Lee Suckling: When's the best age to get married?

The rate at which twenty-somethings marry has halved in the last 10 years. Photo / iStock

The best age to get married, according to researchers, is between 28 and 32.

Conducting your nuptials during this so-called "Goldilocks Age", as University of Utah academics have coined it, apparently results in the lowest chance of divorce across all age groups.

Not surprisingly, the highest divorce rates come from those who wed in their late teens or early twenties. It's easy to see why. Few know themselves at that age, or have had enough life or relationship experiences to understand their commitment fully.

It's not really until we approach 30 (a little later for some) that we start to feel comfortable as adults. We're all at least five years out of university, if not almost 10. We've all lived away from our parents for a long time. Most have travelled and experienced different cultures and values.

Perhaps most importantly, between the ages of 28-32 we have learned "how" to be in a relationship.

That is, by the time you reach the end of your twenties, it's highly likely you've had a couple of long-term relationships. You've learned how to compromise, how to adjust expectations, and how to always have someone else's needs at the forefront of your mind.

It's also very probable you've had your heart broken at least once by this age.

It is only in having our hearts broken (once, twice, three times...) that we're able to reflect on what we don't want in a relationship. We learn what a "bad guy" or girl is, and how to pick up on this early on. We learn about negative behaviours and how to either address them or get out before they become too harmful.

In essence, it can take a couple of solid, devastating break-ups to learn not just how to be a good partner, but who will make a good partner for you.

The University of Utah research also suggests that those who marry in their mid-thirties (or later) have a similarly high chance of divorce as those in that late teens/early twenties bracket.

One suggested reason for this is people become "stuck in their ways" of single life and are less accommodating in a marriage after a certain age. Hence the "Goldilocks" period of 28-32: apparently it's the time when you're "just right" for marriage.

It's no secret that people are getting married later in life than ever before. Only 25 years ago, when my mother was 29 (the same age as I was when I married), she had already been married for five years and had three kids.

Research by market analytics company Gallup shows that the rate at which twenty-somethings marry has halved in just the last 10 years. In 2005, 32 per cent of people between 18-29 were married. Today, it's only 16 per cent.

What is happening to us, exactly? Is it taking us increasingly longer to learn the aforementioned "good relationship" lessons, or is something else at play?

I'd argue that the Stepford dream of marriage - the house, the children, the Volvo in the driveway - isn't nearly as popularised through modern media as it was in the 1990s and earlier.

The old sitcoms of the pre-Facebook era, for example, used to be all about couples and families - think back to Everybody Loves Raymond, Home Improvement, Mad About You, The Cosby Show, or even further to Happy Days and The Brady Bunch. They all disseminated traditional "married values".

TV shows from more recent years promote friendship, singledom, playing the field, and focussing on work. Just look at Two And A Half Men, How I Met Your Mother, Scrubs, and The Office. Even Modern Family doesn't inspire you to get hitched - it purposefully mocks married life.

See, without role models of marriage to see on screen, we're not quite as determined to seek wedlock out in real life. Couple such small screen portrayals with social media's obsession with freedom and fun and it's easy to see why marriage isn't so appealing to the young'uns anymore.

At 29, I still felt very "young" to be getting married. Today, the majority of my friends are happily not married. My husband and I are the peculiarity, not the commonality.

Are we really in the Goldilocks Age, then? Given that we're not really surrounded by others at the same life stage as us, there's definitely no sense of "Keeping Up With The Joneses".

Were we to marry later in life, one would think there'd be more willingness to see the hard times through because of maturity, commitments, and social expectations.

That's not to say we won't be able to weather the storms ahead, but we're not experts, either.

Realistically, the Goldilocks Age shouldn't be about looking at statistics and marrying strategically to prevent divorce. If we can learn one thing from Goldilocks, it's the importance of finding not what's right for everybody else, but what's "just right" for you.