Along a similar, vein my wife and I started a family quite early (by today's standards) at 19. I cannot count the number of times we got "the glare". I'm sure everyone assumed we were unmarried. People used to look (unabashedly) for a ring on my wife's finger. I'm sure they also thought we were on welfare or something.
I was in love with a wonderful woman, married, gainfully employed and paid my own way so whose business is it? Now my wife is 31 but looks 24 and when she goes out with the kids people whisper, "how old do you think she was when she started having kids?"
It is amazing how in a couple of generations children can go from being a blessing to being a social embarassment.
I don't know anyone who married at 19, but I have a couple of friends who married straight out of college, and started having children immediately. I have long thought that they were the really smart ones. While most of us realized somewhere in our late 20's to early 30's that careers weren't the be all and end all, they had figured this out early on. And when they are in their mid-40's they can look forward to pursuing other interests outside of the home.
The only qualification I will add to that is that the women who chose to do so came from fairly well-off backgrounds, and could expect some financial help from their parents.
It's a lot harder for a woman to make that decision if she or her husband have large student loans upon graduation.