Getting Married Young

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We married young too, we were 20 and 22, and we let the Lord give us children in His timing.

We do not regret having the children. You don’t regret a child, a soul who will live forever who reflects the love of God and husband and wife. I don’t regret the hugs and kisses, the chubby cheeks, the full life… I don’t regret either going without things that we could have had… No regrets. Children are truly a blessing and a gift from God.

🙂
 
Happywife said:
We married young too, we were 20 and 22, and we let the Lord give us children in His timing.

We do not regret having the children. You don’t regret a child, a soul who will live forever who reflects the love of God and husband and wife. I don’t regret the hugs and kisses, the chubby cheeks, the full life… I don’t regret either going without things that we could have had… No regrets. Children are truly a blessing and a gift from God.

🙂
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Just wanted to say I love your signature! Congratulations on Baby #8!! WOW!! :extrahappy:
 
I married young, two weks after my 21st birthday. We were not practicing Christians or Catholics at the time, and we were cohabitating. We used birth control for the first 2 years of our marriage. I was in college and graduated a little while after we got married.

While I agree that if you’re not ready for kids, maybe you’re not ready for marriage, I think you have to look at why you’re not ready for kids. I really don’t think there is anything wrong with getting married, planning to have a big family, but also planning to wait a few years to finish school and work for a little while. Live a little outside the home, save some money to buy a home for your children to grow up in, experience the working world a little. Of course, I am assuming that once you start to grow your family, you’ll want to be a SAHM. If not, then frankly I don’t see a difference between being a working mom and a working wife and you wouldn’t have as great a reason to delay pregnancy.

One more thing, though. This is totally anecdotal, of course, but it seems like couples who welcome children early in their marriage have an easier time adjusting to the change. I was 25 when my daughter was born and we had recently celebrated our 4 year wedding anniversary, although if you count the time we loved together before marriage, we’d been together for 6 years. It was a very big change for us, and we had a hard time adjusting to life with another little person in the house. It’s been two years since her birth, we’ve been married for 6 years, and we’re expecting our 2nd. Things are better, for sure, but it was a little rough for a little while. And I’ve met a lot of other couples with similar stories.
 
MooCowSteph said:
…One more thing, though. This is totally anecdotal, of course, but it seems like couples who welcome children early in their marriage have an easier time adjusting to the change. I was 25 when my daughter was born and we had recently celebrated our 4 year wedding anniversary, although if you count the time we loved together before marriage, we’d been together for 6 years. It was a very big change for us, and we had a hard time adjusting to life with another little person in the house. It’s been two years since her birth, we’ve been married for 6 years, and we’re expecting our 2nd. Things are better, for sure, but it was a little rough for a little while. And I’ve met a lot of other couples with similar stories.
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I agree, at least this is what I have heard, and I think it countributed to our smooth first year of marriage (our first baby was born a few days shy of our 9 month anniversary:) ).

I didn’t think I was having kids that young, but I had my first at 24 (literally, the day I turned 24).

B4 I met dh my plan was to study Mechanical Engineering and take Pre-Med courses as my electives. Then, I was going to go either to Med School or graduate school in Biomed. At one point my plan was to wait until after I was settled in my practice or in research to meet my spouse and get married etc. Well, lol, God had other plans. I met my handsome dh while I was around 3 semesters shy of finishing my ME degree. He swept me off the floor and we got married 2 months after I graduated. Although I did not feel my pursuing a career was a good reason to postpone children (and I am glad we didn’t) I planned to work the first year until I got pregnant or while I sent in applications to med/grad school to start the following year if we weren’t blessed with kids. I had decided to start all this after our first month of marriage. Lo and behold, on our 1 mo anniversary I got 2 lines on my little test!!! and now I am the happy stay at home mother of 3 beautiful kids 😃 and I wouldn’t change this for the world. I don’t regret getting a degree, I don’t regret not working a little, I don’t regret having children as soon as we possibly could (lol 9 mo into marriage) and I don’t regret not using my degree right now (I feel very lucky to be able to be home with my kiddos). Maybe God has plans for me to continue my studies later on in life or make some other use of my degree, I don’t know, we’ll see. God’s plans are always the best, listen to Him and you’ll be fine.
 
DH and I got married at 21, we have been together for almost 7 years. 😃 We had both finished our undergraduate degrees before we married but shortly before our 1st anniversary DH started Graduate school, the next 3 years were crazy honestly, there was a whole year were I am sure we only saw each other Sunday during mass.:rolleyes: Was this the ideal way to do things, I don’t know. I do know that if I had to make that choice again I would. (okay one thing I would have changed - We wouldn’t have leased that apartment across from the nudist (anti-blinds) couple :eek: - oh the memories 🤷 !)
 
CatholicSam said:
Just wanted to say I love your signature! Congratulations on Baby #8!! WOW!! :extrahappy:
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Thanks CatholicSam! He is so precious, we already can’t imagine life without William Wesley! He is truly God’s gift of joy!:yup:
 
I got married at 24. Dh was 26. I had just finished graduate school prior to getting married, and my plan was to avoid pregnancy for 1 year after marriage. This way, by the time my first child was born, I would have worked long enough to pay back my student loans, and it would be easy for me to be a SAHM. In reality, I did pay back my loans, but my first baby came almost a year later than I thought he would, so things did now go exactly how I planned. Regret is a strong word, but if I had to do it over again, I would reconsider that decision. Not positive I’d change it, but I would be looking at it from different eyes now than I did then.

Now if I was still in school, I would most likely attempt to keep from becoming a mother until after graduation - again so that I could be a SAHM. I probably would wait until I was finished with school to marry actually, but knowing the way we’ve made our decisions, that’s probably what I’d do. Of course, 10 years after getting married, I now think that I probably would have been best off had I not gone to graduate school at all - again a very personal decision that would have been right for me, but hindsight is 20-20 isn’t it?

On the one hand, one year isn’t a long time to hold off, if you prayerfully discern it is what you need to do. On the other hand, for someone who wants a large family, 24 is not “very young” to be starting your family. For one, you don’t know how quickly you’ll be able to get pregnant, and you don’t now how old you’ll be when nature or other factors require you to stop having babies. You also may not be in control of how much time passes in between births (what with the variations is return of fertility after childbirth and with breastfeeding, not to mention the other reasons why parents end up spacing their children farther apart than they originally planned). You also never know if you might look back someday and wonder what your family would look like if you hadn’t waited as long as you did.
 
As things stand right now, there is a possibility I’ll be getting married either right before or during my senior year of college. My viewpoint on it is, I would really rather not have a baby due during my last semester of college because that would have the potential to force me to drop out halfway through - and my financial aid, which I NEED to finish, ends after that semester! However, if I get married right before or during my senior year, any babies will be coming AFTER I graduate hopefully. So, even if I did get pregnant on my honeymoon, it would be okay. 😃

Why would your family not support you? You’re 23, an adult, educated. Unless they want you to be fully settled in your career before any children, I don’t see why they would be unhappy if you had a child. Either way, you will have your husband by your side.

My parents married at nineteen and twenty and had me (the oldest of almost nine) a year and a half or so later. My mom is a SAHM and always has been. They dropped out of college to get married, though, so their situation is a bit different. 😉
 
I was married at 16 am 27 now. First child at 17 second child at 19 third child at 23 and fourth child at 26. I understand you situation, but put your faith in God. Pray to him and he will guide you. God will never give you a burden or Cross you cannot carry. Talk to your soon to be husband and find out what exactly he is looking for with a family. That is the one reason why my husband and I have been married all this time is because we took the time to talk and pray together. God Bless!
 
My fiance and I are getting married this August, just like you. For us, it will be right before our final semester as undergrads–I’ll be 22, he’ll be 21.

I think it’s important for every engaged couple to really discuss their views on using NFP when they get married, and to make sure they are on the same page. It takes a lot of prayer and a lot of discernment–along with a lot of conversations between the two of you!–so it’s good that you’re both aware of this.

The guideline from the Church is that a couple must have ‘just’ or ‘serious’ reasons to postpone/space their children. This is important to keep in mind, but it has to be interpreted by each couple. A reason which is serious for one person may not be serious for another, etc.

I really understand where you are coming from. It’s scary to think about having a baby when you don’t think you’re ‘ready,’ when the time isn’t ‘right,’ etc. But like Mirror Mirror said above–we are called by Jesus (and JP2!) to “Be not afraid!”.

Does this mean you should throw all planning out the window and rely totally on providence, sans NFP? Nope, not if that’s not what God is calling you to.

If you sincerely believe that you have discerned that God is calling you to a certain vocation that requires considerable graduate work or career establishment before kids, then I think you *may *have just reasons to avoid pregnancy. But I’m not here to tell you that. Pray about it, talk to your fiance, talk to a priest.

What I can tell you is that I am discerning graduate studies to begin around the first year of our marriage. Do I know if I’ll start–or if I start, whether I’ll finish? No. We have talked about it at length, and even though I’m feeling the baby fever (hehe, who am I kidding, I’ve been feeling it for the last year! 👍) we know it is best for us to postpone pregnancy *at least *until after we graduate in December. Our reason for waiting is the schoolwork and pressure I will be under (stress is not good for pregnancy!) and the fact that we won’t be in the most stable situation. If it happens, it happens–and the baby won’t be born until after we graduate anyway. We believe that it is most responsible for us to give us that time to get completely settled in our life together before bringing another life into the picture.

But God has a plan and I trust it. Life is an adventure and we really aren’t totally in the driver’s seat. We are called to discern God’s will for us, and trust that he will take care of us. Take it one day at a time. Everyone has their own experience and their own take on it–only you and your fiance can know what God’s will is for your marriage.
 
nodito (and others):

There IS a downside to waiting. I married at 35. Trust me, we both have a number of reasons we believe it would have been better to have married in our early 20s: it’s a long list of reasons!

Have a little faith. Things work themselves out. You CAN get married at your point in life and things will adjust, can be adjusted. Life’s a little more flexible than you may think.

DON’T get too caught up in thinking the sum of your life is your career; that’s a common mistake. I hope that you’re not getting trapped into trying to “program” your life, e.g., “I will get married at age X, have first child at age Y, then Z should happen”. It’s a fallacy to think life works on a straight-line progression.
 
My husband and I married at 22. Just one month out of college. I never wanted anything else but to be a mom. We are about to have our 3rd in June. I admit that it is hard work with soon to be 3 kids 4 years and under. I have to say though that if you really aren’t ready for kids then you probably aren’t ready for sex. They go together. 🙂 I don’t say that to be mean. Yes the world is full of wonderful things. Getting a grad degree, a job, whatever else; can be really exciting but nothing and no one will ever need you as much as your own children. And for every job you get believe me they can always get someone else to do it but no one can ever replace mom.
To be fair though there are definitely days where I say to myself what did I do?!?!?! I should have gotten a job and had time to myself. But I realize that no matter what job I had it would have boring compared to this one and if I had all the time to myself I wanted I’d be really lonely. If it were me and I were truely scared to have kids then I would spend some time thinking about why that is; what you really want out of life; and what you really want to give of yourself to your future spouse. You should be willing on your wedding day to put your whole self into his hands without any more thoughts about it. Willing to trust that he will care for you better then you could do so yourself and that whatever future that brings will be the one God wants for you. Likewise of course he should be willing to do the same.
The best thing I ever did was marry young to the most wonderful man God had picked out for me. But for that wonderful grace I see many evils that I probably would have fallen into. I wish you the best and hope you will spend some time in prayer about it.
 
My wife and I married young. I was 21 and my wife 22. We had wanted to marry a year earlier but there was such a storm in my wife´s family that we had to put it off for another year out of courtesy for them. In a sense the wait was good for us; I finished my degree at Oxford in June, flew over to Spain, did a super-concentrated pre-matrimonial course, which was possible thanks to my wife´s uncle being our priest, and we got married in July.
A huge trial for us was being apart for the three years that my degree lasted, me in England and my fiancé in Spain. However, looking back, God blessed us during that difficult period. It builds character to have to suffer and wait for what you really want and know is God´s will.
Don´t calculate too much. The Lord may have other plans for you, and you always have to be open to them. In our youthful enthusism we didn´t know where we were going to live until at the last moment we found a flat cheap enough to rent. I didn´t find a job until my future father-in-law gave me a stern talking-to a couple of weeks before the wedding. I went out and found a job teaching english that paid peanuts, but everything worked out fine. That first year, living off faith in a way I´ve never done, before or since, was amazing! Don´t be afraid, the Lord is good!

Yours, in Jesus and Mary
 
Personally I would wait to get married. At the very least until you finish school. If you get pregnant right away it will be VERY hard to finish school and since it sounds like you are close anyway might as well do it! Having a degree goes a LONG way in helping to get a good job these days. Also I would wait so you can enjoy some of the things you want to do. You are still young and waiting 2-3 years on getting married and having kids wonlt make you old. However once you have kids you can;t go oh well I wish I would have waited so I could have done this or that. Enjoy your free time and life without kids and what it allows you do to now.
 
For what it’s worth–

I married my dh when I was 20, right after final exams in my junior year of college. We planned our wedding for that time since I had only one semester of school left, and even if I got pregnant right away (and we were hoping for a honeymoon baby!) I would still be able to finish up my degree before giving birth. DH was 22 and had a year left in grad school with a very small stipend.

As it transpired, school made my life so stressful that I was unable to get pregnant until my classes were done. So, first baby arrived when I was twenty-one, and married for about a year-and-a-half. I never looked for work after graduation as my plan was always to stay home full time with the kiddies. The next two babies followed very quickly-- fourteen and fifteen months later, respectively.

Looking back, it was a totally, totally crazy time. We had very little money, and I spent all day at home with three little people who couldn’t talk (turned out the oldest had a serious speech impediment that affects him to this day) or toilet themselves. :juggle:

That being said, I wouldn’t change any of it. Starting young has allowed us to have a large family-- eight children so far-- and hopefully still a few more to come. DH & I essentially finished “growing up” together. We had no time to really get used to living on our own after college and get set into our own preferences and routines. And having the kids early on prevented any kind of laziness or selfishness from creeping into the relationship-- which I know I would otherwise be very prone to. Babies have this knack for “squeezing” the virtue out of you, by their very natures-- when they need something, they cry very persistently until the need is met, even if it’s 3 AM and you’d rather be sleeping. When you do the simplest things, they BEAM AT YOU with toothless grins in a way that truly lifts the spirits.

I’m sure it wouldn’t have been the right decision for everyone, but for us it was. DH & I were on the same wavelength in terms of dedication to the faith and the Catholic understanding of marriage, I was prepared to dedicate myself full-time to mothering and homemkaing, and DH was ready and able to take on being the sole wage-earner for the family. Since those three were there, it made sense for us.

Actually, there is one thing I would change. I didn’t have a driver’s license when I got married (long story involving NY driving age and my being a year “young” for my grade in high school.) I ended up not getting it until I was pregnant with #2. In retrospect, being more aggressive about learning to drive sooner would have been smart. Oh yeah, and I would have gone with a different wedding caterer. But that’s it.🙂

Good luck. Pray, pray, pray a lot. Hopefully God will give you the light to clearly see His will in this matter.

Margaret
 
mholoth said:
We married young (I was 18, he was 20) and had our children young (dd1 the next year and dd2 2 years after her), while that may not work for everyone, I feel incredibly blessed in my marriage. I am grateful every day that I wake up next to my soul mate. Family is AWESOME!

I went to college during our marriage, and I went to work when the girls were young. I have been able to achieve my dreams both ‘out there’ and at home, but the most fulfilling ones have been at home.

He has been in the military for 17 years, so I understand the fear of having to do it on your own. In our experience it made our bond stronger, because we had only each other & God to depend on and isn’t that the way it is supposed to be anyway?

Over the years I have seen both on my side and his side of the family marriages/relationships fail. Hubby and I joke (not to them though, just each other) that we couldn’t run home to mommy when we had our fights early in our marriage-distance and finances prevented it-so we had to work things out and it benefited our relationship so very much. We are both very stubborn and that can actually be a good thing esp when you are bull headed about staying together forever in good and bad.

sending up prayers for discernment & blessings for your marriage
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I’ve been with my husband since I was thirteen, we married when we were 19. I’m now 32. We had our son two weeks before my 20th birthday. It hasn’t been easy, I have had to make some sacrifices, but it has been worth EVERY minute. I wouldn’t trade what I have done for all the money on wall street. When you don’t have children, you can’t imagine your life with them in it. When you have children, you can’t imagine your life without them.
 
nodito said:
Hi friends,

I’ve been concerned about something the last couple of weeks and I thought that I could use encouragement from a group of strong well-rounded pro-life Catholics such as yourselves.

I’m engaged to a wonderful, very hold Catholic man. We’re to be married this August and have been discussing plans for children. Because we differ in our understanding of just causes for NFP, he feels that we should not abstain at all until we have more serious reasons to do so, whereas I … well, I’m scared. I’m 23 with one more year of graduate school left and very little work experience. I feel torn between marrying the man I love now and wanting to be kid-free for a while longer. I worry that I won’t have any support from friends or family if I get pregnant right away, and that I’ll resent my children for keeping me at home when there’s still a lot outside of the home that I’d like to accomplish. On the other hand, both of us would like to have a large family and we feel that our children could benefit from having young, active parents.

I realize the decisions to marry or not marry or have children or not have children are highly personal ones and not to be made over the internet, and that is not my intention. Rather, I could really use stories of hope and encouragement from any of you that got married young or had children at a young age. Likewise, is there anything I should be considering that I haven’t thought of already? And finally, if I could be so bold as to ask for your prayers that we discern rightly God’s will for our lives, I would be very grateful.

God bless.
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Simple answer - if you are not ready to have kids, you are not ready to get married. This, I think, would be an abuse of “NFP” - not a “grave reason”. Wait one more year. God bless.
 
Island_Oak said:
We married at 24 & 25–both in professional school. We waited for for 5 years–through graduation and several years of practice–before starting our family. I would not have done it any other way. It gave us the security of some maturity in our marriage (as well as fun + time alone together), financial stability, confidence and competence in our careers, the ability to purchase a house and ultimately the flexibility to allow me to stay home with our kids when we chose that as the more preferable way to raise them.

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Yes, but with all due respect, this was immoral. That is not good advice. And an example of the kind of selfishness that the Popes warn against when it comes to being open to children (or not being open to children).
 
Rach620 said:
If you sincerely believe that you have discerned that God is calling you to a certain vocation that requires considerable graduate work or career establishment before kids, then I think you *may *have just reasons to avoid pregnancy.
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Does God ever call someone to this? I don’t really believe God would ever call two people to a marriage where they would HAVE to practice NFP for a period of time right off the bat. “Serious reasons” are something that just “happens” to the couple - they are not reasons brought on by ourselves by our own choices, are they?

And be careful about “it is the couple’s decision”. Yes it is, but there is some objectivity to it. Conscience always has to be formed according to the moral law.
 
nodito said:
Hi friends,

I’ve been concerned about something the last couple of weeks and I thought that I could use encouragement from a group of strong well-rounded pro-life Catholics such as yourselves.

I’m engaged to a wonderful, very hold Catholic man. We’re to be married this August and have been discussing plans for children. Because we differ in our understanding of just causes for NFP, he feels that we should not abstain at all until we have more serious reasons to do so, whereas I … well, I’m scared. I’m 23 with one more year of graduate school left and very little work experience. I feel torn between marrying the man I love now and wanting to be kid-free for a while longer. I worry that I won’t have any support from friends or family if I get pregnant right away, and that I’ll resent my children for keeping me at home when there’s still a lot outside of the home that I’d like to accomplish. On the other hand, both of us would like to have a large family and we feel that our children could benefit from having young, active parents.

I realize the decisions to marry or not marry or have children or not have children are highly personal ones and not to be made over the internet, and that is not my intention. Rather, I could really use stories of hope and encouragement from any of you that got married young or had children at a young age. Likewise, is there anything I should be considering that I haven’t thought of already? And finally, if I could be so bold as to ask for your prayers that we discern rightly God’s will for our lives, I would be very grateful.

God bless.
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Hi Nodito, I got married right after I turned 21. However we we’re not really practicing Catholics at the time, and did not start a family right away.

This really was something that should have been discussed before setting the weding date :-), but it’s good that you are talking about it before the wedding - so many others don’t even do that. I don’t see anything wrong with you practicing NFP for right now. When you are abstaining, you can pray for your future together and for God to prepare to make you the best parents you can be for when the time is right. NFP is not 100% foolproof and you won’t be breaking any church laws, so I don’t really see a problem with practicing it until you are ready. I would talk to him some more about this as you really need to have it resolved. It’s not like you are trying to not have any kids for a long period of time -you just want some newly wed time and to enjoy life for a little while together. Using NFP means you are open to a child even if happens accidentally while using NFP (or otherwise you would be using something such as abc which the church believes is a big no-no). I just don’t see anything wrong with using it as long as you are on the same page about wanting to be younger parents. Talk to him again. Get it worked out before the wedding.
 
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