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Rising Star
I think one of the biggest differences where someone grows up. Where I grew up all of my friends had kids at 16 to 18 years old. some of the married the father and some of them didn’t. It was always a surprise & still a big deal & disappointing for many of them but at the same time it happened pretty often.
Now I’m in the DMV area and most women are purposefully waiting until they’re 30+ to have kids.
for me, I chose a different path than everyone around me in my home town & likely would’ve ended up being one of the ones waiting a long while before purposefully getting pregnant. BUT THEN I GOT PREGNANT! Ha. I had only been dating my now husband about a year and surprise! Here comes baby.
yes it’s still looked down upon. Yes we still disappointed all our family members & made them truly worry for our future and the future of our kid. But it worked out for me and we’ve been happily married for a few years now, have a house and a second kid …. I’m very thankful he is the man I happened to get pregnant with :) oh and we got married when kid number 1 was a year old.
Thank you for sharing this experience! I can relate on so many levels. I am latina and grew up with many cousins having babies as teenagers. I was the "book worm" who went to college and got multiple degrees, moved to a big city and now in my early 30s potentially pregnant.
Pro
I got pregnant while we were still dating, but then I had a miscarriage. We got engaged and bought a house. Then we had another miscarriage. Now we’re getting married this summer, so we will probably be married before we have kids, but it wasn’t something we planned. I was 33 when I first got pregnant and now I’m 35. My partner is 44. We care way more about building our family than anything else at our age. We basically tried to do things in reverse order: baby, house, wedding, but not everything can be planned. People may judge in more conservative areas but I don’t think it’s that big a deal where I live (LA). There are plenty of unmarried people with kids here.
I feel as if all of my friends had babies before marriage, really not a big deal. There are so many ways these days to raise a child, the traditional way is not the only one anymore. I also know a couple single mothers who gave a choice to the fathers to be in the child’s life and they both said no. However the children still have father figures and turned out fine. I really believe the kids that are raised by a community rather than the traditional mother and father turn out better in a way
Our friend and his gf did a shotgun engagement and wedding and it turns out it’s bc she got pregnant. Nobody batted an eye in our friend group. Early-mid 30s, LA area. They’re East Asian - mentioning that because culturally this is frowned down upon in a traditional sense but as far as I know, there wasn’t any backlash from their families.
My cousin in China (verrrrrry conservative / traditional culture) got his gf pregnant last year and also married her fast. My grandma is low key horrified (lol) but she loves the grand baby and our other Chinese family members don’t care nearly as much.
Thank you for all of the perspectives. I am in a situation where there is a potential for an unplanned pregnancy and starting to preemptively weigh my options. It is with someone I have been dating for the last two years. We had discussed marriage at one point but both did not feel ready yet. We both have good incomes and he would be a great father. I was sitting here thinking oh my goodness would I have to get an abortion? But at the same time I do want kids and although this is not the way I had planned it, I'm wondering if it is actually OK to do this out of order. I am in my early 30s and financially stable. It is something I had never even considered but honestly doesn't seem like the worse thing...
Rising Star
So so so so true bcg!!!
I feel like it doesn’t matter that much. But women should always have the means to support themselves and their child even if they are partnerless. At least that is the advice I’ve been given.
My mom is so desperate for grandchildren at my aim already I honestly don’t think she would care if I was married or not.
Pro
Zero moral judgement on women who decide to have babies before marriage (or while completely single). But for me personally, I would never have a baby outside of marriage. I wanted my partner to be fully locked in from a legal / financial perspective before I took on the physical hit as well as lifelong responsibility of a child. Otherwise, I was perfectly happy to remain childless.
(Married for 5 years and a mom for 1 year now!)
I’m a single mom via unplanned pregnancy. I grew up in a conservative, traditional environment and I never thought I’d be in my situation. I *think* people respect my choice to have and raise my son but I’m not going to lie people say some pretty damn insensitive things every now and then. there is 0 doubt in my mind I’ve been gossiped about among those who know me.
I have 2 couple friends who are not married and both had kids within the last year. No one seems to be judging them but they do get asked when they are going to get married from others.
In both my situation and my friends’ there seems to be a thought or question about what these men are thinking. Why one doesn’t want to be involved, what is the other one waiting for now that there is a baby, etc.
I have no idea what my colleagues think about me being an unmarried mother. I will tell you it’s very hard to keep up with a career as a sole or primary caretaker of a child. I never want people to think I’m slacking bc I have a kid or give me less work bc of my home life. Hope this helps? It’s a great prompt to hear what others think!
I have a few girlfriends who got pregnant while dating or engaged; went on to marry their partners, all incredibly successful in their careers and didn’t get any major side eye.
What is your rationale for not wanting to be married?
OP didn't say anything about not wanting to get married. Even if OP didn't want to get married, I'm struggling to understand why this question matters. Tons of people get married, have a child, get divorced, and become a single parent.
Rising Star
If you expect to stay together long term, or expect to marry but don’t feel ready yet, I suppose it would be functionally equivalent to have a kid first. But I wouldn’t really find that position to be logical as IMO having a kid together is a way bigger, like order of magnitude, step, than getting married.
If you don’t expect or want the relationship to last, but want/need to have a kid now, I would view it as a somewhat selfish decision, but obviously something that plays out across the very large portion of households with parents who aren’t together for a variety of reasons.
If it’s an unplanned pregnancy, I wouldn’t rush the marriage just to make sure that happens first. Horse is out of the barn as it were; best to let the relationship proceed as organically as possible vs forcing things.
I'm in my mid-twenties and all of my friends who have children are not married, but are engaged/planning to marry the other parent!
Conversation Starter
My cousin is in her 30s unmarried with 2 kids now. I’d say what’s most important is what the couple wants. If one wants the security of marriage (kids are a lot of work so the support is important), then it’s unfair to expect kids without it. In my cousin’s case, she apparently wants to get married so idk why they aren’t…especially now that she had her second.
I wouldn’t care or judge if my friends had that situation. At my job, one of my coworkers had a baby with her bf and people judged her for it (mostly the old white males) for perspective.