Quote:
Originally Posted by landpoke
and child bearing? Do you ever feel as if you'd been robbed of some elemental and possibly necessary experiences because of the age at which so many of you married and had kids?
I'm not looking for a recounting of the joys of marriage and kids etc. I'm asking if you feel like you've missed something, despite all the good it's brought to your life, by marrying and procreating at a young age.
Maybe this post is in the wrong place, but given that the acts in question spring from the church to which most of you belong I suppose it makes as much sense to put it here as anywhere else.
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I married at 24 and my wife was 21. We didn't have kids for another eight years so I can't comment on that part. Since I was always a guy who wanted to have a girl friend, rather than date many, marriage even at that age was a good fit for me. I don't think I missed out. My wife, however, wishes in retrospect that she had been older when we met, that she had been able to do a semester abroad, live away from home before we got married. She wishes we had been more mature when we got married, but agrees with me that there is sort of a window there were you are mature enough to be married but not so set in your ways that it is hard to adapt as I think can be a function of age.
By the way, I believe that this is a cultural emphasis rather than a doctrinal one. I certainly know that there are many who have undergone tremendous hardship because they have reproduced early and often before they were out of school, though of course they wouldn't ever trade their kids. Perhaps the payoff is that they are out of the house sooner and you get to enjoy your time alone with your spouse before you are too old to do some of the things that age makes more difficult.