Twenty-something Marriage Deserves More Parental Support

I began writing about the merits of marrying (comparatively) young nearly 20 years ago. In fact, I noted in the postscript of Forbidden Fruit that Christians had better think about how to enhance their social upport for marriage if they wished to continue contesting premarital sex in an era in which the average age-at-marriage was quickly climbing. 

Ironically, it wasn’t anyone particularly religious that first gave me cause to consider this. It was a rather secular undergraduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, where I teach. She confessed that she could not level with her friends that she hoped to meet her husband while in college. It was too embarrassing to do so, she relayed; they wouldn’t understand, and they might belittle her desire. I thought that was sad and unfortunate, since she would never again be in the same place at the same time with so many same-aged peers pursuing education, growth, and a launch to their careers. I don’t know how her story turned out. Like Professor Wilcox, though, I know how the story is turning out for many young adults like her today.  

In his Compact essay, Brad leads with the story of Lillian, whose parents are balking at their daughter’s having fallen in love—and wishing to marry—her college boyfriend. Historically, there’s nothing wrong with Lillian, just like there was nothing wrong with my former student. Indeed, Lillian’s parents could be blamed for her interest, since having married parents is a key predictor of finding oneself married in your younger years. In fact, analyses of my 2025 nationally-representative Relationships in America survey of over 5,000 American adults reveal that 65% of married adults ages 20-35 report that their parents are still married themselves (or were so until one of them passed away). Among same-age divorcees, only 46% said their parents were still married. In other words, both entering and leaving marriage can be learned behavior.

“They want what’s best for me,” Lillian claims. That’s a tired parental excuse for socioeconomic status replication. It’s no surprise that they have a vested interest in Lillian reproducing their actions and values. The problem is that her parents are either valuing the wrong things, or perhaps in the wrong order of priority. Did they “see the world” as 22-year-olds? I didn’t. I couldn’t afford it then. Indeed, who can afford that on one income? And when? I was my busiest at that stage of life, and never set foot on continental Europe until I was well over age 40. Moreover, marriage does not prevent twentysomethings from traveling. Trips happen. Trips conclude. They may be interesting. But travel is not a happiness-production business, despite how it’s marketed.

Forget getting your ducks in a row by 30. (What does that even mean?) Instead, get yourself some ducklings. They change everything.

Lillian’s parental to-do list goes on: they hold that your 20s are for getting your career launched, “figuring out who you are,” and having fun. Enough of the navel-gazing identity quests. Not only is fun overrated, fun is far more likely to materialize when you’re with friends and family, not when you’re alone, online, at work, meeting up with strangers, stressed by overwork, or on a packed airplane for the next seven hours. “Fun” like that is overrated. How have we been so misled for so long? 

Instead, forget getting your ducks in a row by 30. (What does that even mean?) Instead, get yourself some ducklings. They change everything. Analyses of my 2025 survey further reveals that among married mothers ages 20-35, only 7% report being unhappy, while 46% say they are “very” happy, and 42% “somewhat” happy. By comparison, only 17% of unmarried mothers at that age report being very happy. The same is true for married young men with children: 39% report being very happy, compared with 24% of young men who are either unmarried or have no children.

There is something about adding responsibilities rather than substracting them that makes us more secure and more satisfied. We know what we’re supposed to do. But it’s not a failsafe pathway: poachers real or imagined abound, seeking to undermine couples’ faith in their union and their families. If leaving your marriage was so fulfilling, why do so many seek social support for doing so online?

There is something about adding responsibilities rather than substracting them that makes us more secure and more satisfied.

Parents of young adults are (in some ways) understandably concerned about having to “support” their adult children, whatever that means. But in some ways this concern is mistaken or misplaced. I want to see my children, and my children’s children, flourish—and I intend to help them accomplish that. My wife and I aren’t set on regaining our future independence. We’re not holding out for an empty nest—what the New York Times describes as a “pipeline” for the “gray divorce” revolution that is upon us in the States. Neither young adulthood nor older adulthood ought to be about the self. Families are intergenerational units, not monogenerational couplings. We are stronger for having more ties—just as a family with numerous children is typically the most resilient to splitting, not because it’s always fun but because they rely on each other. We learn that our lives were never really supposed to be about us. 

No one is forcing marriage upon unwilling twentysomethings. This is about recognizing young adults as adults for whom responsibility may actually attract rather than repel. Uniting one’s life to one’s beloved and learning sacrifice, hard work, doing without, and producing more than just work—this tends to be more satisfying over the long run than most young adults imagine. Indeed, it has a chance to yield sustained happiness for those who can discern and pursue it. 

Mark Regnerus is professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, president of the Austin Institute, and author of Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy (Oxford, 2017).

Editor's Note: This essay is the second in our "Get Married Young" series. Read essay 1 from Lisa Britton here.

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