As Millennials and Gen Z Age, They Confront Family Formation

When parody is a solo-dwelling single’s best friend

The New York Times recently published an article titled “As Gen X and Boomers Age, They Confront Living Alone.” It contained many of the same fear-inducing words typically seen in articles about singles or solo-dwellers: confront, lack, challenge, compensate, etc. Bella DePaulo wrote in her Living Single blog the issues with this article. Below, I take the format of the original Times article and imagine what it would look like if it were instead about couples and nuclear families.

Originally published at Substack on December 18, 2022.

Frank Yates is 38 and married with two children, which is the kind of life he’s dreamed about since he was a teenager growing up in York, Pennsylvania. But the high school science teacher worries about how much his world has narrowed since he tied the knot nearly 11 years ago.

Becky Nash, a 32-year-old accountant in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is mostly grateful to be married, she said, because her mother and aunts never took her life seriously until her husband Greg popped the question in 2016.

Diane Hunter and Louis Shriver are raising a 3-year-old in Madison, Wisconsin. Married in 2020, the young family radiates with positivity about the future. But the real estate market has posed challenges, and the modest bungalow that was within their price range has required repairs that have drained their savings.

These stories represent one of the country’s fastest-shrinking demographic groups: people 45 and younger who form nuclear families. This trend has been decades in the making and has been driven by deep structural changes in the social fabric, among them the economic and political empowerment of women. While 13 percent of US households had a single occupant in 1960, single men and women comprised nearly 30 percent of all home buyers in 2019.

In interviews, many married younger adults with or without children said they feel positively about their lives.

But while many thrive while married, research never has – and indeed never will – prove that marriage itself boosts people’s health, happiness, or longevity. This is because it is impossible, both practically and ethically, to randomly assign study participants to singlehood or marriage.

This concerns Stanley Robertson, a sociologist at Syracuse University. “Even with declining rates of family formation, there is so much pressure in our culture to marry and have children. I fear that sloppy studies and sloppy journalism that proports to show the unequivocal goodness of marriage and parenthood will only serve to lead some young people down the wrong path for them.”

Compounding the issue, many children grow up to become adults who, for a broad spectrum of reasons, are unable or unwilling to carry on any kind of relationship with their parents, raising questions about how elder care will be managed in these families.

“What will happen to these people?” Dr. Robertson asked. “Will they be able to find other supports to compensate for believing that marriage and children are a glide path to well-being?”

Looking to the Future

For many married couples and parents, the pandemic highlighted the challenge of living with others. Ms. Nash, the 32-year-old accountant, discovered that spending nearly every waking hour in her husband Greg’s presence as they both worked full-time jobs from home took a terrible toll on their relationship. “I needed another social and emotional outlet, so I started looking for interesting service and recreational opportunities in town,” she said. She joined a hiking club and helped with fundraising for the local library, and says she is happier than before the pandemic began.

Ms. Nash regularly drives to San Diego to visit her parents, trips which reinforce her desire to have strong relationships with people beyond her husband. “My mom felt like my life began when Greg proposed, which reflected her belief that your spouse is everything. After 36 years of marriage, I fear neither of my parents would be able to function if the other died. That’s not cute or endearing, it’s terrifying,” she said.

Observing their parents’ marriages seems to have had a profound effect on many members of the Gen Z and Millennial generations, who say they doubt they’ll want to replicate the same patterns of behavior.

Mr. Yates, the high school teacher, watched helplessly as his parents went through an acrimonious “grey” divorce in 2018. “It was a long time coming. I think the last time they spoke to each other was during the Clinton administration,” he said. He believes the couple stayed together for so long despite their unhappiness due to every aspect of their lives being profoundly intertwined. “When you come to detest the very person you’ve built your entire life around, every day becomes Sophie’s choice on steroids,” he said.

All this has made Mr. Yates think about his own future. “I’ve been married for over a decade. I have two young children. It’s the life I’ve always dreamed about, and I love my family more than anything.” But he feels his world narrowing more every year, and said that the options for maintaining his independence are “almost non-existent. I’m totally freaked out by it.”

Home Sweet Home

Mr. Shriver and Ms. Hunter, the Wisconsin couple, began dating in 2014, and both were determined to take things slowly. “We really wanted to carefully explore life’s big questions together before jumping into anything,” said Ms. Hunter, 32, a sales rep for a media company.

They decided to move in together in 2017, renting a one-bedroom apartment. Their daughter was born in 2019, and they married in February 2020. “Our space needs grew beyond our apartment, and instead of an expensive honeymoon, we decided to buy a house,” said Mr. Shriver, a 29-year-old truck driver.

Then the pandemic struck and real estate prices across the country skyrocketed. After a monthslong search, the couple found a modest two-bedroom home within their price range and closed the deal in April 2021. While they love their home, it has come with a few very expensive surprises, such as the sudden need for a new furnace in the middle of last winter and the replacement of a collapsed sewer line. “Our savings took a big hit,” said Mr. Shriver.

Then, last month, family life became harder.

On his way home from the store, a driver alleged to be texting ran a red light and smashed into Mr. Shriver, breaking his left leg and totaling the family car.

“It’s been a tough time for us,” he said. “My wife works full-time and has to do almost everything with our daughter as I’m still having a hard time getting around. It’s going to be awhile before I can work again and we’re still waiting on disability payments.”

He sometimes wonders if his recovery would be easier if he were single. “I’d be able to focus on getting better and not see every day the toll this is taking on the people around me. And people wouldn’t assume that because I have a spouse, I automatically have a full-time caregiver.”

That last point rankles Ms. Hunter. “They saw ‘married’ on his paperwork at the hospital and assumed ‘she’s got this.’ Our beliefs about coupled life are ridiculous. No family can exist as an island.”

Despite what they’ve been through, the couple remains optimistic. That’s fueled, in part, by their proactive approach to their situation. Mr. Shriver, calling the couch his “command center,” is coordinating household tasks with all the people in their lives willing to help. “Just this weekend, a friend is getting our groceries and our neighbor is mowing the lawn,” he said.

“We’ll be stronger as a result of all this,” said Ms. Hunter. “But only if we understand we’re never going to be each other’s ‘everything.’”