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Cultural Differences: Age "Landmarks" in your countries
Yesterday as I was doing my makeup trial for the wedding here in Spain, the esthetician commented: "But you're so young!"
People up here in the northern part of Spain/Basque Country in particular tend to start to think about getting married at age 30. At 26, I'm quite young. A friend just got engaged at 30 (he still doesn't have a real job) and his mom made the comment that she thinks they're too young. His fiancee is older than he is.
Because they get married later in life, babies tend to come when people are in their mid 30s as well.
This is all very different for me. I'm from a town where folks get married around 18-20 and have kids very soon after.
What are the norms where you are? When do people tend to get married? When do they start to have kids?
Re: Cultural Differences: Age "Landmarks" in your countries
I'm not entirely sure here. I know that if you want to get married before the age of 21 you need parental consent. Boys over 18 and girls over 16 may get married with parental permission. In one state muslims can get married younger than 16/18. Apparently this is supposed to reduce unmarried teen pregnancy.
The ethnic Malays (muslims) seem to get married young here, and the Chinese and Indian Malaysians get married later. Chinese and Indian Malays also tend to do better financially while the Malays tend to be pretty poor, and I kind of wonder how much age at time of marriage has to do with it.
It depends on where in Holland that you live.
The only constant I see is either once you have a long term relationship but definitely after you get married the baby should follow. I can not speak for the whole of Holland but I remeber when we got married I was 26 and the first question I got asked is when will you stop working or work less and have babies?
Stateside was kind of a mix. In my actual hometown a lot of girls either got knocked up in school, or had/wanted to get out of their parents house at 18. No kidding but I had under 18 girl classmates who were already married. There were some interesting social issues in that area. Just getting through high school was considered a big enough accomplishment and the schools averaged a 66% graduation rate.
Go 20 miles out and the social setting changed. It was expected to finish college and work for at least a couple years. So 24ish for girls, 27ish for guys though around 30 would be considered normal. I was 26. No one was saying it was too early. Can't recall any of my friends who were told it was too early in the 24-35 range. If anything some were told that at 30 they were pushing it to have a relationship, get married, be married for a bit, and then have kids before getting too old.
I'm curious if a 30-year old not having their first real job yet is considered normal there.
Here people normally get married in their 30's after living together and a lot of the time building a house. I got married at 26 so everyone thought I was young, DH was 36 and he was considered the right age. Most of his friends are still not married or have just gotten married.
Babies are less of a thought here. Luxembourg gives you money when you have a baby, they are trying to promote procreation.
"Children" here are looked after much into what we would consider adulthood. MIL did DH's groceries until I moved in with him and cleaned the apartment until we moved to our house.
Once I got married and had E most of my friends were already married and had a baby, some of them were working on number 2.
Among the people we know here, up until June, H and I were the only couple who was actually married.
I find people here have the baby first, then get married or not. The girls are all around 30 - 35 and the guys around 35 - 40.
I have a question. At what age do people begin to PACS? Most of the French people I know are PACSing and I am wondering where that falls into the framework given that it's not an option in most of the rest of the world.
I can't speak for all of OZ, but up here, they seem to start having babies YOUNG! Like go to school until you can legally leave (16 yrs) and then start having the kids, married or not. Marriage doesn't seem to be a priority as you can now register Defacto marriages after living together for a year.
Australia does pay $5000 per kid.
Considering "youth" unemployment is around 40%, I imagine so.
It's totally ok to live at home with your parents until you get married - so many are at home until they're in their 30s. It's hard for me to fathom.
Hard for me to fathom, too. But with unemployment rates like that I'd probably fathom it pretty quickly.
I'm not sure, the only people I know who did the PACS just got married last month. And they had their kid before they got PACS. She was 29 and he was 37 when they did it.
I don't know much about PACS, isn't it pretty much the same as being considered common law?
Unfortunately it seems to be fairly normal from what I've seen in Madrid. A lot of people study into their 30s (like multiple degrees, not getting masters and really doing something productive) and since everyone lives with their parents until they move out to live with their boyfriend/girlfriend when they buy a house...well, there's no pressure to have a real job.
30 seems to be the minimum age to get married in Spain and not be considered young. I think 26 in the US is not considered that young to get married, but here my DH was 26 when we got married and everyone thought he was such a baby. Don't get me started on what was said to me!
Most people I know start to get married in their late 20s early 30s.
My H's friends are just starting to get married and he is 29.
Bio
I'm going to be considered the worst mother ever. At 18, when my children will be able to legally work, mean mom here will be suggesting they find a job. It seems to be totally ok to just live at home and slack off for a while.
as they would say here, tienes un par de huevos. I look up to you!
I don't think it's an issue of national differences. It is absolutely unheard of in my (Southern California native) or DH's (West Country England native) circles to get married at 18-20. It's almost unheard of for people to get married before turning 30. That means the vast majority of our friends are in their mid-30's when they had kids.
That clearly doesn't mean people don't get married and have kids when they're super young in England or So Cal, but it's not an across the board sort of thing.
Yup. I grew up 30 miles outside of LA (so LA 'burbs) and many of my high school friends were married by 20. Hell, I had a friend who had a baby, got married, and was divorced by like 22 or something ridiculous. Granted, this partially has to do with the uber religious, pseudo cult that my high school belonged to, but I think marriage and kids has a lot more to do with how religious people are and their socio-economic status than where they are in the country, although I do think that plays some role.
Where I lived in the US (St.Louis) it was very common to get married in your early to mid 20's and have children soon after. There were some girls, not married and had children in their teens or early 20's but not many from the high school I went to (it was Catholic, this might have played a role in it).
If you go 10 miles west though is East St.Louis or inner city St.Louis, where I imagine the statistics to be very different. In the early 1970's my mom worked as a NICU nurse at an inner city East St.Louis hospital, she said it was uncommon for girls as young as 15 to be having babies and it wasn't not uncommon for mothers and daughters to be in labor during similar time periods, she there was even a time when there was a grandmother and granddaughter, both in labor, a week apart from each other. I'm not sure about marriage rates in the inner cities though.
I see what you're saying, but in the case of Spain I can say that in most rural areas as well as cosmopolitan ones the figures are generally the same. Live at home until early 30s-- buy a house and move in with long-term SO -- possibly get married-- have kids. If you don't want to have kids people usually just don't get married and might do something similar to a civil union called "Pareja de Hecho." I know in the US it varies a ton from area to area, but I truly believe that it's basically the same all over Spain as far as typical age to marry or have kids.
Ditto that it's cultural, not just dependent on the economy. A lot of my friends and cousins in Miami (who are all Cuban) moved back in with their parents after college and lived there until their mid-to-late 20s, usually moving out because they were getting married or relocating. To me, this very much feels like a cultural norm, not a financial thing.
And ditto pps that expected ages for marriage & procreation can vary greatly within a country. I am usually one of the youngest among many of the mommy groups I hang out with in NYC and I'm 35. But I have lots of friends in other parts of the US my age whose kids are quite a bit older than my DD.