Novaseeker’s comment here reminded me of something I said recently, and I need to get a post out.
I noted to a friend recently that as a society we look totally wrong at the delay in marriage. If a woman is biologically capable of bearing children around 15, and if her fertility and ability to complete pregnancy starts to fall off around 30, then they only have about 15 reliable years.
We aren’t pushing marriage out a few years as if it was a fraction of time, but increasing it by orders of magnitude. For millennia, until the modern era, women often first married[1] in their teens. In the later 20th Century, marriage after college became the prescription. That is a delay of 7 years already: almost half of the 15 available. A woman who waits until 30 may be out of time. If she wants multiple children she takes a great risk. Delaying just a few years after age of majority (18) is not a great idea. It is a terrible idea to delay it to 25. A determined pause until 30 is insane.
Unless, of course, your goals are short-term pleasure, dishonoring your (future) husband, and the self-satisfaction of telling everyone, “They don’t know you”–which is the dominant message everyone signals to women.
[1] Widowhood was common.
Things that We have Heard and Known 