After seeing a few facebook friends have children in recent months, it got me thinking about how different they were. [name]One[/name] couple were married 7 years before having their first, while another had only been going out a year and a bit (but are now engaged) before she got pregnant.
It got me wondering, how common is it now to be married before having a child, or indeed be dating for a long amount of time? So, Berries, what was it like for you?
My DH and I were married two years when we had our son. (We had been together for a total of 5 1/2 years.)
My husband and I are very conservative, and we did the Biblical purity-until-marriage thing. Absolutely no regrets. We have been married for a year and a half and are now trying for our first.
Edit: Some comments below indicate that this thread feels judgmental, and I hope that wasn’t caused by my post. I don’t mean to judge anyone. My own baby sister, whom I love very much, is pregnant and unmarried, and I’m not about to judge her or anyone else. To each their own. My only point is that for us, this was the right decision, and while today’s society views it as “weird” to be a virgin for so long, we have no regrets about our decision.
We have been married 3 years and are expecting our first. We wanted to have some “just us” time to focus on getting careers off the ground and buying/renovating a house first.
We got pregnant 10 months into our marriage. I thought we’d be married for a few years first, but it felt right so we decided to go for it.
We celebrated our 1 yr wedding anniversary when I was 2 months pregnant
I was a few months pregnant when we celebrated our first wedding anniversary.
We were together 3 years before getting married. We lived together for 2 of those years.
My friends are a big mix of every possibility
We dated three years and were married two years before becoming pregnant with our first sticky baby. We started TTC just a few months after our wedding. I’m a [name]Christian[/name] and firmly believe in marriage before baby. If unexpected baby comes along you should get married quickly, forget the big unneeded fancy wedding, if not for yourselves then for your child’s sake. My one friend got married after finding out she was pregnant which was their plan. If they never had a baby they would have never married, just lived together, but both agreed that should she become pregnant the right thing to do was to go to the [name]Justice[/name] of the [name]Peace[/name] and get married. My one cousin-in-law was married a year I think before becoming pregnant with her son, something like that. The other cousin-in-law was a knocked up seventeen year old and as you can guess broke up with the baby’s daddy before the kid was a year old (he is an involved father though). My mom was a very pregnant Catholic bride which just thrilled my father’s very Catholic family as you can imagine.
My Fiance and I have been together almost 7 years, and it will be another 3+ before we have any kids.
My boyfriend and I had been together for almost a year when I got pregnant (which makes it one year and almost six months now). We had been living together for almost all that time (I moved in with him six days after we starting being together). We’re not getting married, at least not yet as it’s way to soon and I don’t really think marriage is necessary (baby was obviously an acciedent, but a happy one). I think age is kind of interesting with these questions as well, I’m almost 30 and my boyfriend is ten years older than me. Most couples I know who meet the one they want to be with in their thirties don’t wait around for years before starting having children, while if you meet in your early twenties, you’ll probably wait a while.
Less than half of first births in the US, UK or Europe are to married mothers. In the US, 40% of all births are to unmarried women.
My fiance and I will have been together 2 years this [name]January[/name]. We’ve been living together for 21 months (5 of those with his parents while we apartment searched!) and will have been together 2 and a half years on our wedding day this [name]July[/name]. I hope to start TTC late 2014, early 2015. So we’ll have been together for at least 3 years before we start TTC.
[name]How[/name] the world has changed in forty years. It was unthinkable in the 60’s to live with anyone, it was unthinkable to have a child out of wedlock and without knowing for sure most women waited till married to have sex (or at least till engaged).
I was married for almost 7 years before having a child. The house came first.
I have been married for 43 years as have most of my friends the same age (if not longer).
rollo
I agree. I’m in my earlyish-mid twenties and have been with my current boyfriend for two years, and have been living together for about a year and a half. We both agree that we’d like to have children together, but we’re waiting for a bit. I don’t know if we’ll get married or not before. I don’t want to TTC now, but in a few years. We are also both finishing degrees at university and I am soon going to apply for a job I desperately want, and we agree that careers come first. Personally, and I am not speaking for anyone else and in different situations different things are necessary, but in my own circumstances, I don’t want to have a child until I have a stable job.
My OH and I had been together for 2 years and 1 month when I fell pregnant.
That’s not always possible. Sometimes people rush into marriage/marry too young and end up with the wrong person. Making it harder to marry the RIGHT person when they find them.
My OH is still legally married (Though has been seperated for 4 years…they have no children) and we cannot afford for him to get divorced right now, as his ex wife is deliberately trying to make the process as difficult as possible. So we don’t have the option to get married.
I was with a man for 7 years before I met my OH and we were engaged to be married. He would have been an awful father. My OH will be a fantastic father. I think this is FAR more important a factor than a piece of paper or the length of the relationship.
Yeah, I’m really interested in everyone’s ages, along with their relationship timelines. I’m 25 and I’ve been married for a year and half (got engaged six months into dating!)–and I think we’ll probably wait another handful of years. Probably about 5 years total together before les bebes–3 years married, and six years at my job–enough of a tenure to go part-time after kids.
Age: mid-30s
05/04: started dating
05/09: married
03/12: [name]Antoine[/name]
“tried” to conceive for 1 week. Did not expect it to work quite that quickly, which threw a very very large wrench in the works re: my job.
I started dating [name]Cody[/name] when we were 13. We broke up for a teeny amount of time in there and I dated some other people, he did too.
We got married when we were 18. We’ve been married 3 years. For our 3 year wedding anniversary, I told him I was pregnant. So we were together a total of 8 (almost 9) years together. 3 of those married before getting pregnant with our first.
My friends were completely different. [name]One[/name] married a 40 year old when she was 20 and already pregnant with someone else’s baby. 2 have babies with no men in their lives. [name]One[/name] got married at 19 to another almost 40 year old man and got pregnant pretty quickly after (the sad thing is, she only married him to have a baby. She hates him.) [name]One[/name] of them got married when she found out she was pregnant.
I completely disapprove of the choices they’ve made concerning marriage and children, but it’s not my life. Most of them are unhappy. Only one of them is still unmarried, though in a happy relationship, and with no children. She’s waiting until she’s graduates in the spring, gets her career going, and has been married for several years.
[name]Will[/name] and I have been together for 6 years in [name]April[/name]. Only married since very recently. [name]Rowan[/name] was born when we were unmarried, after we had been together for 4 1/2 years. My best friend just got married in [name]September[/name] after living with her boyfriend for 2 1/2 years, and she is 10 weeks pregnant. We joke her conservative religious family thinks they were really in a hurry after their wedding when in reality they weren’t trying at all.
We had been married for 2 years when my son was born.
ETA: and it’s not because we’re super conservative or anything of the sort. I’m getting a very judgmental vibe from this post.