Learn from the mistakes of others

Yes, the rules about relationships have changed. A lot was revealed to me from speaking to my mother and various uncles and aunts recently (all baby boomers).

My mother married my father when she was 21 (he was 23) and had her first child at 23. That was quite normal in the 1960s. One of my aunts did not marry until she was 28, much later than most of her peers. That aunt speaks of constant pressure from peers and parents regarding her single status ("you'll be left on the shelf", "what's wrong with you", ...) until she married (she divorced "the jerk" about 10 years later).

My mother admits that she and her friends had no problems with sex before and outside marriage, but openly living together unmarried was another thing - it wasn't done in the 60s and 70s. In order to live together, you got married. There was no religious component to marriage - that is, people didn't get married in the 60s and 70s because of personal religious strictures, although a surprisingly large proportion of them got married in a church. I was surprised when I found out that my parents had been married in a church - a family less interested in religion and the church than ours is hard to imagine.

The baby boomers seem to have married earlier than their parents and to have less children. My father has 2 surviving siblings and my mother 4 - that's why they're called the baby boomers, I suppose. In Gen X, there is only me and my sister, and all of my cousins and friends have zero, 1 or 2 siblings. It was a shock to meet a girl at my school who had 4 sisters and 2 brothers - so many!

mary