iGen
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Then there’s the question of timing: when do high school seniors expect to get married? In the 1970s, most expected to get married in the next five years, but by 2015 only 39% did. That’s a 22% decline just since 2007, suggesting that iGen’ers will continue the trend toward later marriage begun by GenX’ers and Millennials. “A lot of people are putting off [marriage] so they can fulfill their dreams and desires without having to answer to someone else,” wrote Andrew, 22.
The shift in the average age at first marriage since the 1960s has been enormous, increasing by seven years over five and a half decades. In 1960, the median age at first marriage for women was 20—thus half of the women getting married for the first time back then were teenagers. That rose to only 21 in 1970, when the first wave of Boomers was coming of age. Then the age started to climb, and it hasn’t stopped since. In 2015, the median age at first marriage for women was 27.1. The average age for men also shot up, from 23 in 1960 to 29 in 2015 (see Appendix H). Marriage is beginning to be seen as something only old people do. As Caitlyn, 22, puts it, “Marriage is boring because you’re stuck with the same person for the rest of your life. It’s like having chicken every night for dinner. So people are waiting until they don’t have any other option but to get married.”
Think about it: When was the last time you received an invitation to the wedding of two 23-year-olds? The percentage of 18- to-29 year-olds who are married was cut in half in just eight years, from 32% in 2006 to 16% in 2014. Getting married young is now so uncommon that when Barnard College student Melyssa Luxenberg got engaged in 2015, the campus newspaper ran a story on it, headlined “Engaged at 20.”
Whereas previous generations married young and figured out their economic prospects together, many iGen’ers have a long list of things they think need to be in place before getting married. “You’d better have a job that is stable and is high paying or be close to your ideal life before getting married,” wrote Harrison, 21. “Settling so young without an education and no business skills is gonna be a disaster down the road. You need to get all this right before being in a committed relationship.” The requirement of having a steady job in place is especially problematic for this generation, in which one out of four men in their early twenties is not working at all (see Appendix H).
Americans aren’t just waiting longer to get married; fewer are getting married at all, with the US marriage rate reaching all-time lows in the 2010s. This is likely to continue for iGen: more iGen’ers than any other generation were raised by unmarried parents or single mothers. Marriage does not feel mandatory to them. “Marriage is not a necessity anymore,” wrote David, 22. “We live in a society no longer blinded by social dogma, and people are allowed to do what they want.”
Okay, so maybe more people are living together—after all, high school students are now much more likely to say that’s a good idea. Sure enough, more young couples now live together while unmarried than in previous generations. But in the last decade, something interesting has happened: the percentage of unmarried young adults living with a partner has stayed about the same, while the percentage who are married has plummeted. That means that more young people are truly single—not married and not living with anyone (see Figure 8.6).
Figure 8.6. Percentage of 18- to 29-year-olds who are married, living with a partner, or neither. Gallup, 2004–2014.
Millennials and iGen’ers are putting off not just marriage but live-in relationships entirely, with fewer young people living with a partner at all. By 2014, more 18- to 34-year-olds were living with their parents than with a spouse or romantic partner. So not only are high school students less likely to date and young adults less likely to have sex, fewer are living in committed relationships and fewer anticipate marriage and family being a priority. iGen’ers are also less likely to hang out with their friends, at least in person. All in all, iGen’ers are increasingly disconnected from human relationships—except perhaps with their parents.
Not Sure if I Want Kids
The economic squeeze facing Millennials and iGen’ers makes having children challenging. College debt loads are at record levels, housing costs have soared, and child care often costs more than rent. Children are expensive, and it’s tough to be able to afford to have more than one. “While I would like to have children at some point in my life, I think one of the major challenges in doing so would be financial,” wrote Tyler, 23. “It just seems so costly to raise kids and being able to afford them would probably require more than one income.” Ava, 22, says, “I already have a child, and the most challenging thing has definitely been the money management of it all. It takes a lot of money to raise a child.” With iGen’ers prioritizing financial success over family and many facing economic challenges, more of them will not have children, plunging the birthrate to all-time lows.
Economic woes may be part of the reason Millennials, right before iGen, are waiting longer than any previous American generation to have kids. In the 1950s, women aged 20 to 24 had the highest birthrates of any age group. Just since 1990, the birthrate for women in their early twenties has plunged by 36%. Over the same time, the birthrate for 35- to 39-year-olds has increased by 63% (see Appendix H).
iGen’ers will undoubtedly continue the trend toward later motherhood, with more women having their children in their 30s, often their late 30s or early 40s (which is about the age limit of both natural fertility and current fertility techniques, including IVF). It remains to be seen whether new fertility technology will be able to extend fertility even later; if it can, many Millennials and iGen’ers will be interested.
The profound shifts in attitudes toward sex, marriage, and children have fundamentally altered the reproductive lifecourse. On average, Boomer women had their first child only about two and a half years after they first had sex. With earlier sex and later births, GenX lengthened that interval to seven and a half years. Millennials and iGen’ers wait to have sex and to have children, with 8.3 years from first sex to first birth. For the first time, the entire reproductive timeline has shifted later (see Figure 8.7).
Figure 8.7. Women’s ages at reproductive milestones, 1960–2014. Finer & Philbin (2014), U.S. Current Population Survey, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This can be a difficult waiting game for iGen’ers; evolution has shaped humans to want to reproduce earlier in life, and the time between sexual maturity and reproduction keeps growing. “I have seven siblings and all I have wanted since I was eight is a family of my own. I really scared my mom all through high school when I kept telling her that I just want to have a baby,” wrote Janelle, 18, a nursing major at SDSU. Yet her typical-for-iGen fears and lack of experience with relationships don’t make contemplating marriage easy. “Marriage scares me,” she admits. “I have never been in a long-term committed relationship so the thought of spending the rest of my life with one person is frightening.” All in all, iGen’ers want kids but fear they might not be able to afford them and are frightened of the long-term adult relationships that often go along with having them.
What will the future hold? There are several possible scenarios. First, iGen’ers will have children but will choose to do so in more unconventional arrangements. With their caution around relationships, more may choose to have babies on their own, and fewer will feel the need to live with their partner if they do get pregnant accidentally. Take Louis Tomlinson of the boy band One Direction, whose former flame Briana Jungwirth announced in 2015 that she was pregnant when they were both 23. “[The pregnancy] was a surprise at first, but he and Briana are very, very close friends and this has brought them even closer,” a friend of the two told People. “Although they aren’t in a relationship, their friendship is extremely strong and they are both really excited about the baby.” Perhaps this will become the new iGen model of parenthood: we won’t get married or even live together or be in a relationship, but we will be good friends and raise our baby together. (Or not—by 2016, Tomlinson and Jungwirth were embroiled in a c
ustody dispute that had begun when Tomlinson started dating someone else.)
Such situations make it difficult to have more than one child, and many people want to raise children with a partner. If committed relationships become less common, the birthrate might decrease, too. Several signs point in this direction. Fewer Americans are having children outside marriage: after rising for decades, the percentage of babies born to unmarried mothers declined from 52% in 2008 to 40% in 2015. With marriage being put off ever later and fewer women having children outside marriage, childbearing is increasingly being postponed until one’s thirties, if it happens at all.
The trends all seem to be going the same way: fewer young adults are having sex, fewer are in committed relationships, and fewer prioritize marriage and family. The high cost of housing and child care make having children, particularly more than one, economically challenging. All of these trends suggest that fewer iGen’ers will ever have children and that only children will become more common. The United States will increasingly resemble Europe, where birthrates are below replacement level and marriage is optional. The move away from relationships and children might be a permanent trend instead of just a postponement. If so, iGen will be on track to be the generation with the largest number of single people in US history and the lowest birthrate on record.
Chapter 9
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Inclusive: LGBT, Gender, and Race Issues in the New Age
When the Supreme Court ruled in June 2015 that same-sex marriage was legal nationwide, Snickers tweeted a picture of a rainbow-wrapped candy bar inscribed “Stay who you are.” AT&T turned its globe logo to rainbow hues, and American Airlines tweeted, “We’re on board. Diversity strengthens us all & today we celebrate #MarriageEquality.”
It’s rare for companies to chime in on social issues, as they’d rather not alienate their customers. For a company like American, headquartered in Texas, that could be a lot of customers. But American and other companies are looking toward an iGen future, seeking to appeal to the young consumers who will fuel their bottom line in years to come. Companies know that embracing equality is not just an expectation for iGen; it’s a requirement.
From LGBT identities to gender to race, iGen’ers expect equality and are often surprised, even shocked, to still encounter prejudice. At the same time, equality issues are far from resolved, creating divisions within iGen as well as generation gaps that can seem like unbridgeable gulfs. The equality revolution has been breathtaking but incomplete, leaving iGen to come of age after 2017, when issues around LGBT rights, gender, and race were suddenly back in contention.
LGBT: Love Wins
Cameron has always known about gays and lesbians; his uncle is gay, so he can’t remember a time when he thought same-sex relationships were out of the ordinary. Perhaps as a result, he takes it for granted that same-sex marriage should be legal. “There’s no plausible reason to be against same-sex marriage,” he says. “Saying you can’t marry who you want to doesn’t let gays and lesbians exist as equals.”
The oldest iGen’ers were starting preschool when Will & Grace (the first sitcom with a gay man as a central character) premiered in 1998 and in elementary school when shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy made being gay not just mainstream but fashionable. iGen teens grew up watching Glee, which featured several gay, lesbian, and transgender teen characters, and they saw numerous celebrities come out. Compare that to Boomers, who were young when gay men were still getting arrested at Stonewall; GenX’ers, who were teens during the extreme homophobia of the AIDS crisis; or Millennials, who were adolescents when President Bill Clinton signed the bill outlawing same-sex marriage and Ellen DeGeneres found her sitcom abruptly canceled after she came out. In contrast, many iGen’ers will barely recall a time before same-sex marriage was legal, and they’ll remember Ellen as a popular talk show host married to the actress from Arrested Development, which they watch on Netflix.
As the country singer Kacey Musgraves, 28, sings, “Make lots of noise and kiss lots of boys/Or kiss lots of girls if that’s something you’re into”—not exactly your father’s country song. But it is iGen’s country song. “I believe people should do what they want with their own bodies,” Musgraves says. “The majority of the younger people that listen to my music don’t think twice about the things I’m singing about.”
The 2000s and 2010s ushered in a sea change in attitudes toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. These are some of the largest and most rapid generational and time-period differences in existence (see Figure 9.1). Even many conservative Republican iGen’ers now support same-sex marriage. Anthony Liveris, the vice president of the University of Pennsylvania College Republicans, said in 2013, “A true conservative should endorse empowering Americans to marry whom they love, not limit them.” The vast majority of iGen’ers see no reason why two people of the same sex can’t get married.
Figure 9.1. Attitudes toward gays and lesbians, 18- to 29-year-olds (General Social Survey) and entering college students (American Freshman Survey), 1973–2016.
In this graph, the differences aren’t due to age, since everyone is 18 to 29 years old, but we don’t know how much of the shift is due to a generational trend (affecting only young people and not older people) and how much to a time-period trend (with people of all ages shifting in their views). Because the General Social Survey (GSS) includes adults of all ages, we can compare the views of all ages and generations in recent years to see the current generation gaps.
By 2014–2016, Boomers, GenX’ers, Millennials, and iGen’ers were all nearly universally supportive of a gay man teaching at a local college—only Silent generation members over 70 weren’t as sure. Views of gays’ and lesbians’ personal lives, however, differ more by generation. In 2014–2016, a slim majority of GenX’ers still found something questionable about sex between two same-sex adults. In contrast, two-thirds of iGen’ers and younger Millennials saw nothing wrong with gay/lesbian sexuality. Support for same-sex marriage follows a similar pattern. Even in recent years, LGBT issues have produced a significant generation gap (see Figure 9.2).
Figure 9.2. Attitudes toward gays and lesbians, all adults, by age/generation group. General Social Survey, 2014–2016.
For many iGen’ers, LGBT issues are tightly linked to their innate individualism. They take acceptance of others so much for granted that you can almost hear them yawn. “My view of LGBTQ is the same as on other people having sex before marriage: I don’t particularly care,” wrote Riley, 17. “I wouldn’t do it, but it has nothing to do with me, it doesn’t affect me in the slightest, and I have no right to tell other people what to do or believe. . . . I wouldn’t go to a protest for it or anything, but they can do what they want.” Twelve-year-old Harper captures the view of a generation who likely won’t remember a time before same-sex marriage. “I’ve never really thought anything about it,” she said when I ask her what she thinks about same-sex marriage. “When you see two people [of the same sex] together it’s just like you think it’s normal, you never really thought they were different or weird. You kind of just thought they’re the same people as you, just, like, a different gender.”
Even many religious teens embrace same-sex marriage. Emily, 14, whom we met in chapter 2, attends church regularly with her family in suburban Minneapolis. When I talk to her older brother, he tells me that their church views marriage as between a man and a woman. But when I ask Emily about same-sex marriage, she says, “I’m proud for those people—they fought through everything. It’s letting everyone be themselves, and everyone can be happy.” When I ask her how she thinks her generation is different, she says, “People aren’t afraid to be who they are.” Even in the South, the issue is not at the forefront as it once was. At his historically black church in Georgia, 20-year-old Darnell says the pastors “never, like, bring it up—I think because the LGBT community is so big now, maybe we don’t touch that.”
Even with the large changes in attitudes, a third
of iGen’ers still have some issues with same-sex sexuality, and one in four questions same-sex marriage. These young people often struggle to reconcile their iGen upbringing with their religion’s viewpoint that homosexuality is wrong. Sofia, 18, and I meet for lunch at the food court on her university’s San Diego campus. She was born in South America and came to the United States as a small child, growing up in a small town in the high desert of California. A strikingly pretty young woman with beautiful brown eyes and a kind smile, she attends church every Sunday and believes that sex should be saved for marriage. She and her boyfriend, who was her first kiss in 8th grade, have already discussed getting married someday.
When I ask Sofia what she thinks of the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage, she says, “That’s a tough one for me. I don’t think some people are less deserving of happiness than others. God made everyone in his perfect image—there’s not a mistake, ‘Oh, she likes girls.’ It makes me really sad when Christians condemn other people for who they are. That’s not really the point of being a Christian at all, it’s supposed to be the complete opposite, accepting people for who they are and still love them anyway, because that’s what Jesus did, and that’s something they forget quite a lot.” Yet, she says, it’s problematic when gays and lesbians “act upon” their desires. “God didn’t say they are sinful for being gay—their choice is more acting upon it, and acting upon their sexual desires. That’s where it becomes difficult, since marriage was meant for a man and a woman. But I don’t believe they are less deserving of happiness—and when they don’t act on it, they’re missing out on some of that happiness.” Sofia has reconciled her Christianity and her belief that “people should be who they are” but has not yet accepted the realities of homosexuality or same-sex marriage. Yet Sofia is the exception among iGen’ers, and with the legalization of same-sex marriage, acceptance will continue to grow.