I’m pre-disposed to disagree with everything in Michael Gerson’s recent diatribe against the 20-something from The Washington Post. Frankly any article that starts by claiming that an entire generation – mine or any other – finds family values “increasingly irrelevant” gets me on the defensive. That’s a blanket statement.
So is this: “This is the period of life in which society’s most important social commitments take shape — commitments that produce stability, happiness and children.”
I’m immediately drawn to words like “society’s” and “most important” and “stability, happiness and children.” It’s my job to hate “the man” and his requirement that I be stable faster than I’m ready to welcome the children that happiness requires; I’m 26 and live in Manhattan. But Gerson seems to suggest that I’m in big trouble because I am – and will continue to be – late to arrive to the stable life party – which would probably just be an afternoon tea. I’m making mistakes left and right, according to him, and they’ll cost me. Here’s where I admit that I don’t hate this article because I firmly disagree with it; I hate it because I’m afraid there’s a chance it could be true.
So in an effort to be less “26” than Gerson thinks I am, I’m going to evaluate his premise that I am/we are “lost in a world without courtship” as if I agree (or am at least willing to think about maybe agreeing).
Paraphrased, paragraph by paragraph:
- This whole 20-something relationship problem exists because people are ready to have sex earlier but ready to marry later, 26 for women and 28 for men, on average. Agree, except later than 26…please.
- More time to be unmarried = more time to be sexually experimental and unstable. Fine. The “courtship narrative” as Gerson calls it, used to be clear: date around, get engaged, marry, have kids. Now it’s totally disrupted and without a replacement. It’s true that dating means a lot of different things these days, and goes on for a lot longer than it used to with far, far more people, but I think the engagement —> marriage —> children path, for the most part holds steadys.
- As such 20-somethings sit in a “relational wasteland.” Ouch. Media-promoted casual sex and liberalism leads to real-life STDs and “emotional and physical wreckage” Double ouch. But does this mean we don’t know how to have relationships or that we don’t want them? Two different things…
- And then after early 20s involving all that emotional wreckage, our generation moves on to another destructive set-up: cohabitation. Not like when you couldn’t have boys sleep in your double long twin at Boston College. Like when they move into your full bed in Manhattan so you can each save $600 a month on rent.
- According to Gerson, this cohabitation and delayed marriage isn’t working out so well. “About 40% of children will now spend some of their childhood in a cohabiting union.” That is a MASSIVE stat. That means almost 1/2 the children born are born to parents who aren’t married. Challenge. “3/4 of children born to cohabiting parents will see their parents split up by the time they turn 16.” I’m famously bad at math but that’s 75% of the 40% of all kids born – so a LOT of the entire population. Still not resting easy with these numbers…
- So while we can no longer force the combo of marriage and living together, Gerson suggests we maintain standards around marriage before children. Fine, I concede; it is most secure to be married prior to having children, but I don’t think that’s really the point of his article…
- Gerson moves off the kids and marriage issue and onto the age of marriage issue. Gulp. The age of first marriage is important, he explains. And later is not always better. Double gulp. “People who marry after 27 tend to have less happy marriages – perhaps because partners are set in their ways or have unrealistically high standards. The marital sweet spot seems to be in the early to mid-20s.” Whaaaaat? Who did he talk to? How many people over 27? What kind of unhappiness? I want numbers – even if they’re as annoying as those babies-out-of-wedlock numbers…
- And finally – having a series of low-commitment relationships does not bode well for later marital commitment. Why do I feel like he really wanted to write a whole article about this… A. Yes, some people are pre-disposed to low commitment and will come at all relationships with a non-traditional approach, no matter how many they have. But B. there’s evidence, according to Wilcox, that “multiple failed relationships can ‘poison one’s view of the opposite sex'” further “serial cohabitation trains people for divorce.” Wait – who’s Wilcox……………………..oh, Director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. Curious…
- In conclusion, Gerson concludes, “delaying marriage creates moral, emotional and practical complications….The answer, even in the relational wasteland, is responsibility, commitment and sacrifice for the sake of children.” Whoa. See below, a lot.
I need to take the “sacrificing for the sake of children” off the table in this debate because I don’t believe Gerson means, “stop f-ing around, find someone to marry, settle down and have kids or you’ll end up miserable and unstable.” If that is in fact what he means then that’s a whole other blog post…
What I do think he means is stop f-ing around, hunker down, and get serious about relationships and marriage because it will lead to an overall more stable and happy life. And hurry up because outside a certain issue, you’re screwed.
But what he doesn’t address – and really no one addresses – is what happens if you hit marriage within that apparent “sweet spot” of your early 20’s and sacrifice developing your life and career in the process. Yes kids with parents who co-habit may see more divorce, but what about kids with parents who didn’t develop a sense of self because they were too wrapped up in getting married and having kids? Can you develop a sense of self inside a marriage, yes, of course you can. But then on that same token can’t you take your time to arrive at marriage focusing first on career and self and still end up happy? According to Gerson, probably not.
I am not married. I am incredibly happy. It’s hard to image re-setting my story to think of how it would feel if I were married right now, but I think for personal and developmental reasons, I would be less happy. I’m not married for a reason, and that reason is not so that I can sleep with as much of Manhattan as possible before I a-fix the ball and chain. That reason is because I don’t feel ready to be married, and scary stats about how unhappy I’ll be if I don’t get married faster aren’t helping.
My problem with Gerson’s argument isn’t his belief that marriage is important – that having children inside a marriage is more stable – that having too much casual sex is dangerous. I agree with all of that. My problem is that he seems to believe we’re delaying marriage because we’re stuck in this emotional wasteland that we can’t dig through to find the right person to marry, that it’s an issue of sexual and relational maturity — more specifically, that we don’t have enough. I think he thinks we’re foolish and immature and stilted as a generation. I disagree.
I think Gerson overlooks the fact that some of us 22 or 29, are choosing not to take those major life steps because of reasons that have nothing to do with sex or cohabiting or having children. It’s about career and personal development and time spent getting to know what and who we want. We realize life is long and refuse to believe that if we don’t insert marriage into it around the 23-year-old mark all’s lost.
Isn’t that mature too? Doesn’t that seem stable? Can’t that be as much a recipe for happiness as the life path Gerson prefers we take?
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I agree with you wholeheartedly.
Did our parents raise us so that we could have better? My mother told me constantly to wait until I found the right man and finished school to get married. She had married and never gone past an associate’s degree and she always regretted that. I think that a good chunk of our generation wants to better themselves and become emotionally ready to be in a marriage before they get married. In my eyes, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Another point on education is that many people in our generation are opting to get advanced degrees (go to grad school, get a PHD, etc…). This process could take until the person is out of the “sweet spot” of marriage age. Does that mean they will be a less than optimal husband/wife? I don’t think so- they will have the opportunity to provide for their families in a better way (monetarily) and be happier in their 9-5 life because they presumably chose a path that interested them instead of taking the first warehouse job they could because they had to provide.
So many people have fathers that cut out on the family when they were 3-10 years old. Is it just a coincidence that most of these men were only 23-33 themselves? I doubt people’s maturity levels (by age) have changed that much in the last thirty years. I think that it’s a case of people knowing they aren’t ready and waiting instead of knowing they aren’t ready and doing it anyway because society deems it the right “time” to do it.
I agree with you wholeheartedly.
Did our parents raise us so that we could have better? My mother told me constantly to wait until I found the right man and finished school to get married. She had married and never gone past an associate’s degree and she always regretted that. I think that a good chunk of our generation wants to better themselves and become emotionally ready to be in a marriage before they get married. In my eyes, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Another point on education is that many people in our generation are opting to get advanced degrees (go to grad school, get a PHD, etc…). This process could take until the person is out of the “sweet spot” of marriage age. Does that mean they will be a less than optimal husband/wife? I don’t think so- they will have the opportunity to provide for their families in a better way (monetarily) and be happier in their 9-5 life because they presumably chose a path that interested them instead of taking the first warehouse job they could because they had to provide.
So many people have fathers that cut out on the family when they were 3-10 years old. Is it just a coincidence that most of these men were only 23-33 themselves? I doubt people’s maturity levels (by age) have changed that much in the last thirty years. I think that it’s a case of people knowing they aren’t ready and waiting instead of knowing they aren’t ready and doing it anyway because society deems it the right “time” to do it.
Anytime I read a column that begins with the phrase “traditional family values,” my brain immediately shuts off because I assume this person wants to talk to me about how the gays are undermining society, why abortion is murder and why sex is evil.
Reading over his column, this guy just comes off as out of touch and, frankly, old. And not in like an “oh you’re so wiiiiiise” way. Just like in a “go back to your bingo and lemonade” way. Or something.
The headline on this is “Just Say No to Early Marriage.” It’s not entirely applicable, but it made me think of this post:
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/134696/
The headline on this is “Just Say No to Early Marriage.” It’s not entirely applicable, but it made me think of this post:
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/134696/
Although I know the baby stats are largely irrelevant to your point, I would like to possibly make you feel a little less panicky by pointing out that the 40% is not the number of children born to parents who are cohabitating or even the number born ‘out of wedlock.’ It says at some point in their childhoods, which means they’re including all the kids whose parents were married but divorced and then Mom’s boyfriend moved in or whatever.
The problem I have with these type of posts is that they tend to place the blame on women for the trend of less serious commitment. (If it is indeed a trend; assuming that the Victorian to 1950’s western model of marriage comprised the entirety of the history of human relationships; rather than just a small slice.) They ignore that in the marriages of yore; men took mistresses, cheated, and deserted frequently while women had no legal or financial rights. I’ll take today’s model of romantic instability over being broke and pregnant and married to a brute anyday.
The other thing these whiners neglect is that our economy has been changing over the past two decades to the point where the average middle class family sustains a huge percentage of debt; in the form of large mortgages, car leases, student loans, and credit. The average 20-something thinks; “Wow, I have a good education, a white collar job, and yet I’m still struggling to maintain an apt, living expenses, and student loans. How am I ever going to afford a family?” That’s what this economic crisis is about… the death of the middle class.
Economics have always dictated the mores of a society; perhaps these family values pundits should pull their heads out of their asses and look at what’s really going on.
Kudos on the brilliant post Jessie, I’m only 21 and I probably don’t understand the issue as well as you do – but I definitely don’t agree that our generation is founded upon selfish non-committal type values.
I’ve only read your paraphrased version of Garson’s article but it seems to me that he has failed to acknowledge that this is a different era that we’re living in – there is an increased academic pressure in the society we live in, and there are millions of options to choose from; not to forget the higher commitment levels we have to give in terms to having a successful career.
I’ve always believed that marriage should happen when the couple is ready – regardless of age – and more importantly that the couple has a separate identity from each other outside their marriage and kids – be it their career or hobbies etc
Just because we’ve realized there are many things that bring richness and fulfillment to our lives other then getting married, doesn’t mean that family values have become increasingly irrelevant.
An insightfull post. Will definitely help.
Thanks,
Karim – Positive thinking
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