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Getting married and having kids at young ages

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MSBKyle
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15 Apr 2015, 11:06 pm

Why does everyone keep getting married and having kids at such a young age? It seems like every time I am on Facebook I see engagement statuses and people posting that they are pregnant or they post pictures of their babies. All of these Facebook friends are people that I went to high school with so they are in their late teens or early 20s. I cannot imagine taking on the responsibility of a child or being married. I have never been in a relationship before and no I am not jealous of these people. I am actually glad it is them and not me. How is anyone financially ready to be a parent in his or her teens or early 20s? How is anyone mature enough at that age to be married and starting a family? I don't feel my age at all. I feel more like a young teenager like 13-15 than a 22 year old. Being married and having kids is something that I never want. Even if I did want those things, they would never happen for me anyway.



trollcatman
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15 Apr 2015, 11:23 pm

I think that mostly depends on where you live. I see the opposite, I'm in early 30s and most people my age I see are not having kids or getting married. It's likely a demographic issue, religious/not religious, rural/urban etc.



sly279
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15 Apr 2015, 11:45 pm

lots of 18-25 year old single mothers with 2-4 kids on dating sites. It is upsetting.



Lazar_Kaganovich
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16 Apr 2015, 12:37 am

MSBKyle wrote:
Why does everyone keep getting married and having kids at such a young age? It seems like every time I am on Facebook I see engagement statuses and people posting that they are pregnant or they post pictures of their babies. All of these Facebook friends are people that I went to high school with so they are in their late teens or early 20s. I cannot imagine taking on the responsibility of a child or being married. I have never been in a relationship before and no I am not jealous of these people. I am actually glad it is them and not me. How is anyone financially ready to be a parent in his or her teens or early 20s? How is anyone mature enough at that age to be married and starting a family? I don't feel my age at all. I feel more like a young teenager like 13-15 than a 22 year old. Being married and having kids is something that I never want. Even if I did want those things, they would never happen for me anyway.




I've noticed this too. For Americans from the GI generation(born in the 20s and came of age during WW2), getting married and having kids in your early 20s was common. As it was for most of human history. But the baby boomers and gen-Xers, the latter born from the mid 60s to the late 70s, decided to wait until their 30s to get married and sometimes even their 40s to have children(for women). And now, generation-Y, the millennial generation, particularly those born in the 80s and the 90s, are reversing that trend towards marrying and having kids much younger than our parents did.



Antharis
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16 Apr 2015, 2:13 am

This is as much of a growing trend as childless families nowadays.

It's all about what cultural values are like. To many women it's something you're taught you're supposed to want just because you're a woman and because kids are "SOOOOO CUTE". There isn't any emphasis on appreciating the enormity of what it is to create life and to bring it to this world, or self examination regarding why you want to do this (would the planet be overpopulated if this was appreciated to the extent it should be?) . In fact it's almost as if you shouldn't think about such lofty things.

Couple that with social media, which gives children an added appeal as fashion accessories/clickbait, and you have all the motivation anyone could ever need to start popping crotchspawns.



halleluhwah
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16 Apr 2015, 2:19 am

i was born when my mom was 19, and even though i think she made a lot of mistakes, none of them really had to do with her age. personally, i think women get enough people telling them what they should and shouldn't do with their bodies, so i just try to stay out of that.