THE AGE TO MARRY

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 29, 29 October 1926, Page 9

THE AGE TO MARRY

CUSTOM IN‘NEW ZEALAND. “When studying the ages at which people marry the greatest attention is naturally focussed upon youth and old age ” states a report on the vital statistics of New Zealand for the year 1920, which has just been issued from the Census and Statistics Office. Taking brides and bridegrooms separately, it is found that of the persons warned in 1925 no fewer than. 1831 brides (or nearly 18 per cent, of all brides) and 366 bridegrooms (3| per cent.) were under 21 vears of age. In three cases the bride had not attained her fifteenth birthdav, in 10 cases she was between the age's of 15 and 16, and in 64 cases between 16 and 17. The youngest age for bridegrooms in 1925 was between 17 and 18, there being 10 cases in which the groom had only attained his seventeenth birthday. Forty-six of_ the grooms were between the ages of 18 and 19- at marriage. . “At the other end of the list 829 bridegrooms and 355 brides were of 45 vears and over, these figures representing 8 per cent, and 3 per cent, respectively of the totals. Sixty-three per cent.' of the bridegrooms .and 78 per cent, of the brides were under 30 years of. age. “The dissimilarity between the ages of married couples is a subject of .much comment, and the figures for .1925 provide some interesting data for .such a study. The table .of ages of persons married gives a detailed view of the relative ages of persons married during 1925 Of 9712. women under the age of 40 who married ..in .1925,. 7150 were definitely shown to have married men older than themselves, 1701 married men of a younger age, while in the remaining 861 cases age at last birthday of both the bride and the bridegroom was shown to have been the same. “Dealing with individual ages it is found that age 25 held pride of place with bridegrooms and age 21 with brides. The latter has remained unaltered for many years, but in the case of bridegrooms, -except for the four vears* prior to 1925, when it remained at 24, what may lie termed the most popular age has varied considerably.

“The average age at marriage in 1925 was 30 39 for bridegrooms and 26.56 for brides, the median age being —grooms 27, brides 24. • “The number of marriages registered in New Zealand during 1925 was 10,419, this total representing an advance of 160 over the previous year. It is, however. 132 below the average’of the five preceding years. The marriage rate of '7.84 per 1000 of mean population is slightly lower than that for 1924 (7.90) and 0.61 per 1000 less than the preceding five-yearly average. The rate for 1925 is also considerably below the average of the fifteen years immediately preceding the war, and, omitting the .war and post-war years, it is necessary to go back to 1901 to find a lower rate (7.83) than that recorded in 1925.”