A recent study has found that parents and their children have differing opinions on when is the right time to get married.
A national study by researchers at Brigham Young University in America found that college students think 25 is the “right age” to get married, while a majority of parents feel 25 is still a little too soon.
“The assumption has been that the younger generation wants to delay marriage and parents are hassling them about when they would get married,” said Brian Willoughby, a professor at Brigham Young University and lead author of the study. “We actually found the opposite, that the parental generation is showing the ‘slow down’ mindset more than the young adults.”
“Initially we thought that this might be dads wanting their daughters to delay marriage,” Willoughby said. “Moms and dads trended together – gender wasn’t a factor.”
Many parents feel their children should get an education before getting married. While they generally feel marriage is important, parents think the “right age” is one year older than what their children say. Excluding teen marriages, research doesn’t support the notion that there is an optimal time to tie the knot.
According to Census data, the median age for first marriages is 27. Willoughby says that what people say is the “right age” generally comes a few years before the actual marriage age.
“What happens is that someone thinks that 25 is when they want to get married,” Willoughby said. “So at age 25, they start changing their patterns around dating, and it takes two or so years to make the transition.”
