Why do you feel compelled to defend your choices?
I defend human rights. I do it because I promote peace. We can't have peace without respecting one another.
You can't alienate everyone who married below 25 and have peace. You can't dis the kids of the young and say it's preferable if the path that brought them here were passed over in favor of a more affluent lifestyle with fewer or no kids. It just won't work.
You did what you wanted and it worked. Nobody here, including me, has ever said you shouldn't have gotten married to an older man and had kids at such a young age. We acknowledge your family as an exception to the rule and we are happy for you. We may not agree with you on everything, but we are happy your marriage works. That said, I do not wee your success at what is a very risky proposition at best as sufficient evidence to encourage others to follow in your footsteps.
I'm not encouraging others to follow me. I wasn't following anyone who told me young marriage was best - but the fact that it worked for me should at least garner some respect for the relationships that work or that can work.
I would hope that every young adult consider marriage to be one of the most serious decisions of their lives. And I think that most do. That's why most are dissuaded from marrying at a very young age and when they do, they are given good support and counsel, if they are wise, because that's what they surrounded themselves with.
Some will make a mistake who marry young. Maybe it wasn't so much the marriage that was the mistake as the attitude that leads to it's dissolution.
The attitudes of the spouses are, after all, what determine the viability of the relationship.