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When 29-year-old Juan Casas married his 23-year-old girlfriend Shanzenyetta, it was not just as the beginning of a life together but an end—to a lonely decade of low-wage jobs punctuating periods of unemployment. Marriage, according to Shan, "really picked up Juan's motivation and work ethic." Within three years, Shan went from being a single parent scrambling to make rent to a married woman with "a decent place to live, a car that works, bills paid, and someone to lean on: Things I never had on my own."
Sheamus and Julia Mahoney, both 21, skipped those lonely early years going it alone altogether. They met and dated in high school in Washington State, left for different colleges, then decided they wanted to get married and do college, and life together. And that's what they did. Now they both work 25 hours a week as campus janitors to pay for tuition, rent, and groceries, and enjoy sharing "the day-to-day dreary parts of life," Sheamus says, "along with our excitement for building a joint future with each other."
One often hears about the "capstone model" of marriage, in which getting married is the last step of adulting after an education, professional status, and even home ownership are in the rearview mirror. We're often told that getting married later leads to happier and more stable marriages. But in bucking that trend, Sheamus, Julia, Juan and Shan are part of a competing view of what makes for a stable marriage—and it now has data to back it up.
A new National Marriage Project 2022 report arrived at the counter-cultural conclusion that earlier marriages can often be as successful as later ones for heterosexual couples. The report, a joint publication of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, the Wheatley Institution, and the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University, analyzes three national surveys to see if marrying earlier—between 20 and 24—is a disaster waiting to happen. And the answer is decidedly no.
According to authors Alan Hawkins, Jason Carroll, Anne Marie Wright Jones, and Spencer James, marriages forged in the early twenties do about as well as later marriages on most outcomes. Surprisingly, these early "cornerstone marriages" enjoy slightly higher relationship quality than later capstone marriages. In fact, fully 81 percent of early married husbands said they were satisfied with their relationships and 63 percent reported they were sexually satisfied, compared to 71 percent and 49 percent of men who married later. Moreover, there as a 3-percentage point gap in relationship satisfaction and an 11-percentage point gap in sexual satisfaction among wives—both favoring wives who married younger.
Why might that be?
For starters, delaying marriage can turn into a decade of me-centered pursuits that can threaten the compromise and personal remodeling required for marriages to thrive. Even more concerning is the extended period of sexual exploration late marriage often entails that, contrary to conventional wisdom, does not "get it out of your system." Research suggests the opposite, including a long line of research indicating that having multiple partners, including multiple cohabiting partners, increases your risk of divorce. And finally, a re-sequencing of family formation, kids-first and marriage later, creates copious challenges for both parents and children who are less likely to form stable families.
Fortunately, as the Casas family found, even boarding of the "success sequence" train late with children in tow can bring upward mobility.
Late 20s marriage can work well for goal-oriented young adults who have the resources to navigate higher education, career paths, and relationships in their twenties. But it doesn't work for everyone, and parents holding out a financial lifeline as single children navigate early adulthood should also help young couples with apartment deposits, auto insurance, and expenses that could easily overwhelm a young couple just starting out.
But many young adults need more than financial help, especially those who have never experienced a strong, healthy marriage during their growing-up years. Juan, Shan, and Sheamus all regret the dearth of marital role models inhabiting their childhood. They expressed a hunger for a marriage narrative of adventure, growth, and meaning rather than the one of loss of sexual freedom now dominating our public culture.
Young men like Juan won't often show up in articles like "We Married Young & Are Still Traveling the World." Still, his testimonial is important. "When I was single, I didn't have anything to wake up to or even to live for," he says. "I hung out with the guys, didn't commit to the women I dated, and didn't have anything to live for."
Taking ten years of young adulthood might help some arrive at a healthier, happier marriage. But for others, that's not true. The 2022 State of Our Unions report sets aside the fallacy that later is always better. Early can be good, too. "I have a wife and kids to wake up for now," Juan explains. "If you love someone, just go for it! Best decision of my life."
If you're twenty-something, deeply in love, and ready to build a shared life together, that's something worth keeping in mind this Valentine's Day.
Alan Hawkins is a professor in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University and the former chair of the Utah Marriage Commission. Brad Wilcox, a professor of sociology, directs the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Betsy VanDenBerghe is a writer based in Salt Lake City.
The views in this article are the writers' own.
