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Status is key, however there is another mechanism that is playing in here.
With hypergamy and women not needing men for protection and provision women can seek higher status men. Men can achieve higher status by spending more time. Even if you wanted to just have kids at a young age it is going to be hard to find an attractive wife without going to college, without traveling, without buying a nice house etc. The status that you get from getting a low skilled labour job and from renting a place that a 22 year old can afford doing unqualified labour is shooting yourself in the foot on the dating market.
There is no time pressure to have kids. We have effective contraception and people are pushing through grad school, trying to buy a place in the right side of town or trying to take the right tinder pics on Bali so they can get an attractive partner. If people were more naturally paired up more kids would be born.
This is only true because our culture does not like age gaps, though.
Old women do not like age gaps. Young women and older men are happy enough with them. And nobody cares what young men want.
Only prosperous societies care about that; whether or not that's causal or a consequence is still up for debate.
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Young women mostly don’t like the idea of age gaps, though, even if they’re happy enough with them in practice.
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I think there’s another factor here. The Western WEIRD culture actually discourages having kids young. Both parents are highly pressured to go through 4 years or more of college, then work for a few years before getting married. Then you spend a few years building up a nest egg and a career before you start thinking about kids.
Given the relatively short real fertility window, the delay in childbearing means fewer kids just because of biology. A woman’s best fertility is between 18 or so and 25. So she might well be too old to have kids by the time that she’s secure enough to think of having them. She’s not even getting married until 22 at minimum. Three years after that, her fertility is starting to decline, but she’s not yet getting pregnant.
Getting married at later than 22 wasn't uncommon as a historical norm. Although I agree that people often don't think clearly about biological realities, we know that getting married in the mid-twenties on average wasn't by itself a barrier to population growth.
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Uh, who waits for years after getting married to start having babies? Is it really something that's common in the blue tribe?
Like even very secular people I know, or know of, do not do this- if they're dead set against having kids for years, they do not get married.
Yes, very.
The marriage is a big, self-referential celebration of Disney style True Love. Marriage inside of an actual church is less and less common and, for the couples that are doing it because Mom and Dad would be otherwise displeased, the "ceremony" is one reading and the vows. The real ceremony is always the reception which is a strange bacchanalia devotion to the Wife. The husband is pretty much a slightly drunk usher. The "best" weddings are the ones where everyone gets incredibly hammered, but there is no violence, vomiting, or immediately broken vows.
Usually it's about 2 years before the first kid.
Narcissism is strong.
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Had our first around 4/5 years after our wedding. Despite what I was taught by Risky Business, it's not always that easy to get a woman pregnant.
Sure, fertility issues are understandable. I’m confused more by people who marry with the intention of delaying childbirth.
To clarify, do you find this more confusing or uniquely confusing compared to not marrying until later?
I find it confusing that a non-negligible number of people marry without intending to go ahead and have babies whatever the cost. Delaying marriage because you don’t want no baby seems pretty easy to wrap my head around. Having a baby and stopping at one because you don’t think you can handle more seems easy to grasp. Going ahead and getting married with the intention of not having a baby for years just seems confusing.
I loved my husband. He loved me. We wanted to spend our lives together. Marriage provided a legal structure to that decision, and offered protections that living together wouldn't. We didn't even have the "do you want kids" conversation until we'd been married several years, and were fortunately on the same page when we got to it. OTOH, both of our siblings married specifically with child-bearing in mind.
IME, religious weddings seem to focus a lot more on the idea that marriage exists for kids. Health insurance, property inheritance, SS, medical care decisions, and specifically committing to building a life together with someone you love and respect were plenty of motivation for us.
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I had my kid about 10 years after I got married. I wouldn't say it's common to wait that long after marriage but if you add dating + marriage, several friends fall into a similar time frame. I am not blue tribe, some friends are, some aren't. It's not that weird to marry to commit to your spouse, especially for those of us who are secular. Children are a separate choice.
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Most people (I know) don't view the purpose of marriage to be producing kids, and therefore don't think it's weird to get married without any intention of producing kids.
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We 'waited' seven years. We'd likely have more than 4 if we started earlier. My wife was trying for a top decile career.
Not blue tribe in any sense.
....Why? Is it really impossible to have children and be a lawyer or a doctor or what have you?
It's just mindboggling that people actually do this.
@hyrdoacetylene
Can you share your most commonly seen models of family formation and early child rearing where you are? Genuine question / curiosity.
People don’t marry when they don’t intend to have children fairly quickly. They might date ‘for fun’ but not ‘seriously’ up until that point. The woman’s parents can veto a prospective groom; family goes to the wedding along with a few close friends. When the woman’s father begins referring to them as ‘engaged’ is an inflection point in the relationship that comes well before the actual proposal, or even the prospective groom speaking to him about it. If the couple has a ‘church home’ that’s where they marry, if they don’t then they marry outdoors with a clergyman in someone’s extended social circle officiating, the denomination is irrelevant, using classic Christian vows and following a brief prayer service- even if they only go to church a couple of times a year. The bride’s parents would not allow the wedding if they didn’t think both parties meant every word of their vows. Child free weddings are not a thing, and the reception afterwards allows considerable latitude for teenagers and older children to do things normally not allowed on account of age(eg sneak a few beers, stay up very late). There is a dance floor and some toasting, it’s normal to get a bit tipsy. The maid of honor catches the bouquet and the garter is caught by a photogenic preadolescent boy.
Babies come quickly after marriage. It’s not a sin to marry poor or have babies poor, it is a sin to neglect them. The grandparents are very involved and usually a young couple has a female relative come stay to help for a few weeks after the first and second baby. Not having at least two is weird. It’s ideal for a woman to stay home until her youngest is at least out of diapers, or maybe in elementary school if she can swing it, but if not childcare from relatives or on the market has to do. The children have to come before the parents’ wants or ambitions, and it weighing heavier on the woman is just the way the world works.
It would be better if people could marry young, but they are no longer as wise, selfless, mature, and virtuous as they were in the fifties, and particularly young men take longer to grow up these days. Some of that’s their fault and some of it isn’t. It is normal for parents and grandparents to provide extra help to try to overcome this by co-signing loans or making gifts, to try to get around the socioeconomic factors like high housing costs. An elder who cannot see when doing this is destructive rather than constructive has a serious character flaw for co-signing on a corvette purchase or giving money to a wastrel who will lose it sports betting or what have you. Most women will not accept a large age gap, so people are into their twenties before they marry.
That’s more or less a description of the extended branches of my extended family doing things.
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It's not impossible. It is hard. I have one kid. I am a programmer, so work in male dominated environments. There was no work support for a lactating mother. Fortunately I was senior so had flexibility in schedule and an office. But I had to pump every 2 hours. I could do that because my job allowed for it. A litigator would have had a much harder time. I could bail on work for random sick or injured kid needs (spouse work wasn't as flexible). When we had a childcare problem, my 4 yr old spent a month at work with me, hanging out under my desk until I got it sorted. Doctors or lawyers would likely have had a harder time with that. These things are the sorts of things that kill a woman's career. I could struggle through with one. More than one? Unlikely. I could struggle through as a senior in a flexible career. Not a senior or in a less flexible career? Unlikely. If my spouse had had a less demanding career and was able to be more helpful it would have been easier, but in my experience women with excellent career options tend to be married to men with equivalent or better options.
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I'm not going to say it's impossible, but there wasn't an abundance of successful examples.
Despite the efforts to reduce the working hours of junior doctors, it's still alot of work frequently at odd hours. If the program has an academic commitment or requirement this is often on-top.
We were fortunate that there was no school debt.
We were also fortunate to have a very easy time conceiving.
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