Yup thats when it started for me...after I finished my masters and my best friend got married. It was as if my mom had a check list and once "higher degrees" was checked off, the next thing down was "marriage." She really lost it when my friend got married...but thats another story

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Yep - saw that.

I have several male friends who joined the armed forces that had girlfriends, then made them wives & then they had kids... and while they were away those wives & girlfriends left them ... but most of them cheated on their guy and they found out later & the guys got the divorce...

that's messed up

So what does the armed forces do when the woman is out on duty and leaves her kid with her husband at home? Husband cheats and she finds out? Just asking...

I forgot they pay more to guys who are married with more children... I know some guys are trying to get off of hazard duty that way, but in this day and age it seems more of a lottery choice whether one gets hazard duty or not.

But everyone knows that the military is cutting back on caring for families whilst a loved one is on tour(s). I mean I hear up here where I am military families are practically homeless and are unable to pay the most basic of bills--such as food, forget water and shelter and clothing... And from what I understand military doesn't pay for WIC... Conflicts with the budgets...

I'm 25 and I've finally found someone that I want to spend the rest of my life with. I can say that I found him in good course and I didn't have a set deadline. I also never received any pressure from my family or friends. I do know that there were times that I put pressure on myself.

Do you think that there are some circumstances where it is the single woman herself that is applying pressure and her family and friends do the same because they think that is what she wants?

I think that the pressure you say you may have put on yourself is different than the kind of familial pressure that James is asking.

Your family probably wants you to be happy and would be happy whoever you found yourself with. The minute you are unhappy with somebody, then they'd be unhappy and would help you in some way.

The kind of familial pressure that we are discussing is the kind that gets asked a family gatherings where they ask you and your significant other "point blank" indicating that you and your other are defective because in their perceived world people should be together is some way... I really don't get it and I hope I will never turn in to that.

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Point of fact, you do get a different housing allowance if you are single or have a dependent. You DON'T get more money for more dependents. One spouse or one spouse and 3 kids or even just 10 kids all would grant the active-duty member the same BAH w/dependent rate. Being married also qualifies the military member for military housing vs. living in the barracks.

that must be strange, to have people that don't really know you that well to be pressuring you into marrigage/engagement.

Almost the opposite from my peer group and family.

My Dad always tells me that I shouldn't spend time with boys and that I should spend all of my time concentrating on my studies. He's been telling me that since I was 15, and now I'm 25. Sometimes I wonder when he's going to see that I like the people I date and that I need to get out there if he wants grandkids.

Also, most of my classmates are my age and we all have 3 more years of school and at least 3 more years of hard training after that before we have real jobs with real incomes -- being in school really prolongs the "kid" feeling. There are a handful of engaged or married students, and many of the single people think it's odd to be getting married "so young".

I guess I always thought the ideal age was 28 or 29. Enough to be done with grad school and have a job, not too late for good meoisis.

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I know a woman who's daughter married a military guy (early 20's) simply because she needed the health insurance and he wanted the extra pay.......

That then became the joke of the night that one of the other girls in our group needed to go down to Southern CA and find a military guy.

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I shake my head at that. I was getting a new ID card about a year ago and some guy came in with his new wife, just married the day before ( This was a Wednesday or Thursday ) and he was setting her up for insurance. They warn the young people about this all of the time, getting married young for the wrong reasons. I've never been stationed overseas but I hear it's really bad with the local women hunting for US military husbands.

I think that the best time to marry depends on each individual couple. I got married at 27 (Mr. C. was 30) and had my first child at 28. This was right for us. We had our degrees and had traveled and were readly to settle down.

My oldest and her husband just got married at 23. He had his 5-year engineering degree, she had her BS and MS. They'd been dating for 5 years and it was right for them. How anyone can come up with a universal right time for anyone is beyond me!

I will say this, though: a bunch of my friends decided to wait until their mid-thirties to have their first child. They all had fertility problems and none conceived. I wonder if there is some deadline that many women pass in their early thirties that makes conceiving that first child much more difficult?

i heard it was about 35 or so.