Indeed, one of the most striking differences between swimmers and treaders lies in this interim choice: living together. Although living together is increasingly common among all young adults, treaders are more often serial cohabiters and they more often have children. “Affluent college kids don’t raise children while living together,” says Network associate member Maria Kefalas, “but lower- and working-class kids do. It’s much more often a ‘shotgun cohabitation.’ ”10
Tanya and her boyfriend, Jackson, have lived together for five years, since the birth of her third child (his first). The two didn’t put much thought into their decision to move in together after their five-year-old was born. “It just happened,” she says. “Maybe it was the baby.”
Tanya likes the stability of their relationship. “I like the support physically and financially. I feel real secure,” she says. She works as a teacher’s assistant in a public school and holds a part-time job at a parks and recreations program to help make ends meet for her children, ages ten, nine, and five. Jackson, meanwhile, works as a mechanic. Their relationship is no great shakes, but it isn’t abusive or a huge strain, either, a bonus in Tanya’s eyes. She knows all too well what the alternative is like.
Tanya got pregnant in high school with her oldest daughter, but the relationship was abusive and it ended within two years. Her next boyfriend, the father of her second child, was also “a mistake.” “He was into drugs and couldn’t do it,” she says of that relationship. Tanya’s bad luck is fairly common among our treaders. Many of their relationships are fragile and short-term—more like a string of live-in dates.
Today, Tanya and Jackson occasionally talk about getting married, but she says, “I think it’s just talk. We can jump the broom and call it marriage. We don’t need a legal obligation right now with me trying to go to school and me wanting to get a house.” Part of their hesitation is economic. “He truly believes he’s supposed to be the breadwinner and I shouldn’t work. Work on more cars, then I will,” she says with a laugh.
This breadwinner role that Tanya mentions is a key reason why the relationships of treaders less frequently “convert” to marriage. Both Tanya and Jackson badly want to fulfill what they see as the “normal” way to family: Jackson earning enough so that Tanya can stay home with the children. He would be happy to be able to provide for her and the children, to fulfill that simple American dream. But even this modest goal is so hard to accomplish these days. The factory job is gone, and the earnings of men without a college degree continue to fall or at best stagnate. Tanya’s job, like most low-skill jobs in retail, health care, and the helping professions, is low paid, part-time, and without benefits.
Men in particular have always broached the idea of marriage only when they feel financially able to support a family. Many studies have found that men who have unsteady or part-time jobs are more likely to live with a partner than to get married. This pattern is most evident when using education as a measure of economic security. The odds of high school dropouts living together are nearly twice as high as those for college grads. The difficulty of providing for a family is a primary reason why marriage rates plummeted in the Depression, and it is one reason why living together has increased today. Without the means, treaders less often convert those relationships into marriage. For this group of young people, a marriage license has in some respects become “just a piece of paper.” These couples are not against marriage, nor do they think that marriage is outdated. Rather, the marriage they idealize—the marriage they see in the movies with the steady job, a nice house, two kids and a dog—is always just out of their reach.
If cohabiting relationships were enduring, few would blink an eye at these statistics. But the world of relationships is anything but stable. Michelle is actually right on track, if trends are any indication.
Michelle dropped out of community college at age nineteen and has held a string of jobs, the most recent as an assistant to an accountant, for $11.50 an hour. Her boyfriend, Robbie, works as a security guard at a casino. The two have been together for seven years, with five of those spent living together. They have a daughter, Missy, who just turned two—“the best thing that ever happened to us,” says Michelle, although Missy was not planned.
However, Michelle is now having serious reservations about her relationship with Robbie. She has dreams and goals, and she’s not sure he’s as ambitious and on track as she’d like him to be. “I’m hoping we’ll be together for the long run,” she says, “but I don’t know. I had pretty much almost broken it off with him last year. It was just like to the point where I don’t know what he’s doing, I don’t know where he wants us to go. You know? And I don’t think he does, either.”
Michelle will likely join the roughly half of all cohabiting couples who split up by year five. In fact, in a recent study of couples who live together, only 10 percent were still living together five years later, and another 44 percent had married. The majority of those who had married were college-educated and employed. Before concluding that this college group has higher moral character, however, consider how the conversion rate widens as income declines. Among women living in poverty, only 31 percent had married their partners. For those better off, 42 percent had married. Money clearly matters. It makes life more stable, not to mention more enjoyable. There is nothing worse than bills hanging overhead or a debt collector calling to make tempers snap, and relationships break. Disillusionment on both parts sets in more quickly when the rent is overdue. Even more stress is piled on when the man of the household, traditionally the breadwinner, cannot hold a job or earn what he considers necessary to fulfill his role. Under these circumstances, the woman in the relationship may end up earning more and supporting him, but she may choose to institute a “pay to stay” rule, in which case he may simply opt to leave.
And Baby Makes … Two
The serial nature of the more tenuous relationships of treaders would be of less concern if it weren’t for the children. More often than not in these relationships, the woman has a child. Children, in fact, are one of the biggest distinctions in our story of diverging destinies. While well-positioned young people see children as disrupting their plans and forcing them to put dreams on hold, those with less optimistic futures approach children and marriage differently. The Shus of this generation, with their hard-earned credentials and enormous potential, are delaying both marriage and children because they have a clear plan for their futures and ample personal resources to get there. It is possible, and some say likely, that these women are getting pregnant as often as those without college degrees, but because of their brighter futures, they more often terminate their pregnancies, which would, in their view, foreclose their futures. In contrast, the Tanyas and Jacksons, whose future choices are more constrained and who are furiously treading against the currents, are delaying marriage but not children. And why not? With futures that hold limited promise in education and work, the prospect of having a child is less disruptive and is, instead, a potential source of meaning to fill holes created by limited opportunities in other realms.
“I don’t think many people aspire to be single mothers,” says Network chair Frank Furstenberg, who has followed the lives of a group of teen mothers in Baltimore since 1965, most recently chronicled in his book Destinies of the Disadvantaged: The Politics of Teenage Childbearing. “They don’t set out thinking, ‘I’m going to raise a child and I don’t want a man around.’ Yet when they do find themselves pregnant, the choice of keeping the baby is an easier one to make. Often those around them have children, their futures are not ascending a fast ladder of success, and they view having a child as a positive turning point.
“You really have to get inside the heads of these women who are making decisions to understand them,” Furstenberg goes on. “Often the school, the family background, peer groups, neighborhoods all provide cues to people about what their future prospects are going to be, and those cues influence the decisions they’ll make along the way—how
vigilant to be about contraception, when to begin sexual relationships, and what to do if they become pregnant. All those decisions are different depending on the social world you’re part of.”
That social world contributes greatly to the diverging paths leading up to marriage. Those with more education and, in some respects, more to lose delay marriage and children as they get settled and set, using the span spent living together as a chance to work out the kinks. Those with less on the line delay marriage but not children, and their stints at living together are shorter and less frequently lead to marriage. Marriage itself is a dividing line marking the prospects of the swimmers and the treaders. Those more hopeful that life ahead will come with a good job, some sense of stability, and maybe even a lifelong partner are more likely to eventually take the march down the aisle.
Divided Prospects
The exalted pedestal on which many young adults place marriage might be worrisome on some level. But more worrisome are those who act first and think later. Even in marriage, where one might think love makes few distinctions, we found a sharp contrast in both the timing and the success of the marriages of the swimmers and treaders. Like good schools and safe neighborhoods, happy and successful marriages and families are yet another variation of class privilege in American society. Those with a college education are delaying marriage and children, but their marriages are more successful as a result. While many treaders are moving in together without marrying, a small group of them—many of whom have skipped the critical step of college—are marrying quickly. About one in five young adults marry before age twenty-five today. While this may warm the hearts of those who are worried about the demise of marriage, they may want to think twice. These marriages are more likely to struggle and end in divorce.
At twenty-three, Grace looks back and wishes she had done things differently. She and Larry are both from a small town in Iowa. They married at age seventeen, with special permission from a judge and her parents, because they did not want to be apart when Larry left for California and the army. “He only had so much leave time,” says Grace, “and we wanted to have a big wedding. We got married Saturday, and left Monday for California.”
For young people like Grace and her peers, who hail from more religious, rural, or disadvantaged backgrounds, the cues they receive are clear: Marriage is one of the first steps “adults” take. Views on marriage are frequently shaped by our surroundings. Religious families, for example, more often marry early because they believe deeply in the sanctity of the institution. In rural towns across the country, reasons for marrying early have less to do with the dictates of the church than with the limited options available to young people and the strong signals their families and the community send to them. As one young man from small-town Iowa says of dating, “I mean, you might as well marry her because you guys have been together for so long and it’s not gonna make a difference. It’s kind of like the concept around here.” Marriage is just what you do at a certain point in your life. Rural youth who are not college-bound see no reason to wait. They have often known their girlfriends or boyfriends since elementary school. They have jobs, even if not great ones. What else is there? Indeed, unlike their counterparts in more urban settings, their choices both of mates and of life paths are more restricted and, ironically, more clearly defined.
These fast-starters differ from other groups because their marriages are often a first step, not the last, in a chain of adult decisions and achievements. Like their counterparts at midcentury, they are marrying early on the assumption that marriage is a, if not the, key marker of adulthood. They wed and find a job in short order. These fast-starters are also more likely to have children, which rapidly alters the rules of the game. Although no one regrets having their son or daughter, many say that if they had it to do over, they would wait longer, and get their educations out of the way first.
Or as Grace says, “What would I do different? I’ll answer that. I would’ve waited a little longer to have my kids until I was settled, had a little money, knew for sure everything. But like I said, I don’t regret my kids at all. I just wished more for them, that I could give them more … There’s a perfect plan, but you can’t always follow that.”
Grace realizes now that she made a rash decision to marry at seventeen. Her marriage was stressful, she says, “money-wise and the kids. You think you got it all planned out. You fall in love with this person and you go out two or three years and you think, Okay, we’re gonna get married and have our perfect little house, be comfortable every day, have kids. I really never had anything for myself.” She had no “me” time.
In the end, Grace, says, “Larry wanted his space. He wanted independence. I begged him to stay, but he said, no, not this time.” A week later, “I found out about her.” Grace says that if only she and Larry had lived together first and postponed having children, they might have been spared the pain of divorce.
They were too young to be married in this day and age. Sixty percent of those who marry as Grace did before age eighteen will be divorced by age thirty-four. One-half of those who marry by age twenty will not make it to their fifteenth wedding anniversary. This compares with the roughly 35 percent divorce rate of those who postpone marriage until after age twenty-five.11
Diverging Destinies at the Altar
“For the non-college-educated population,” claims the National Marriage Project’s The State of Our Unions 2007, “the marriage situation remains gloomy.” Divorce rates by social class are much more pronounced than they were in the 1950s.12 On many levels, delaying marriage is not so bad, especially given the high divorce rates today. Marriages would become sturdier if they were based on more planning and compatibility. Perhaps that is one reason why the marriages of the college-educated are stronger and happier, according to State of Our Unions, and why their marriage rates are up. “Their marriages are more egalitarian, well-matched in education and earnings. The share saying their marriages are very happy has held steady while other segments of the population have been declining in marital happiness.” These marriages are stronger, we might add, because the more elite young adults have the privilege to concentrate on their futures early in life, and that ultimately concentrates privilege, which creates a different strategy toward marriage.
As one young woman who married early says, “It makes things a lot easier if you do it the ‘normal’ way. I wish I had done that. I wish I had gone to school first. And then got a job, and then got married, and then had kids. It just makes everything so much easier. You don’t have to find babysitters. You don’t have to tune out SpongeBob while you’re doing homework. You can pay things off in order. You start off with no bills making lots of money. That starts you off in a very different place in life.”
Not only college secures this foothold on a more delayed strategy. In addition, the norms, neighborhoods, networks, and opportunities that young people cultivate early in life position them on their future courses.
Young adults are striving to develop their own personal satisfaction, independent of others, which is a commendable goal. In a world with seemingly unlimited opportunities and time—as well as uncertainty—planning may be even more necessary. Gaining credentials and maturity early in life, without the distractions of romance and children, may be just the ticket to creating a more solid foundation from which to embrace a lifelong companion.
But delay how long? Sociologist Frances Goldscheider, who studies the changing roles in marriage, worries that marriage is being put off for too long. Time, after all, is ticking. Although women often feel the imperative of their biological clock, men think they are immune. “Men often say that they want three to four kids ‘later,’ ” Goldscheider says. “But what happens to your retirement savings, let alone plans, when you have three kids in college in your late sixties?” The young men in her classroom look at her, puzzled. “It’s the first time they’ve thought about it. They might not have a biological clock, but they have an earnings clock that is not mu
ch different.” Although delaying marriage allows one to get all of one’s ducks in a row and get settled on a solid path, there is a danger of waiting too long. While no one advocates for a return to shotgun marriages or unhappy couples trapped in unhappy marriages, it is worth asking: How late is too late? What will happen to marriage as more young people delay? We return to these questions at the end of the book.
These very different paths through marriage and parenthood risk hardening our growing class and income divisions in society. On the whole, people tend to marry partners who have similar backgrounds. Those who have college degrees tend to marry others with college degrees. Those with money marry others with money. There are, of course, exceptions, but in general, we rarely marry “up” or “down.” We also know that marriage confers some important benefits. It is associated with better health, more income, and improved well-being. Given the tendency to choose partners who are similar to us, and the tendency for those with less affluence and education to live together instead of marrying, the question is, will the elite more often find success in, and benefit from, marriage? Will these benefits exacerbate the already growing rift between the swimmers and treaders of this world? As The State of Our Unions puts it, “America is becoming a nation divided not only by education and income, but by unequal family structures.”
5
The Unlonely Crowd: Friends and Social Networks
Friends: Would anyone choose to live without them? It would be a very empty life, indeed, were it not for friends. As children, friends let us join in, they cushion our fears, they offer community. Seeing friends ensconced in the new fifth-grade classroom makes all the worries about the new teacher and school year disappear. As we age, friends do much the same, but for bigger decisions, bigger challenges. Friends allow us to be ourselves, flaws exposed and guard dropped. They are, as essayist Joseph Epstein writes, “not concerned with what might be made of one another, but only with the enjoyment of one another.” To have a friend is to be healthier, happier, and to have a connection to a community, even a community of just two.
Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It’s Good for Everyone Page 14
