Sinusoidal Movements in Marriage

Stink Pants #5 and I were talking earlier. We were saying how the marrying age is getting older and older. His parents got married somewhere between the ages of 18 and 20. My parents probably got married in their early to mid twenties (I could do the math, but I'm really lazy right now.) Nowadays, the norm is to marry in your late twenties to early thirties.

You know what I think is going to happen? People will continue to marry later and later with thirty-five being the upper limit for most singles to be married their very first time. Our parents tell us to wait for marriage and kids, and we tell our kids until everyone (in the U.S.) ends up waiting quite a while before they tie the knot. Having a greater life expectancy helps too.

Then, after a while, people will be saying how they shouldn't have waited for marriage, how they're too old to have children. Right now there are couples that celebrate their fifty or sixtieth wedding anniversary. Such things would be unheard of when people wait until their mid thirties to be married. So, the marrying age will drop, slowly but surely, back to somewhere in the late teens/early twenties.

Therefore, the marrying age, like the wolf and moose populations on Isle Royale, show characteristics of a sinusoidal wave, the mean being somewhere around 26 or 27. You can't say that the mean marrying age is always 26 or 27 however, because a straight line doesn't accurately describe a wave, you know?

And what does this all mean? Not much. Stink Pants and I were just talking with our math nerd hats on.