[marriage & in-laws] AM I CRAZY FOR HAVING A CHILD AT 26 Y'O?

Hello, I got married at 25 and became pregnant right away, so I gave birth at 26.

I’m 28 now.
I don’t really think I was that early.
I just think I got married about 3~4 years earlier than most people..?

Now my friends are slowly starting to get married, and they ask me all kinds of questions about marriage.

I went to a university friends’ gathering, and I heard someone say,
“If you get married in your mid-20s, that’s crazy.”

Of course, they didn’t say it in front of me, they said it while I was in the bathroom.
But when I came back, one of my friends kept talking about it, and I ended up hearing it…

Honestly, I don’t really care about other people.
It’s not like they’re going to help me in life anyway…

But I’m really happy being married and having a child.
Watching my baby grow is so lovely and adorable…
Seeing them grow day by day makes me feel happy and realize how precious everything is.

My husband comes home from work, we take care of the baby together, eat good food,
go out when we have plans, and on weekends we go out as a family, it’s really great.

But some people look at me like they feel sorry for me.

They say things like:
“A kid raising a kid,”
“You’ve wasted your youth,”
“What about your career?”
“What are you going to do later?”
“You’re not working?”
“Your husband might look down on you someday,” and so on…

Sometimes when I hear these things, it’s not even from people my age but from older women.
I can’t tell if they’re genuinely worried or just being passive-aggressive.

I’m honestly fine, so I don’t understand why people around me worry about me like this…
I don’t even talk about my life to others.
I’ve never even told my friends things like “raising a child is hard.”

When people see someone like me, do they really think it’s pathetic or pitiful?

After hearing that comment at the gathering, I thought about it carefully,
and realized that most of what people have said to me all had the same undertone:
“Your life is so unfortunate”

My close friends never say things like that, they just chat, joke around, and that’s it.
It’s always the less close people who say those kinds of things.

post response:

[+105][-347]

original post: here

1. [+438, -85]

If you had a kid the moment you graduated, it does feel like you've wasted your entire tuition fee away

2. [+333, -39]

It’s not really something I would recommend to my own children. Of course, if you're living your best life, you may want to tell your kid to do the same...

3. [+314, -25]

You're not crazy. Everyone just has different values. I had a child in my 30s, but even if I could go back in time, I wouldn't have a child in my 20s. I believe the countless experiences I was able to have because I was in my 20s were essential to my life, so I don't want to force marriage, childbirth, and parenting into my 20s. After all, 25 is the age when you have just graduated from university and are starting your career as a working professional. However, you might want different things, and since it is your life, the decision is yours to make.

4. [+234, -43]

Everyone has their own time for everything. You couldn't even do the things you can only do in your 20s. You wrote about having a baby and married life simply, as if it were no big deal, but didn't you truly regret spending such a difficult time raising a child alone while your friends were enjoying their youth? You even said that you can have children early, raise them, and then just have fun, but having fun when you're old is absolutely not the same as having fun when you're young. Besides, who are you going to hang out with then? Your friends will be busy raising kids; are you going to hang out just with your husband? That's easier said than done.

5. [+173, -36]

At gatherings with my friends, stay-at-home mothers often jokingly say, "If I had known it would be like this, I would have just stopped at middle school." It’s not meant seriously, just a self-deprecating joke, but... everyone had education and careers, yet in the end, they couldn't protect their careers because they had to take care of the kids (they faced hardships like life-or-death crises for both mother and fetus during pregnancy in their late 20s and early 30s, and life-or-death crises for the baby after birth). Since you didn't even have to worry about protecting a career, you might not understand why others view it that way... but for some, giving up a career is precisely because their lives were at stake. As long as you keep other people's homes separate from yours.

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