Marriage ages are up but these Gen Zers are bucking the trend with 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 th...