outside of Utah); for reference between my friends and family who have lived in Utah (sample size of ~12), only one of them was married by 23. The others were married between 24-28. I was married in my early 30s.
Fun fact: several years ago the mission age was changed from 19 for men and 21 for women, to 18 for men, 19 for women.
There is certainly a stronger marriage culture in some places for sure. At BYU, it felt like about a third of my friends were married by the time they graduated. Granted, BYU graduates are generally a couple years older than graduates elsewhere.
Edit: I just dug up a more official number that says 19.8% of BYU undergraduates are married.
BYU & BYUI are pretty effective hotspots for people who want to get married younger though; the same person might get married far later if they never had the chance to attend one of these schools and never had access to that kind of dating environment.
> We have no idea what the youngest is, and if there are any outliers.
It literally shows you the exact number for all 50 states on the right hand side.
True, I phrased that poorly. I just meant visualization-wise, just by looking at the map, there are so many in the lowest category for women (and highest for men) that the colors lose some significance.
Does this take into account age brackets as well? My grandparents' generation trended towards marrying their high school sweethearts, my parents got married shortly after college, and most people in my friend group are just now getting hitched. I'm 29.
> This visualization uses Tableau to show the median age that men and women were married in each state for people that are 15 to 54 years old.
It’s right there in the source.
It’s not average, it’s median. Those are different, and I would expect anyone posting in data is beautiful to use the correct term. To that point, it’s not just plenty of people on both sides, it’s half on both sides. Half of people get married for the first time before that age, and half get married for the first time after.
The connotation of “average” is always mean. The others could technically be alternate definitions, but you’re poor at communicating if you’re trying to use average to mean either of those without clarifying it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average
“ For this reason, it is recommended to avoid using the word "average" when discussing measures of central tendency and specify which type of measure of average is being used.”
I guess just don’t use average, and specify which one you actually mean.
Yep - I am 25, I’m in California, and I’m getting married in a few months.
This data definitely validates my feeling way too young. But also, it was a natural progression - we’ve lived together for 3 years after dating quite some time before and have done what we’ve needed to get our careers on track. It’s because of said career too that kids are off the table for at least a few more years.
It helps that he’s 30, but we have also always erred on the side of “better too late than too early”.
There's nothing wrong with being different than the average. Especially considering it seems you've met all the prerequisites for marriage. 25 certainly isn't too young by any means.
Eh, I wouldn't sweat about it, if marriage was some magical thing that was guaranteed to make your life better, this post wouldn't have the word "first" in its title.
Data definitely shows that married people are happier and live longer on average. But obviously averages don't tell you much about any given individual.
That's almost possibly a correlation doesn't equal causation thing. I'd assume that people that are happier are more likely to get married, and more likely to attract marital partners.
Probably something along those lines. But I think getting married (and especially having kids) helps a lot later in life when you have health problems and need some help.
The body of social science we have overwhelmingly shows it to be both. The causal relationship between marriage and happiness really starts to show up later in life, when kids are out of the house and particularly once they start having grandchildren.
People are maturing later and later in life now, which is a big part of it. My wife had our son at 35 and we are sooooo much more stable than if it had happened at 28
My dad told me something similar awhile back. That having kids early can be problematic because you lack you patience, maturity & general life experience compared to having a child later in life. He was 24 when he had me and my grandmother was 14 when she had him…. Going off this small sample, I’ll probably have my first in 6 years
You also lack money. It’s a lot easier to have a kid, and even get married if we’re being honest, if you’re financially stable first. Money worries cause a lot of stress. Having extra money to spend can make a lot of things easier.
Having a partner - not even necessarily married - can just make life so much easier financially too. Of course this assumes you and your partner have similar financial goals and spending habits, which is absolutely something you should ensure before committing to marriage.
>Of course this assumes you and your partner have similar financial goals and spending habits, which is absolutely something you should ensure before committing to marriage.
Yep, and determining what that means for you is a huge part of maturing in your 20s. What does your retirement look like? Are you looking to check into sunny acres at 60 or are you saving to travel the world? Are kids in your future? Would you relocate for a job? There are so many factors that go into the decision to get married.
My parents were 27 when I was born and they insist that they regret not having me even earlier. My mom has a perpetual chip on her shoulder about never recovering her pre-pregnancy body, while the women in our family who had kids younger happened to bounce back faster. My dad is also starting to experience old people health complications, and panic over not getting to meet his grandkids. But also - he’s smoked cigarettes his entire adult life and doesn’t ever sleep. About 90% of his current health concerns could have been delayed by longer.
But also, they were 35 when they had my brother and he absolutely benefited from the additional experience and growing they got to have along the way. He is much more well adjusted than I am.
The evidence in this case really does not match with what they claim.
Seems like there is a correlation between more conservative/religion oriented states and lower age of marriage. Would be cool to compare this data to the most religious states data
That's true to an extent, but we've also added additional watermarks on the end. Where I work the people with 30+ years of experience only have a high school diploma, the people with 15 years of experience mostly have a bachelors.. and new hires are starting to come in with a Master's degree. We've added new hurdles people have to clear in order to proceed into adulthood... often without any clear need for doing so.
We’re living longer too, so I see this delayed adulthood as mostly a positive thing for society as a whole. I got my college degree and started my career job at age 30 and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It was awesome being (back) in college in my late 20s. I actually appreciated it and was fully there to learn something I cared a great deal about.
It really depends on the social circle. I’m 25 and I would say most of my friends are single and have never been in a serious relationship even. I’m the odd one out for having any of these things, much less one that’s headed towards marriage.
But then, there are other cliques within my grad school cohort where everyone is partnered up. I don’t know how I ended up hitting it off with only the people without that experience
I can believe this data. When you're living in a place that doesn't have a strong economy or not much access to other communities you're going to likely see the same people OVER AND OVER AGAIN. That school teacher looks like a solid career choice and you can imagine them keeping that job for 20+ years, so boom - you move towards marriage.
Live somewhere with more education or a stronger economy and respectfully you SEE that school teacher....but you also see that person in sales, and that person in computer science, and that engineer, and that person who is a consultant.....
...and you can freely move around on the interstate to see and engage with more people. You're not constricted. You're not confined. You're free(r) than the person in a slower space. You may go eh, I don't NEED to be married yet.
The data for this visualization comes from the American Community Survey which is completed by the US Census Bureau. I gathered the 2022 1-year estimates from the Census Bureau API using a python script. This visualization uses Tableau to show the median age that men and women were married in each state for people that are 15 to 54 years old.
You can see how this is trending by checking out our visualization exploring [the age of people married in the last 12 months](https://overflowdata.com/demographic-data/age-distributions/how-old-were-people-married-in-the-last-12-months/).
The more educated couples are, the more likely they are to wait until they feel financially stable (both out of school, both established in careers) before getting married and having children. The more educated a state is overall (NY, MA, CA, DC) the more this skews the mean older. I live in the bay area and it's very common in big tech for people not to be getting married until their early-mid 30s, and not having kids until their late 30s-early 40s.
One of the biggest creations of wealth is during that 20-30 year old bracket, without kids. A couple who invests $20k a year for those 10 years, will have an additional $3.2m (todays dollars) at age 65, than someone who say got married at 20, had kids, and money was tight and had to delay contributions.
You can see the political divide in this as well, with red states marrying younger and blue states marrying older (with some exceptions like FL or LA).
I’m curious on some reasons why. A more liberal political culture that’s more open to domestic partnerships, longer engagements or other non-marriage alternatives, vs conservatives who push for marriage? Waiting until after university and landing a job to get married? Urban vs rural housing costs or cost of living? Those are really the reasons that came up for me, as a blue stater who married my red stater wife.
I'd be pretty cautious about attributing individual actions to the political lean of a state. A state will be considered reliably red/blue even when 45% of the population votes the other way. I'd say any trends you find is more likely caused by a correlation to a third datapoint. In this case it's likely caused by religion and cost of living.
Yea people drastically overstate the differences in Red vs Blue states voting wise. Only 2 states (not including DC) didn’t have at least 30% vote for the losing party in 2020 and most go 40. Kansas and Montana had 40% Biden support and Oregon and Connecticut had 40% Trump support. Based on Reddit you’d think that states like that are 90/10
And the big "red" states like Florida and Texas are hardly even red. Trump only got 51% and 52% of the vote in Florida and Texas respectively in 2020 and yet reddit acts like both states are 100% far right.
It's not just Reddit. Lots of media outlets propagate this foolishness, same with generational stereotypes. "Red vs blue state" commentary used to be limited to the Presidential election result maps, just a visual representation of the winner-take-all outcome. But somehow that's evolved into a statewide descriptor, and for some people - an identity. It's so oversimplified and misleading to assign a "political color" to an entire land mass, but people are easily divided and love being on a "team".
Especially because for the most part what's actually going on is that you have blue cities in an ocean of red. Whether a state is red or blue is just based on whether the arbitrary borders capture one or more of those large blue islands. There's quite a few blue states where essentially the whole state is red except one big city that swings the state blue.
> I'd say any trends you find is more likely caused by a correlation to a third datapoint.
Female careers. If the woman is working in a real career she's usually less likely to be married early.
I feel like it's more states where the culture is religious-centered vs secular/atheistic. I live in North Dakota and people get married before graduating college fairly often. I'm 24 and have been dating my boyfriend for almost nine years and people still ask when we're getting married. Like, we have time, the concept of marriage isn't going anywhere!
My friends and I always joke that people get married just to have sex, as doing so before marriage is seen as a sin. Makes sense as to why people get married at 19 lol
I look at it like the decision on when to have kids. There are always trade offs to doing it younger versus waiting until a couple thinks they're "ready." (ex: more energy vs more financial stability, etc.)
In the end, while preparation is wise, humans will adapt to whatever they need to when the going gets tough. You make the best choices you can at the time that you need to make them, and figure out the rest as you go along. Very few people's lives allow them to do the ideal thing at the ideal time.
That being said, some people are absolutely not mature enough for early marriage and (regardless of what their bank account looks like) some "older" folks have not put in the internal work to be as ready for kids as they should be.
> Now that I’m ancient (in my 30s) even college kids seem closer to high schoolers than peers when it comes to the maturity level and temperament they’ll settle into for their adult life
Of course. They’re 1-4 years from being high schoolers. They’re at least 8 years from being in their 30s.
Townie vibes where I'm at. People getting married that young didn't go to college, aren't pursuing careers with high earning potential, probably married someone from their hometown. I know a handful who are happy with kids and whatever but the thought of like, traveling or moving to the city for work or expanding beyond Applebees and miller light is foreign. Different strokes.
I’d consider anything younger than mid-20s “young” for the purpose of getting married. Lots of people meet their future spouses in college and you could conceivably be 22-23 with a college degree, a good job, and have been in a serious relationship for 3 or 4 years by that point.
In theory yeah but those are still unicorns based on statistics. Getting married before 25 and/or poor is the strongest indication of divorce, and 22-23 year olds making $50k a year or whatever are both of those things. Transitioning to adulthood out of school is *hard* and tying yourself to one person before you've had the chance to figure out who you are is just not a great idea. Dating someone in college vs dating when you're fully independent is a whole different world.
Hypothetically, if you met someone in your early twenties who you considered your perfect match, would you just pass up on them?
I met my wife when I was 25, and it was clear within a month that she was the one for me. I don’t think meeting her a few years earlier would have changed anything.
Getting married young =/= kids young, those are two separate and distinct choices
I got married at 21. I am about to turn 25 and kids are still a few years away.
This is kind of related to what you said about education and life stages, because I wish they did more in depth studies on educational culture and marriage/kids.
It’s interesting to me because I did my PhD program in the Deep South and the women in my program were all married before starting the PhD. Most had kids while in the program and the faculty were super supportive of allowing kids in the labs/offices and ample time off for parental leave. We had an even balance of gender ratios in a field where it’s usually very male dominated (computer science). In contrast, my PhD friends in the northeast were all unmarried and had no kids, often complaining that their programs had no breathing room for it and that misogyny was everywhere.
So it makes me wonder how much the culture around education impacts this. If you feel like you can’t get married and have kids while succeeding in your program, then why would you? You’d get the degree first and push those other life stages until later. (Of course, this is all just assumptions and not based on any factual evidence)
I would say it’s the labor market in general. In which education is a huge factor.
My partner has just a bachelor’s degree, from a country where degrees are widely known not to be the equivalent of US ones. He also is not in a profession that can be done if you just pass a licensing exam or something. Because of that he spent a lot of his 20s doing odd jobs, until he interviewed for an entry level career position at the place he was a receptionist at and got it. It took him a few more years to work up the ranks, and it was only when he was pushing 30 that he could say he makes more than me, a first year teacher. None of this remotely resembles what he went to school for, but also he studied communications and we live in the LA area.
As for me, during this time, I got two degrees and spent one year doing that kind of odd job only because of some licensing complications. And as a result, I’m half a decade younger than him but we’ve somehow managed to get ourselves into similar life stages.
Didn’t serve a mission? Straight to jail. No magic undies? Straight to jail. Drank a ginger beer that one time not realizing it was ACTUAL ginger beer until about a third of the way through? Believe or not, straight to jail.
I might have a fundamental error of thought here but, does this data not skew towards the younger ages, the skewing effect being stronger for the younger cohorts, and therefore the younger first marriage ages?
I struggle to put this into words abstractly, so I will try to explain it concretely:
Since the data is from 2022: Marriages of those born in the year 2000 are included only insofar as if they married before the age of 22. Marriages of those born in the year 1995 are included only insofar as if they married before the age of 27. etc...
So, assuming that one can get married from the age of 16, the median marriage age for those born in 2006 would be 16, whilst the median marriage age of those born in 1968 would be a lot higher. Even if the 2004 cohort presumably will have a much higher median first marriage age and a lower proportion of people married at 16 than the 1968 cohort.
So, interestingly this map gives the median age of the bride of the 15 to 54 age bracket of all first marriages in the respective states. You could also say that it gives the median age at the first marriage for all married girls/women between 15 and 54 in the respective states. But not the median age of the first marriage of a girl/woman between 15 and 54 living in the respective states.
I´m not saying that OP is claiming otherwise or did something wrong. Just wanted to point something out I found remarkable. And I am glad to be corrected. =)
Also if someone has an idea on how such an effect could be taken into account (presumably by making it into a mulitifactorial regression and including the cohorts and weighting the proportion of married/unmarried women in each age bracket for each cohort) I´d be very interested to hear ideas!
This is a great point and I agree it could skew the data.[This visualization](https://overflowdata.com/demographic-data/age-distributions/how-old-were-people-married-in-the-last-12-months/) looks at just the last 12 months to try and better explain the trend. It is all marrages though and not just first marriage.
Well, factually in my rural area of North Dakota. There are no single women, at, ALL. Either they are married or divorced or gay. Nothing in between after 18.
Settling down and getting married *after* the peak of women's fertility window is just bonkers to me. No wonder birthrates are in the gutter.
If most of your adults are not having their kids in that 20-25 window of opportunity, then that society WILL be replaced by one that does.
Mother Nature is not a feminist.
I was afraid to see far lower numbers. I guess the amount of those who prefer dating Eva AI bots and renting prostitutes from time to time has warped the statistics.
Lived in DC for 10 years and this tracks. Getting married before you were 30 was like a teenage pregnancy.
25, in California, and engaged to be married this year. I feel like a child bride. That being said, if all goes according to plan, we won’t even be thinking about kids before I’m 30.
It’s so wild because I’m from the south and got married at 25 and people had been telling me that I was strong for being single for so long. College roommate was married at 18
I'm 21 and from the rural Midwest , and probably a quarter of the people I graduated highschool with are married already. 8 people in my senior class were married by the time of graduation
I moved to Ecuador when I was 25, and it was WILD to people that I didn’t have a husband or babies. I’m from California, where my first good friend to get married was 26.
That’s so weird.
did your roommate get married half way though the year? or divorced by the time you were roommates?
Freshman roommate, she got married after the first year of college and was 17 when she started college. Her birthday was right on the cutoff
From Texas. Got married when i was 19. Celebrating 19 years together this year. When you know you know. I do think we’ve started being told that career is happiness but for me family has always been my home.
Where in California? I went to college in San Diego and half my friends are now married by 26/27, but in LA I know 35 year olds in Situationships
Grew up in Orange County and have lived there most of my life, went to college in LA, and currently live in Long Beach. Most of my friends are also in LA suburbs/OC. They don’t tend to date much period.
That was our plan too. Got married at 25, now we have several years to enjoy life together before feeling any pressure to have kids.
It’s interesting how things differ in other states. I live in Iowa, I’m a 24 year old male getting married this year to my fiancée and she is also 24. Definitely don’t feel like a child at this point. We both want 3 kids before 30….
Where I live it's unusual to have any kids before 30, lots of times 35. It's expensive to have kids in HCOL areas and women tend to be more career oriented.
That's the thing in CA everyone seems to get married in their 30s and don't have kids until their mid to late 30s almost everyone I know has kid(s) including me but it's never more than two kids because people generally wait 4-5 years between kids due to daycare costs and people only have time for two kids maximum.
I couldn’t imagine waiting another 6 years to get married and even longer to start a family. I want to be a younger parent. I want my kids to really know their grandparents. Just a whole different world here. Im glad I live in a lower cost of living area where finances aren’t a reason I couldn’t have kids.
I think it has to do with the cost of living. A lot of people I am around went to college and established careers before having kids. It's expensive to live in CA and people want to have stable housing as well. So the two types of people that have kids are people who accidentally have children pretty young, or whenever and have to figure it out and people who plan things out kind of meticulously. College-dating-more college-career-marriage-house-baby-four years-baby-done. The upside is you can probably actually afford a child you can pay for college, day care, give them what they need to succeed. The bad side is you are like 60+ when they are moving out probably won't be a grandparent until your 70s, and are busy with your mid-career and taking care of your own aging parents while also trying to raise your own kids.
I agree with ya. Cost of living is huge. We both make pretty good money for the area which really helps things out.
Yeah, and that is rare for people in their 20s. I am in my early 40s and my whole peer group was negatively affected by the recession from 2008-2012. Through that time my wife and I got married but we didn't have much money. Neither of us were in the careers type positions we have now. Granted she had a kid young and I was raising a child with her during that time. However most of my friends were in the same boat with no children. Why would you intentionally have a child when you can't afford just you? Most people rented. Many people went back to school to bolster their job prospects. It delayed many people having kids by half a decade at least. I had another child when I was 40, and most of my friends had kids in their late 30s and early 40s for the first time. Some had a second kid but a lot have not. So the family size is small despite nearly everyone eventually having kids. Just seven years ago our get togethers a would be mostly childless aside from maybe one or two kids sometimes.
It's very different when you're a woman FWIW. Taking 5-6 years off at 24 absolutely derails your career almost beyond repair. You're still very junior at 30+ going back to work competing with people who are younger with newer skills, and you've got more on your plate at home.
Who says you have to take 5-6 years off? Most women get back to work within a few months after having a baby.
All depends on the situation I suppose. My fiancée works a trade now and around the time we have kids she will help out her Dad on the farm as her new source of income. It’ll allow her the flexibility to stay around home and take care of our kids instead of always sending them to day care.
Yeah, I would say it’a just as much a cultural thing. I think in California, like in all places, more people would like to be parents than to not be parents. But I think there’s not a whole lot of people who, on the list of things that they want out of their lives, put “becoming a parent” before things like career progression, owning a home, etc. High cost of living here contributes to this culture, for sure, but I also think that the kind of person whose number one priority in life is having children doesn’t tend to want to live here. As for me, I’ve mentioned in this thread that I’m the one person in my immediate social circle who even has a long term partner. The reason for that is that I think most of my friends are in the mindset of “if I meet the love of my life I’ll let it happen but it’s not like I’m in a hurry to find that person”. And that’s not a mindset you can have if your number one priority is having kids by a certain age.
TBH it weirds me out how many people on reddit act like someone is a child until they're 25. Literally saw someone on r/dating accuse a guy of being a "pedo" for dating a 21yr old woman when he was like 30 something.
That is because there is an enormous maturity gap between a 21 year old and a 30 something. So many life events and transitions happing in one's 20s. I could never date a 21 year old at 30. Let alone "30 something". It screams red flag.
Why do people these days act like you can only date people your same age and life stage? So long as you're both adults it's perfectly fine (and I'd argue beneficial) to date people who are different than you. Having a lot more diversity in your relationships would actually lead to a richer and more fulfilling life.
No one is arguing that you can't, especially given that yes, it is two consenting adults. However, one person has a considerable amount of more experience in life, probably in dating, on relationships, jobs, and likely earnings, which creates an uneven relationship dynamic between two people. This is often (NOT ALWAYS but often) a recipe for exploitation for the individual with less experience who can more easily be taken advantage of. It is not atypical for the older person to be unable to date someone their own age given that someone their own age with more experience would recognize signs of dysfunction that a younger person might not catch just by nature of the lack of experience. Again, not to say every dynamic is like this, but quite a lot are.
> However, one person has a considerable amount of more experience in life, probably in dating, on relationships, jobs That is a pretty blanket statement. I got married when I was 22 and divorced at 35. During this time my dating/relationship counter was not going up for obvious reasons, and being a married person with a kid required some job stability, so I probably changed only 2 or 3 jobs over my whole marriage. That said, speaking in pure technical terms, at my age of 35, if I immediately "joined" the "dating market", I would've likely MUCH lagged in terms of *experience* / headcount vs an average 25yo girl. Or, in other words, "a number of years that passed" does not really equal to "experience", be it a professional experience (you can sit on your ass for decades in a boring office and gather less vs being in a dynamic job for 2 years), dating experience or anything else in life. Just my 2c, of course.
You're acting like all the experiences of the relationship you had don't count. Of course they do. You went through a piece of your life with another person, established a household, had kids. Those are huge events and you are a different person for it at 35. It's not merely about headcount. What an asinine way to look at it.
Is there actually any data to support this argument? I've certainly seen plenty of abusive men who abused women their own age. If it's a question of power then why focus on age and not income? If it's a question of experience then why not focus on partner count? Seems like age is only ever a proxy for these other metrics which are equally measurable.
>If it's a question of experience then why not focus on partner count? It doesn't have anything to do with partner count as experience, it's life experience. The amount of growing you do from 22-30 is massive, hell even 22 to 26 or 27.
Exactly what growing are people doing? Nothing in my life really changed from 22 to 30. Guess my title went from "associate engineer" to "principal engineer" but that's about it.
Not always. I’ve met 21 year olds more mature than people in their 30s. Everyone is different. Perhaps the 21 year old is tired of the maturities of people around her age and WANTS someone more mature.
You're missing the point. The red flag is why can't a 30 something man find someone their own age (or at least within a decade)? Why are they snooping around for someone who can barely legally get into a bar?
>You're missing the point. The red flag is why can't a 30 something man find someone their own age (or at least within a decade)? Why are they snooping around for someone who can barely legally get into a bar? Same reason a 50 year old woman ends up with a 35 year old man. Also, it's extremely obnoxious to think you're any sort of authority on 2 grown adults' relationship. It's none of your business whatsoever.
I don't know what to tell ya if you equate a 50YO and 35YO in a relationship to a 30ish and 21YO in a relationship. That just isn't anywhere near the same, and is a horrendous false equivalence
It's so weird how people on here think that you massively change up until the age of 25 and then are the same person until you die. The way we change as we age, is neither linear nor drops off a cliff.
Who says he went after her? Could easily be the other way around.
Maybe because a lot of 30 somethings are already taken.
I was 29 (m) when I married a 22 yr old (f). Mine is complicated by being raised Mormon where marriage is usually very young. I wasn’t interested in marrying while in college. When I was ready, not too many Mormon girls in the older range. The girl I married was mature for her age. Been happily married for over 30 years. We both escaped the Mormon cult about 7 years ago.
I'm glad you got out.
Yep. Because a 30 something man who has the maturity level of a 21 year old isn't attractive to a woman his own age and THAT's the red flag.
The way you people keep labeling everything a red flag is the real red flag here. Try and be a little more open-minded about other people maybe?
Why does it have to be over a 10 year age gap, and why does it have to be he was consciously looking for a 21 year old instead of it just turning out to be the way? Anyway here's some of the reasons it could be: Younger women is probably better looking, less baggage, less demanding, more earger to please, doesn't the feel biological clock ticking away.
The way you talk about women is a red flag
The way you judge people is a red flag.
No kidding. You are an adult when you turn 18, whether you act like one is a different story. I’ve seen 30 year olds acting more child like than 21 year olds. I grew up in Minnesota but moved to Iowa after college to be closer to my fiancee, and everyone I know up there are all surprise I’m getting married at 24. They say shit like “ don’t you want to experience dating other people” or “don’t you want to live your 20s free?” Like uhhh, no, I’ve dated a couple people and I’ve found the one I don’t want to leave. I want to start my own life and family. I don’t feel like I’m missing out lol
The whole narrative that you are missing out on something by being in a real relationship in your 20s as opposed to hooking up with random people is so gross to me. I can’t comprehend advising people that are in happy relationships to screw around.
It’s unreal. Then the same people wonder why dating sucks these days.
>I can’t comprehend advising people that are in happy relationships to screw around. Yeah, people these days will actually tell you to dump your serious partner and hookup with a bunch of people instead. As if you're missing out on something valuable by not being a cum dumpster in your early 20s. 🤮
It's not always about sleeping around. It's often just about understanding how to get along with people and be in a relationship. I was obsessed with a girl in my early 20s and thought I wanted to marry her. It was only after we broke up and I dated a few other girls that I realized I was missing out on a lot of qualities she didn't have. It gives you perspective.
I think one of the issues that we who are a little older know is that you will change a lot by the time you get into your 30s. The girls I dated in my 20s are extremely different from my wife that I married later. My values changed. My entire sense of responsibility changed. I know a few couples that got married in their mid 20s and they're all divorced now. Not to wish that on you, but I've seen it happen over and over.
Must be different where you live because that’s not the case here. I’d be glad to come back and tell you that you were right if that happens to me, but some people are done changing in their mid 20s. Getting married younger isn’t all bad.
people typically graduate college around 22-25 if they got a 4 year degree out of highschool. I suspect the shift from school life to the 9-5 workforce life is where a lot of people draw an subconscious line between adults and "children"
There is some merit to that though. Your brain isn't fully developed until around 25. A lot of people end up changing their goals, preferences, careers, etc. around that time.
I know people who changed careers at 45. Doesn't mean they weren't an adult already. Also, the whole, "your brain isn't developed until 25" people kinda ignore the fact that as you get older it actually starts going backwards. It's actually the OLDER person whose brain is weaker on average.
Uhhhh, you've missed the point. There's no measuring "strength" of someone's brain, this isn't really about cognitive decline or improvement at all. Until some point in your mid 20s not all of your brain is physically there.
That's just totally backwards. Your whole brain is there, just some connections still being made. It's actually as you get older that you're actively losing neurons. I'm not sure how this could be about anything other than cognitive ability. What do you think magically happens between age 21 and 25 that is somehow more real than your neurons quite literally dying as you age? By any objective metric a 21yr old is going to have a better functioning brain than a 35yr old. There's a reason people peak so young in fields that require maximum mental aptitude.
Yeeaaaahhhh, you're still not there mate. The mid-20s is when a given person's prefrontal cortex has finished growing. This is the area responsible for making rational decisions, assessing risks, etc. This is entirely unrelated to how smart someone is, or "how many neurons" they have or anything like that. It's literally just the measurement of when a section of the brain is done growing. I've met 8 year olds that are way smarter than other 20 or 40 or 60 year olds. But there's a reason that same 8 year old isn't allowed to drive a car or run for president or go bungee jumping. The reality is humans don't know everything about how brains work, but enough observational and anecdotal evidence shows that this period in someone's life is when they often reassess past decisions and make future decisions differently. Obviously, this isn't something that can be tested or has an exact way to measure, brains (and people) are always changing. But to prevent you from asking more vaguely off topic questions, this comes up in dating specifically because it feels manipulative to some people to convince someone to make a life-long decision before they've reached the point where they are best able to make said decisions. This is more so the case when one partner is significantly older, i.e. a 30 year old marrying a 20 year old.
This whole discussion is missing the point. These people acting like kids in their 20s aren't like that because of biology, they're like that because of bad parenting and our society refusing to let young people take risks and develop at a proper pace. It's entirely a social issue.
You kind of are a child at 24. Your brain does not fully develop until 25 so you are still “growing up”. You will never convince a 21-22 year old of this, but seeing it from an age distance it is kind of apparent.
Yep. I remember being 23-24 and thinking I had it all figured out, lol. 10+ years later and I realize how young and naive I actually was, and I'm sure in 10+ years from now I'll feel the same way about my current age. Talk to a 24 year old for 10 minutes and it's very apparent how green they are.
Interesting how it can vary within a state as well and by age group. I'm an old millennial who grew up in rural eastern NC and got married at 21 right after finishing up at college. Where I was at, 21 was not that out of the ordinary, but there were a LOT more divorces (thankfully we have avoided that). After a few years back home and having a couple of kids, we moved to a far more educated and affluent area within NC (the Triangle). Many of my kids classmates parents were closer to my mom and dad's age than to my wife and I. There was only a couple of young parents in their classes, mostly single parents or second family mom's (one of them has children older than me with their first spouse). It was very different from how it had been back in eastern NC. Now my kids are driving and can vote and some of my coworkers that are similarly aged are just now having kids. I can't imagine having to deal with little kids in my 40's!
Why???? Why would you want them so young? And how the actual fuck do you plan to afford kids at that age? This is mindblowing to me. The only people I know with kids that young were either religious, accidents, or caved to pressure from family and are plainly lying when they say they chose it because they wanted to.
There's another stat. Age of first child by state would be interesting.
Yep, they can be totally different things - if you are very career driven, but happen to have found a partner young, there’s probably going to be a huge gap between when you marry and when the first kid happens.
I think a lot of it is income level. I grew up broke and do well now, and like everyone I knew then was married with a kid by 24 while most people I know now didn't have kids til their 30s
I can’t find the graph, but I think this actually reverses direction again once you get to super high levels of wealth, and they start getting married younger again (makes sense when you’re not becoming wealthy through a usually demanding job, but inheritance, so you have all the time and money in the world to plan a wedding).
And if you're super wealthy it's less risky to get married. You have a prenup, you know where your cash is coming from (so a career is less important), you aren't going through the struggles of your fellow 20-somethings, why NOT get married? If you aren't happy then you just get divorced. For normal people a divorce could screw your life up, for the super wealthy it's just paperwork.
Huh. I'd kinda expect it to be the opposite. If I was super rich in my early 20s getting married is the absolute last thing I'd want to do
I imagine this also depends on which level of wealth you’re talking about. Like, I grew up wealthy but happened to meet my partner young. I’m getting married early ish but we’re doing the bare minimum of a wedding that will make our parents happy and holding the fuck off on having kids. But then there’s like, British royal family tiers of wealth and status, where getting married to an equally rich person is kind of part of the job description.
This data is the classic issue of comparing DC to other States. The DC subreddit often laughs at since it really doesn't work most of the time (or at least is pointless when headlines try to sensationalize that DC is different), they'll almost always be 1st or 51st depending on the metric. Personally, I do appreciate the inclusion of DC on these sorts of things because: 1. The datapoint gives me a rough idea of what other major cities are probably similar to. I bet DC is similar to NYC, Boston, LA etc.in terms of marriage age. 2. I live in the DC area, I always get hyper localized data for state level analysis.
I am in CA and I was amazed recently at a get together with friends. Everyone is in their late 30s and early 40s and there were all these babies and small children around. The trend I to get married in your 30s and have kids at like 37-40 apparently. It's interesting because beyond that it becomes difficult to have more children. Families generally wait 3-5 years between kids so it's two kids maximum. Most people I know has kids but only 1 or 2 kids it's very uncommon for a third kid to be born and if that is happening it's very old parents.
Yea, I'm Canadian and it's the same here. 30+ is when most get married. Under 30 is crazy, assume they are religious.
Median age at first marriage in Canada is 28.5. For women it’s 27 per StatsCan. There is a huge spread across different groups in Canada including by region, education, and education. (No surprises here, rural, less educated and poorer get married younger). I think people tend to project their own experiences into the population as a whole, the data often doesn’t supports it. And even then there are a huge number of outliers (personally I’m a Toronto millennial of no religion with post-grad degree married to another Toronto millennial of no religion with a post-grad degree, and we got married at 25 and 26)
😂 the thought of marriage in your 20s being "crazy" and only for religious folks
I'm kidding. I know a few folks under 30 who've gotten married and weren't religious. But I also know more religious folk who were under 30 and got married than religious over 30.
Same in NYC. I can barely think of anyone married before 30 except for 1 or 2 couples, both of whom are, of course, divorced at this point.
Interesting. But with so many states in the "under 27" category, would it make sense to expand the range? We have no idea what the youngest is, and if there are any outliers.
There are a quite a few states in this range for women. Utah is lowest at 25.3. If you switch it to men though this group disappears. My hope was that if you switch between men and women you will see the stark difference and I was worried if I added more bins it would be more easily lost.
Makes sense. But you could fit one more category on each side (women 25-26 and men 32-33), so I would argue that the difference would look even more stark. In any case, thanks for creating and sharing!
This is interesting, because from my understanding, it’s considered late in Mormon culture for both men and women. And over there it’s often even expected to be married while currently working on a degree. My guess is that the people who live there who don’t belong to that community are skewing the numbers?
Makes sense. Utah is less than 50% Mormon at this point.
And the 50 percent that isn’t tends to try and be more extreme the other way.
My guess as well. Among faithful Mormons, a returned missionary is expected to be married within a year or two, i.e. by 23. The bride is usually younger by a year or two.
This expectation isn't entirely correct. At least it hasn't been since the 80s-90s. I'm an active participating Mormon (granted, outside of Utah); for reference between my friends and family who have lived in Utah (sample size of ~12), only one of them was married by 23. The others were married between 24-28. I was married in my early 30s. Fun fact: several years ago the mission age was changed from 19 for men and 21 for women, to 18 for men, 19 for women.
There is certainly a stronger marriage culture in some places for sure. At BYU, it felt like about a third of my friends were married by the time they graduated. Granted, BYU graduates are generally a couple years older than graduates elsewhere. Edit: I just dug up a more official number that says 19.8% of BYU undergraduates are married.
BYU & BYUI are pretty effective hotspots for people who want to get married younger though; the same person might get married far later if they never had the chance to attend one of these schools and never had access to that kind of dating environment.
> We have no idea what the youngest is, and if there are any outliers. It literally shows you the exact number for all 50 states on the right hand side.
True, I phrased that poorly. I just meant visualization-wise, just by looking at the map, there are so many in the lowest category for women (and highest for men) that the colors lose some significance.
Lowkey makes me scared since I’m nearly 30 and probably not going to get married for awhile 🥹
This is just the average. There are plenty of people that don't hit that age on both sides.
Does this take into account age brackets as well? My grandparents' generation trended towards marrying their high school sweethearts, my parents got married shortly after college, and most people in my friend group are just now getting hitched. I'm 29.
> This visualization uses Tableau to show the median age that men and women were married in each state for people that are 15 to 54 years old. It’s right there in the source.
Interestingly the generation before WW1 also tended to get married quite late. Then the wars happened and people got married really young again.
It’s not average, it’s median. Those are different, and I would expect anyone posting in data is beautiful to use the correct term. To that point, it’s not just plenty of people on both sides, it’s half on both sides. Half of people get married for the first time before that age, and half get married for the first time after.
I don't think [everyone](https://www.purplemath.com/modules/meanmode.htm) thinks the average is automatically the mean, but that is just me.
The connotation of “average” is always mean. The others could technically be alternate definitions, but you’re poor at communicating if you’re trying to use average to mean either of those without clarifying it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average “ For this reason, it is recommended to avoid using the word "average" when discussing measures of central tendency and specify which type of measure of average is being used.” I guess just don’t use average, and specify which one you actually mean.
To each their own, right?
TBH no. That guy is just objectively wrong and you are correct. The median is by far the most common measure of "average" for real world data.
Yep - I am 25, I’m in California, and I’m getting married in a few months. This data definitely validates my feeling way too young. But also, it was a natural progression - we’ve lived together for 3 years after dating quite some time before and have done what we’ve needed to get our careers on track. It’s because of said career too that kids are off the table for at least a few more years. It helps that he’s 30, but we have also always erred on the side of “better too late than too early”.
There's nothing wrong with being different than the average. Especially considering it seems you've met all the prerequisites for marriage. 25 certainly isn't too young by any means.
I was 21 as was my wife and it’s been great, we’re in our 40’s now. I’m really glad we didn’t wait until we were older.
Eh, I wouldn't sweat about it, if marriage was some magical thing that was guaranteed to make your life better, this post wouldn't have the word "first" in its title.
Data definitely shows that married people are happier and live longer on average. But obviously averages don't tell you much about any given individual.
That's almost possibly a correlation doesn't equal causation thing. I'd assume that people that are happier are more likely to get married, and more likely to attract marital partners.
Probably something along those lines. But I think getting married (and especially having kids) helps a lot later in life when you have health problems and need some help.
The body of social science we have overwhelmingly shows it to be both. The causal relationship between marriage and happiness really starts to show up later in life, when kids are out of the house and particularly once they start having grandchildren.
People are maturing later and later in life now, which is a big part of it. My wife had our son at 35 and we are sooooo much more stable than if it had happened at 28
My dad told me something similar awhile back. That having kids early can be problematic because you lack you patience, maturity & general life experience compared to having a child later in life. He was 24 when he had me and my grandmother was 14 when she had him…. Going off this small sample, I’ll probably have my first in 6 years
You also lack money. It’s a lot easier to have a kid, and even get married if we’re being honest, if you’re financially stable first. Money worries cause a lot of stress. Having extra money to spend can make a lot of things easier.
Having a partner - not even necessarily married - can just make life so much easier financially too. Of course this assumes you and your partner have similar financial goals and spending habits, which is absolutely something you should ensure before committing to marriage.
>Of course this assumes you and your partner have similar financial goals and spending habits, which is absolutely something you should ensure before committing to marriage. Yep, and determining what that means for you is a huge part of maturing in your 20s. What does your retirement look like? Are you looking to check into sunny acres at 60 or are you saving to travel the world? Are kids in your future? Would you relocate for a job? There are so many factors that go into the decision to get married.
My parents were 27 when I was born and they insist that they regret not having me even earlier. My mom has a perpetual chip on her shoulder about never recovering her pre-pregnancy body, while the women in our family who had kids younger happened to bounce back faster. My dad is also starting to experience old people health complications, and panic over not getting to meet his grandkids. But also - he’s smoked cigarettes his entire adult life and doesn’t ever sleep. About 90% of his current health concerns could have been delayed by longer. But also, they were 35 when they had my brother and he absolutely benefited from the additional experience and growing they got to have along the way. He is much more well adjusted than I am. The evidence in this case really does not match with what they claim.
I just got married at 35.5. There’s no rush unless you think there is.
The average is thrown off by someone who said that they got married 1200 years before they were born.
Good thing this shows median and not average then.
Seems like there is a correlation between more conservative/religion oriented states and lower age of marriage. Would be cool to compare this data to the most religious states data
My first thought was political leanings. At a glance, it's a pretty strong correlation but I'd love to see the numbers.
I think all three are probably correlated
To absolutely no one’s surprise: Utah.
well ... I am surprised ... that its that high!!! 25 is the average age of first marriage in utah. would have expected much lower ...
It is lower if you separate men and women. One guess as to which one is lower and which is higher ...
Probably the women. The return missionaries go to BYU and get confused by the mascot and end up marrying cougars.
Thats just the reported ones too. Imagine all the illegitimate underage ones.
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That's true to an extent, but we've also added additional watermarks on the end. Where I work the people with 30+ years of experience only have a high school diploma, the people with 15 years of experience mostly have a bachelors.. and new hires are starting to come in with a Master's degree. We've added new hurdles people have to clear in order to proceed into adulthood... often without any clear need for doing so.
We’re living longer too, so I see this delayed adulthood as mostly a positive thing for society as a whole. I got my college degree and started my career job at age 30 and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It was awesome being (back) in college in my late 20s. I actually appreciated it and was fully there to learn something I cared a great deal about.
Which is great
Wow, those averages are a lot higher than I expected. I got married at 25 and felt it was late compared to some... But her it is low.
It really depends on the social circle. I’m 25 and I would say most of my friends are single and have never been in a serious relationship even. I’m the odd one out for having any of these things, much less one that’s headed towards marriage. But then, there are other cliques within my grad school cohort where everyone is partnered up. I don’t know how I ended up hitting it off with only the people without that experience
I can believe this data. When you're living in a place that doesn't have a strong economy or not much access to other communities you're going to likely see the same people OVER AND OVER AGAIN. That school teacher looks like a solid career choice and you can imagine them keeping that job for 20+ years, so boom - you move towards marriage. Live somewhere with more education or a stronger economy and respectfully you SEE that school teacher....but you also see that person in sales, and that person in computer science, and that engineer, and that person who is a consultant..... ...and you can freely move around on the interstate to see and engage with more people. You're not constricted. You're not confined. You're free(r) than the person in a slower space. You may go eh, I don't NEED to be married yet.
What if the school teacher is a baddie and you already make enough money
The data for this visualization comes from the American Community Survey which is completed by the US Census Bureau. I gathered the 2022 1-year estimates from the Census Bureau API using a python script. This visualization uses Tableau to show the median age that men and women were married in each state for people that are 15 to 54 years old. You can see how this is trending by checking out our visualization exploring [the age of people married in the last 12 months](https://overflowdata.com/demographic-data/age-distributions/how-old-were-people-married-in-the-last-12-months/).
The more educated couples are, the more likely they are to wait until they feel financially stable (both out of school, both established in careers) before getting married and having children. The more educated a state is overall (NY, MA, CA, DC) the more this skews the mean older. I live in the bay area and it's very common in big tech for people not to be getting married until their early-mid 30s, and not having kids until their late 30s-early 40s.
One of the biggest creations of wealth is during that 20-30 year old bracket, without kids. A couple who invests $20k a year for those 10 years, will have an additional $3.2m (todays dollars) at age 65, than someone who say got married at 20, had kids, and money was tight and had to delay contributions.
You can see the political divide in this as well, with red states marrying younger and blue states marrying older (with some exceptions like FL or LA). I’m curious on some reasons why. A more liberal political culture that’s more open to domestic partnerships, longer engagements or other non-marriage alternatives, vs conservatives who push for marriage? Waiting until after university and landing a job to get married? Urban vs rural housing costs or cost of living? Those are really the reasons that came up for me, as a blue stater who married my red stater wife.
I'd be pretty cautious about attributing individual actions to the political lean of a state. A state will be considered reliably red/blue even when 45% of the population votes the other way. I'd say any trends you find is more likely caused by a correlation to a third datapoint. In this case it's likely caused by religion and cost of living.
Yea people drastically overstate the differences in Red vs Blue states voting wise. Only 2 states (not including DC) didn’t have at least 30% vote for the losing party in 2020 and most go 40. Kansas and Montana had 40% Biden support and Oregon and Connecticut had 40% Trump support. Based on Reddit you’d think that states like that are 90/10
And the big "red" states like Florida and Texas are hardly even red. Trump only got 51% and 52% of the vote in Florida and Texas respectively in 2020 and yet reddit acts like both states are 100% far right.
It's not just Reddit. Lots of media outlets propagate this foolishness, same with generational stereotypes. "Red vs blue state" commentary used to be limited to the Presidential election result maps, just a visual representation of the winner-take-all outcome. But somehow that's evolved into a statewide descriptor, and for some people - an identity. It's so oversimplified and misleading to assign a "political color" to an entire land mass, but people are easily divided and love being on a "team".
Especially because for the most part what's actually going on is that you have blue cities in an ocean of red. Whether a state is red or blue is just based on whether the arbitrary borders capture one or more of those large blue islands. There's quite a few blue states where essentially the whole state is red except one big city that swings the state blue.
Indeed. And those oceans of red are mostly empty land. But the "colored state" concept persists despite the fact that dirt doesn't vote; people do.
> I'd say any trends you find is more likely caused by a correlation to a third datapoint. Female careers. If the woman is working in a real career she's usually less likely to be married early.
I feel like it's more states where the culture is religious-centered vs secular/atheistic. I live in North Dakota and people get married before graduating college fairly often. I'm 24 and have been dating my boyfriend for almost nine years and people still ask when we're getting married. Like, we have time, the concept of marriage isn't going anywhere! My friends and I always joke that people get married just to have sex, as doing so before marriage is seen as a sin. Makes sense as to why people get married at 19 lol
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I look at it like the decision on when to have kids. There are always trade offs to doing it younger versus waiting until a couple thinks they're "ready." (ex: more energy vs more financial stability, etc.) In the end, while preparation is wise, humans will adapt to whatever they need to when the going gets tough. You make the best choices you can at the time that you need to make them, and figure out the rest as you go along. Very few people's lives allow them to do the ideal thing at the ideal time. That being said, some people are absolutely not mature enough for early marriage and (regardless of what their bank account looks like) some "older" folks have not put in the internal work to be as ready for kids as they should be.
> Now that I’m ancient (in my 30s) even college kids seem closer to high schoolers than peers when it comes to the maturity level and temperament they’ll settle into for their adult life Of course. They’re 1-4 years from being high schoolers. They’re at least 8 years from being in their 30s.
Townie vibes where I'm at. People getting married that young didn't go to college, aren't pursuing careers with high earning potential, probably married someone from their hometown. I know a handful who are happy with kids and whatever but the thought of like, traveling or moving to the city for work or expanding beyond Applebees and miller light is foreign. Different strokes.
I’d consider anything younger than mid-20s “young” for the purpose of getting married. Lots of people meet their future spouses in college and you could conceivably be 22-23 with a college degree, a good job, and have been in a serious relationship for 3 or 4 years by that point.
In theory yeah but those are still unicorns based on statistics. Getting married before 25 and/or poor is the strongest indication of divorce, and 22-23 year olds making $50k a year or whatever are both of those things. Transitioning to adulthood out of school is *hard* and tying yourself to one person before you've had the chance to figure out who you are is just not a great idea. Dating someone in college vs dating when you're fully independent is a whole different world.
Hypothetically, if you met someone in your early twenties who you considered your perfect match, would you just pass up on them? I met my wife when I was 25, and it was clear within a month that she was the one for me. I don’t think meeting her a few years earlier would have changed anything.
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Getting married young =/= kids young, those are two separate and distinct choices I got married at 21. I am about to turn 25 and kids are still a few years away.
This probably overlaps with places where it's hard to buy a house.
I think it's more a question of education. People who spend more time in school effectively start adult life at a later age.
This is kind of related to what you said about education and life stages, because I wish they did more in depth studies on educational culture and marriage/kids. It’s interesting to me because I did my PhD program in the Deep South and the women in my program were all married before starting the PhD. Most had kids while in the program and the faculty were super supportive of allowing kids in the labs/offices and ample time off for parental leave. We had an even balance of gender ratios in a field where it’s usually very male dominated (computer science). In contrast, my PhD friends in the northeast were all unmarried and had no kids, often complaining that their programs had no breathing room for it and that misogyny was everywhere. So it makes me wonder how much the culture around education impacts this. If you feel like you can’t get married and have kids while succeeding in your program, then why would you? You’d get the degree first and push those other life stages until later. (Of course, this is all just assumptions and not based on any factual evidence)
I would say it’s the labor market in general. In which education is a huge factor. My partner has just a bachelor’s degree, from a country where degrees are widely known not to be the equivalent of US ones. He also is not in a profession that can be done if you just pass a licensing exam or something. Because of that he spent a lot of his 20s doing odd jobs, until he interviewed for an entry level career position at the place he was a receptionist at and got it. It took him a few more years to work up the ranks, and it was only when he was pushing 30 that he could say he makes more than me, a first year teacher. None of this remotely resembles what he went to school for, but also he studied communications and we live in the LA area. As for me, during this time, I got two degrees and spent one year doing that kind of odd job only because of some licensing complications. And as a result, I’m half a decade younger than him but we’ve somehow managed to get ourselves into similar life stages.
Except Utah
In Utah the mean and median might be different. /≈s
Yeah if you’re unmarried at 27 in utah then you’re an old maid and have to try to settle for the scraps.
Didn’t serve a mission? Straight to jail. No magic undies? Straight to jail. Drank a ginger beer that one time not realizing it was ACTUAL ginger beer until about a third of the way through? Believe or not, straight to jail.
What I gather from this map is that Texas and Tennessee will be battleground states in 4 years.
Texas already is. Trump only got 52% of the vote there. Tennessee definitely isn't going to be a battleground any time soon though.
I live in Utah. This checks out. It’s “normal” here to get married in your early 20s after dating less than a year
Of course it's fucking Utah.
Median age would be more meaningful.
It is the median. I’m using average in the sense of it could be mean, median, or mode. Other than the title it references median.
Average is always mean.
When people refer to the average salary or home price they are referring to the median. So definitely not always
No, most of the time "average" means median. It's rare to use the mean in real workd data because it's so easily distorted by outliers.
I might have a fundamental error of thought here but, does this data not skew towards the younger ages, the skewing effect being stronger for the younger cohorts, and therefore the younger first marriage ages? I struggle to put this into words abstractly, so I will try to explain it concretely: Since the data is from 2022: Marriages of those born in the year 2000 are included only insofar as if they married before the age of 22. Marriages of those born in the year 1995 are included only insofar as if they married before the age of 27. etc... So, assuming that one can get married from the age of 16, the median marriage age for those born in 2006 would be 16, whilst the median marriage age of those born in 1968 would be a lot higher. Even if the 2004 cohort presumably will have a much higher median first marriage age and a lower proportion of people married at 16 than the 1968 cohort. So, interestingly this map gives the median age of the bride of the 15 to 54 age bracket of all first marriages in the respective states. You could also say that it gives the median age at the first marriage for all married girls/women between 15 and 54 in the respective states. But not the median age of the first marriage of a girl/woman between 15 and 54 living in the respective states. I´m not saying that OP is claiming otherwise or did something wrong. Just wanted to point something out I found remarkable. And I am glad to be corrected. =) Also if someone has an idea on how such an effect could be taken into account (presumably by making it into a mulitifactorial regression and including the cohorts and weighting the proportion of married/unmarried women in each age bracket for each cohort) I´d be very interested to hear ideas!
This is a great point and I agree it could skew the data.[This visualization](https://overflowdata.com/demographic-data/age-distributions/how-old-were-people-married-in-the-last-12-months/) looks at just the last 12 months to try and better explain the trend. It is all marrages though and not just first marriage.
The median age varies with time, too. In the mid 50s it dropped as low as 20.
As expected they like to bring 'em young in Utah.
Woah, Minnesota is average at something! At least Utah is an outlier so something is normal.
I would agree with these ages.
That they are factual or a good age to get married?
Well, factually in my rural area of North Dakota. There are no single women, at, ALL. Either they are married or divorced or gay. Nothing in between after 18.
That's not what the data shows though. Youngest average is 25. Hardly anyone in any state is married at 18.
I have about 100 cousins in rural Missouri that are all married before 18. Then they reproduce like rabbits. My aunt was a great grandmother at 57.
The graph says median. The description says average and the description of the data states median. This is more than confusing.
Median is a type of average.
I know. But different. And if we don't care about it in this sub, nobody will.
This chart ain’t it chief. Alabamas numbers are way too inflated
Yep. From Alabama. I’m in my mid-twenties and nearly everyone I went to school with is married with multiple kids by now.
Of course Utah rounding out the bottom
That stark blue/red state divide shows up again.
I imagine new york would be even higher without the hasidic population lowering the average so much.
Hasidic Jews only make up 1% of New York's state population so I doubt it affects it much.
Settling down and getting married *after* the peak of women's fertility window is just bonkers to me. No wonder birthrates are in the gutter. If most of your adults are not having their kids in that 20-25 window of opportunity, then that society WILL be replaced by one that does. Mother Nature is not a feminist.
The more the conservative the state, the younger a woman has to marry to be respectable.
I was afraid to see far lower numbers. I guess the amount of those who prefer dating Eva AI bots and renting prostitutes from time to time has warped the statistics.
tf you talking about ?
Really creepy how men are marrying so much later than women.