Se marier jeune (avant 25 ans) vs. attendre la fin de la vingtaine ou la trentaine
Si vous agissez
Se marier avant 25 ans
23%
Si vous n’agissez pas
Attendre la fin de la vingtaine ou la trentaine
15%
Pourcentage de personnes qui regrettent ensuite chaque choix. Les barres et le registre complet s’affichent ci-dessous.
Famille
Dernière révision 2026-05-13
Qualité des preuves 4.0/5
Score d’évaluation en huit dimensions selon la
grille de qualité
. Chaque dimension notée de 1 à 5.
D1 Vérification des sources
4/5
D2 Autorité et indépendance des sources
4/5
D3 Précision du taux de regret
3/5
D4 Comparabilité des sources
3/5
D5 Motif de Gilovich
5/5
D6 Qualité de la prose
4/5
D7 Complétude des réserves
5/5
D8 Qualité de l’échantillon
4/5
Moyenne4.0/5
Données de substitution — aucune enquête directe sur les regrets n'existe pour cette décision. Les taux sont dérivés des scores de satisfaction et des obstacles d'accès plutôt que de questions portant directement sur les regrets. Voir les mises en garde ci-dessous.
Regret d'action
Se marier avant 25 ans
23%
23% des Américains mariés regrettent de s'être mariés trop jeunes
Adultes américains mariés
transversale, rétrospective
Regret d'inaction
Attendre la fin de la vingtaine ou la trentaine
15%
15% des adultes qui ont retardé le mariage regrettent le temps de formation familiale réduit
Adultes mariés plus tard ou restés célibataires, représentatifs au niveau national américain
transversale, 2014
% regrettent ce choix
Se marier avant 25 ansAttendre la fin de la vingtaine ou la trentaine
23%15%
action dominates — L'action domine — la plupart regrettent d'avoir agi.
Décisions associées
Décisions sémantiquement similaires — même terrain, compromis différents.
23% of currently married Americans report regretting that they married too young, according to a 2023 Clever Real Estate survey of 1,000 married US adults, placing it as the third most commonly cited marriage regret. This aligns with a consistent structural finding in family demography: age at first marriage is among the strongest demographic predictors of marital dissolution, and marrying before one’s mid-twenties substantially increases the risk of divorce, according to an Institute for Family Studies analysis by Nicholas Wolfinger. That analysis describes a curvilinear pattern — prior to about age 32 each additional year of age at marriage reduces the odds of divorce by roughly 11 percent, with the late twenties emerging as the optimal window. The mechanism is not mysterious — early marriage compresses identity formation, career establishment, and partner vetting into a narrower window, increasing the probability that the match that seemed right at 21 looks different at 30.
The inaction side cannot be measured directly: no large-scale survey asks adults whether they regret waiting too long to marry. Pew Research’s 2014 nationally representative survey of 2,003 US adults found that 53% of never-married adults would like to marry eventually, and among those, 30% cite not having found someone with what they want in a spouse, 27% financial unreadiness, and 22% being too young or not ready to settle down. Those are reasons for remaining unmarried, not retrospective regret about waiting — so the 15% inaction figure shown here is an explicit proxy drawn from that barrier data, not a measured regret rate, and the comparison should be read accordingly. The same Clever Real Estate survey found that 30% of married respondents wish they had married someone more compatible — its single most cited regret — but that figure is not broken out by age at marriage, so it speaks to partner selection in general rather than to people who waited.
Under Gilovich and Medvec’s temporal framework, action regret (marrying too young) tends to dominate the short and medium term, and the 8-point gap in this dataset is consistent with that pattern. The median marriage age in the United States reached 30 for men and 28 for women in 2022, a generational shift from 23/21 in 1970, meaning the population has already moved toward the lower-regret path on average. Whether that shift has reduced population-level regret, or simply shifted its form from “married too young” to “waited too long and now face fertility constraints,” is a question the current literature does not yet answer with bilateral precision.
Sources : action
Registre des sources
Chaque chiffre ci-dessous correspond à ce que la source a rapporté, avec la citation textuelle sur laquelle nous nous sommes appuyés et la méthode de calcul. Cliquez sur un lien pour vérifier directement.
1/2 sources vérifiées de manière indépendante, mot pour mot, par rapport à la source citée
[1]Clever Real Estate — Marriage Decline Survey 2023
Étude primaire
23% of respondents regret marrying too young — the 3rd most cited marriage regret
Extrait
“"23% of respondents regret marrying too young, making it the third most common marriage regret among surveyed married US adults."
”
Données source de
2023-01-01
Consulté le
2026-05-13
Calcul
Clever Real Estate online survey, n=1,000 married US adults, 2023. Regret rate taken directly from survey: 23% endorsed "marrying too young" as a regret. Used as the action-side regret_rate of 0.23.
[2]Institute for Family Studies — Want to Avoid Divorce? Wait to Get Married, But Not Too Long
Vérifié
Source de référence
Prior to age 32, each additional year of age at marriage reduces divorce odds by 11%; after 32, odds of divorce increase by 5% per year -- with the late 20s as the optimal marriage age
Extrait
“"Those who tie the knot after their early thirties are now more likely to divorce than those who marry in their late twenties. Prior to age 32 or so, each additional year of age at marriage reduces the odds of divorce by 11 percent. However, after that the odds of divorce increase by 5 percent per year. Research consistently finds that marrying before one's mid-twenties substantially increases the risk of divorce. Age at first marriage is among the strongest demographic predictors of marital dissolution."
”
Données source de
2015-07-17
Consulté le
2026-05-14
Vérification
Extrait récupéré et confirmé de manière indépendante, mot pour mot, par rapport à la source citée lors de notre audit de vérification.
Calcul
URL corrected 2026-05-14: the original IFS URL (blog/the-best-age-to-get-married) returns 404. Replaced with the confirmed IFS article by Nicholas Wolfinger (July 2015) on age at marriage and divorce risk, which loads successfully. The Wolfinger article presents the curvilinear finding: late 20s is optimal; marrying before mid-20s substantially raises divorce risk; marrying after 32 also raises it. The corroborating context for the action-side is confirmed: higher divorce risk among early marriages is consistent with higher retrospective regret rates. No separate regret rate extracted.
Sources : inaction
Registre des sources
Chaque chiffre ci-dessous correspond à ce que la source a rapporté, avec la citation textuelle sur laquelle nous nous sommes appuyés et la méthode de calcul. Cliquez sur un lien pour vérifier directement.
2/2 sources vérifiées de manière indépendante, mot pour mot, par rapport à la source citée
[1]Pew Research Center — Record Share of Americans Have Never Married
Vérifié
↗ 1 other entry
Étude primaire
53% of never-married adults would like to marry eventually; among those, 30% say the main reason they are not married is not having found someone with what they want in a spouse, 27% are not financially prepared, and 22% are too young or not ready to settle down
Extrait
“"About half of all never-married adults (53%) say they would like to marry eventually... three-in-ten say the main reason they are not married is that they have not found someone who has what they are looking for in a spouse. Nearly as many (27%) say they are not financially prepared for marriage, and 22% say they are too young or not ready to settle down."
”
Données source de
2014-09-24
Consulté le
2026-05-13
Vérification
Extrait récupéré et confirmé de manière indépendante, mot pour mot, par rapport à la source citée lors de notre audit de vérification.
Calcul
Pew Research nationally representative survey (n=2,003 US adults, 436 never-married), May 2014. The survey measures REASONS never-married adults remain unmarried, not regret: of the 53% who would like to marry eventually, 30% cite not finding the right spouse, 27% financial unreadiness, 22% being too young / not ready. None of these is a retrospective "regret waiting" measure, so this source does not directly support an inaction-side regret rate. See the inaction_side note below: no reliable direct estimate of regret over delayed marriage exists.
[2]Clever Real Estate — Marriage Decline Survey 2023
Vérifié
Étude primaire
30% of married Americans wish they had married someone more compatible — the single most cited marriage regret (general, not specific to those who waited)
Extrait
“"The top three regrets are: wishing they married someone they're more compatible with (30%), wishing they married someone better with money (24%), and marrying too young (23%)."
”
Données source de
2023-01-01
Consulté le
2026-05-13
Vérification
Extrait récupéré et confirmé de manière indépendante, mot pour mot, par rapport à la source citée lors de notre audit de vérification.
Calcul
Same Clever Real Estate survey, n=1,000 married US adults. The "wrong person" regret (30%) is the most common marriage regret overall; it is NOT broken out by age at marriage, so it cannot be attributed to people who waited. Included only as general context that waiting does not by itself solve partner selection -- it does not support an inaction-side regret rate. The 0.15 inaction figure is an acknowledged proxy from the Pew barrier data (see proxy_only: true).
Réserves
Le chiffre de regret d'action de 23% provient d'un échantillon d'adultes actuellement mariés, ce qui exclut ceux dont le mariage précoce s'est terminé par un divorce et qui peuvent porter des taux de regret plus élevés. Les 15% côté inaction sont un proxy de limite inférieure dérivé d'une question Pew sur les obstacles au mariage, pas une mesure de regret rétrospectif direct. L'enquête Clever Real Estate est un panel en ligne, pas un échantillon de probabilité. L'âge médian croissant du mariage (30 pour les hommes, 28 pour les femmes en 2022 contre 23/21 en 1970) reflète un changement de population vers l'attente, mais ne mesure pas en soi le regret. Les deux côtés ne sont pas tirés de la même enquête ou en utilisant des questions équivalentes, donc l'écart de 8 points est directionnel plutôt que précis.
