Gen Zers getting married young in ‘startup’ unions
Over the last couple of decades, childhood has stretched farther and farther past 18 — so it’s no wonder the marriage age has, too.
But some members of Gen Z are rebelling by getting hitched before they can even rent a car.
“I definitely think that there has been a small movement to get married, have babies and move to a farm,” Kiersten Moser, a Zoomer who married in her early 20s, told The Post.
While the national marriage-age median is 30 for men and 28 for women in the US, Kiersten and other baby-faced newlyweds say it makes sense given the cost of living and the increasing difficulty of finding a partner with common values.
Kasen Stephensen, 24, puts it in terms that fit his life in San Francisco’s tech industry: He calls his union with wife Hope, 23, a “startup marriage”— as opposed to a “merger marriage.”
“It seems like there are two approaches to marriage,” he said. “One is more foundational, where you’re pretty young, and you don’t have a lot of baggage or lifestyle things to work around and you can kind of build that foundation together. The other is more of a merger, where you’re trying to combine two established lifestyles together.”
He says he prefers the former model because it offers him and Hope the freedom to make life decisions together without pre-existing obligations holding them down.
The Stephensens, who met on Hinge during the pandemic, wed in April 2022 when they were, respectively, 22 and 21.
“Getting married can be a source of stability as you grow together, even if you’re both pretty young,” Kasen told The Post. “But for Gen Z, the messaging is more like, just kind of mess around and focus on your career rather than your family.”
In addition to gaining a “constant friend and companion,” Kasen notes there’s also a “huge economic advantage” to getting married young, especially in an expensive city like San Francisco: “We have two incomes right now, which has been a huge help, especially in this economy and this geography.”
Now working as a product manager, Kasen admits his marriage was a point of confusion for classmates while he was studying engineering at Stanford University.
“It was surprising,” he said. “It was a bit of a culture shock for other students.
“But we both valued marriage, family, stable relationships, education and hard work,” Kasen said of Hope, who works in advertising. “I got lucky and found someone I loved who loved me and who was also interested in marriage.”
Likewise, Jakob and Kiersten Moser’s similar political beliefs were a motivator to get married in October, when they were both 24.
“I think to have the same core values and outlook on life is very important, and to find that, especially nowadays, is very rare, so you better hold on to it — and we did that,” Kiersten, a nurse who shares conservative views with her contractor husband, said.
According to a 2024 report in the Financial Times, Zoomer women are 30% more liberal than their male counterparts, making it harder than ever to find a partner with similar views.
The Mosers, who both grew up in Virginia and now live in Richmond, were friends for eight years and dated for two before getting hitched. Jakob says some of his friends have teased him for marrying so young.
“Guys are guys,” he told The Post. “Some people just continue college for their twenties and act the same. But some people want to settle down and do something greater.”
Jony Lee knows she is especially unusual. Not only did she marry at 20, but she is a young professional in Manhattan, where marrying young is especially uncommon. According to research from Stanford and Harvard economists at the Equal Opportunities Project, people in urban areas are less likely to be married earlier.
But the creative director said she has noticed there seems to be a “trend” of marrying young.
“It sounds funny to call marriage a trend, but most things in life have these trend cycles,” Jony told The Post. “That’s definitely a more recent thing, probably in the last year or so.”
Since marrying her husband, Alistair, also now 24, in 2020, Jony’s had more and more young women reach out, both in person and via social media, because they are curious about her story.
“I’ve seen that a lot more recently,” she said. “In 2020, that was definitely not the case. People were not asking about getting married young, what that looks like, is it possible, how do you navigate that.”
Many, she said, are simply fed up with the narrative that your twenties are just fun and games.
”I think there’s a fatigue of seeing this party life and that being the dream life being pushed by the media heaps as the ideal of being young, and some people are realizing that they don’t want that,” Jony explained.
“Before we got married, I still felt like a little boy,” Alistair, a chiropractor, told The Post. “It’s really helped me to mature as a person, working through things with Jony as husband and wife.”
The pair describe their decision to marry so young as “situational”: Alistair proposed to Jony a week after they found out her mother was going into hospice care for ovarian cancer.
“At the end of the day, we all knew that we were going to get married anyway,” Jony said. “It all just felt really right. I couldn’t see getting married without my mom.”
Jony’s mother was able to walk her down the aisle before passing away two months later.
Although they hadn’t planned on marrying so young, Jony and Alistair, who split time between New York City and New Zealand for work and family, believe it has benefited them both greatly.
“Honestly, it’s allowed the two of us to move in a direction in our life much faster, because it’s double the income for anything you have to do adult-wise — in terms of getting an apartment, applying for a loan, anything you have to do with money,” Jony said.
Samantha Patrick tied the knot even earlier, becoming a bride five days short of her nineteenth birthday.
“I always knew I wanted to be married early,” Samantha told The Post. “We’re always growing and changing, and I would rather grow and change with the person I’ll be with forever.”
Now 22, she lives with her husband, firefighter Robi Patrick, in Columbus, Ohio. He was 23 when they married. An unexpected downside of getting married young was many friends pulling away.
“They’re just in a whole different season of life and can’t relate anymore,” she said. “It’s super weird. I wasn’t expecting that. It was a lot of people being mad that you’re getting married so young instead of being supportive.”
Samantha, who works as a nanny, said she also got nasty comments — from former friends, acquaintances, coworkers at the restaurant where she used to work, even strangers on social media — when they found out she had tied the knot in her late teens.
“I’d get comments like, ‘Wow, this is ridiculous. You need to find yourself, you need to experience life, and you need to date around.’ Or, ‘You better get a good divorce lawyer,’” she said. “Sometimes I’d get that one from divorced people, so I’m like, I don’t want advice from you.”
She says she’d never judge anyone who wants to use their twenties to date around and discover themselves — but she thinks she should be afforded the same respect for making the opposite choice.
“Some people don’t want to sleep with like a million people before they get married, and that should be okay,” Samantha said. “Both ways should be okay.”
