Marrying Young

My relatives came over today to celebrate my Mum's birthday. The conversation steered towards my upcoming wedding. My aunt, Naomi, and her mum were only too eager to impart some advice.

"Sky, do everything while you're still young. Get married, have kids. It gets too hard when you get to your 30s," said Aunt Jemma.

"First time I was pregnant, everything went really easily but the second time when I was 30, I had to have extra tests to make sure the baby was ok. There's a bigger chance something might go wrong," added Naomi.

"Australians here think very differently. They have careers in their twenties and then stop their lives to have kids. What, you have kids and that's it?"

"It's much harder to get back into the workforce when you're older."

I think that sort of mentality I've inherited from POBian culture. It just makes perfect sense to me. My attitude towards marriage and kids is so different to all of my friends. While they think I'm too young to get married, let alone to have kids, I feel like I'd rather do that now then when I'm 30.

First of all, I feel ready and getting married to David is not such a difficult decision. Secondly, even though kids obviously do change your life, I don't plan for my own life to stop because of them. Everyone in my family is a perfect example of how you can have kids and have a life (e.g. satisfying career, travel, going out).

Of course we all have a big support network behind us where there's always a grandparent or an uncle or aunty willing to help out. One woman from work said that her parents don't want to help out with her kids since they've raised theirs and now want a break. So I'm sure once this woman becomes a grandparent, she's going to be very reluctant to help out her kids since she's never gotten any help.

This is how my family is different. Since my grandparents helped to raise me and my brother, my parents would only be too happy to pass on this help to us. And I would be happy to do the same for my own kids. David's family is the same.

I think marriage has bad publicity here with high divorce rates and people wanting to have their independence. In all honesty, a marriage is a partnership, you always have to think about the other person and help them out. That's the beauty of it. You always have someone you can rely on and who will be there and have you as their top priority. I don't mind giving up my independence for that.

I've had more than enough of independence. I just want to depend on somebody.