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No big deal if they don't get married...... there's always 10 cats to keep you company.
All kidding aside I do see it as a negative that so many kids today don't get married or wait til they are 35. Why are we waiting? Wild oats to sow? All this does is legitimize the moral decay in this nation and send the message that it's ok to run through 25 sexual partners before age 30. We were better of as a society when folks got married at 20. I married young and feel I missed out on nothing but maybe an STD. I have been happily married for 24 years. Marriage encourages people to grow up and walk straight, we don't need a society where adolescent foolishness lasts until 30.
Why are we waiting?
Obscene student loans, skyrocketing cost of living, and stagnating wages.
My boyfriend and I would love to get married, but he is 6 figures in law school debt (and as helpful as his law degree has been, he couldn't find a law job in the demolished legal market and instead is a small business owner) and is trying to scale his business. His Boomer parents pushed him into law school after he graduated from the Ivies on a full scholarship, but right in the middle of law school the economy imploded. His best friend and roommate also has a law degree and 5 years later is working as a bank teller after a series of legal contract work dried up. That's the reality of many well-educated Millennials.
He just finished an MBA on a full scholarship, and I am finishing an MS paid for by my employer to try to improve our economic future, all while working full time (him for more than 80 hours a week, me for 60 hours a week at my day job and also supporting his business). And yet, we still will be unlikely to afford a $400,000 starter home an hour from the city. We can barely afford rent on a small 1 bedroom and currently live with roommates on solidly middle class salaries. It doesn't make a lick of sense to join our finances yet - we just make each other legally responsible for each other in other ways. It would be "adolescent foolishness" to not protect ourselves until our finances are in better shape.
Trust me, it's not selfishness or being lazy that keeps us from getting married. We just *can't* do it until we feel more financially stable. Unfortunately, that stability is more and more elusive for our generation.
And let's not even talk about kids. ~$2000 a month for infant day care. Not to mention the looming crisis of having to take care of our Boomer parents who didn't prepare for their own retirement but could very well live 20 or 30 years (or more) after working.
Note: We're both 29 and live in the Boston area (though he splits his time between Boston and upstate NY where the physical operations of his business are based thanks to cheap land/labor, but there are ZERO job opportunities for me or business development opportunities for him)
Last edited by charolastra00; 04-05-2017 at 09:01 AM..
I speak to a lot of kids this age and my friends who say marriage isn't even on the radar. They might live with someone but marrying them isn't needed. A lot of them opt for pets instead of kids because of cost.
We've been yelling at kids for ages about how expensive kids are, how hard being a grown up is. No wonder. At least they listened. The effects of the recession will probably take a while to wear off. Kids right now are just on the net, working odd jobs and buying a cat. I don't blame them. We've all made life seem so fricken scary, they don't even want to try. Fantasy is a much better payoff in their eyes.
When I was eighteen, I decided that I didn't want my life to devolve something whereby, every weekday, sometime between 6 and 8 AM, my daily existence would turn into something micro-managed by someone else, often involving constant interpersonal schmoozing with an over-indulged "trailing spouse" conditioned to demand needless personal attention by someone who "didn't marry them for their meatloaf"; and always groveling, fawning and smiling for a few (fully-taxable) pennies more, dispensed by someone whose principal goal was to show everyone his/her place, and keep them in it.
Along the way, I nevertheless managed to meet a couple of remarkable women who helped me to understand Alexander Pope's observation that "All our knowledge is ourselves to know"; things might have turned out differently, (but not necessarily better) had I met one of them at a different stage in life.
And I was also favored with a couple of unmarried uncles and aunts who had the time to develop an identity of their own and provide an exposure to some of the finer points of developing and interacting in an increasingly-complex world. All of them were educators, and their sexual orientation was sometimes questioned by the more judgmental; that was especially apparent when I met a few of the people in their lives. But from time to time, I've been lucky enough to build a small bridge to a couple of nephews and nieces -- some of them "by proxy", in the same role as the adults who helped me to round out my own character.
There were times I felt I paid a terrible price, and times I knew it couldn't have turned out any other way. A diverse, increasingly-affluent society provides more options, but it's up to us to use them wisely. And, caterwauling and saber-rattling by those afraid of freedom to the contrary, I think the jury's still out on where it all leads.
Last edited by 2nd trick op; 04-05-2017 at 09:10 AM..
Obscene student loans, skyrocketing cost of living, and stagnating wages.
My boyfriend and I would love to get married, but he is 6 figures in law school debt (and as helpful as his law degree has been, he couldn't find a law job in the demolished legal market and instead is a small business owner) and is trying to scale his business. His Boomer parents pushed him into law school after he graduated from the Ivies on a full scholarship, but right in the middle of law school the economy imploded. His best friend and roommate also has a law degree and 5 years later is working as a bank teller after a series of legal contract work dried up. That's the reality of many well-educated Millennials.
He just finished an MBA on a full scholarship, and I am finishing an MS paid for by my employer to try to improve our economic future, all while working full time (him for more than 80 hours a week, me for 60 hours a week at my day job and also supporting his business). And yet, we still will be unlikely to afford a $400,000 starter home an hour from the city. We can barely afford rent on a small 1 bedroom and currently live with roommates on solidly middle class salaries. It doesn't make a lick of sense to join our finances yet - we just make each other legally responsible for each other in other ways. It would be "adolescent foolishness" to not protect ourselves until our finances are in better shape.
Trust me, it's not selfishness or being lazy that keeps us from getting married. We just *can't* do it until we feel more financially stable. Unfortunately, that stability is more and more elusive for our generation.
And let's not even talk about kids. ~$2000 a month for infant day care. Not to mention the looming crisis of having to take care of our Boomer parents who didn't prepare for their own retirement but could very well live 20 or 30 years (or more) after working.
Note: We're both 29 and live in the Boston area (though he splits his time between Boston and upstate NY where the physical operations of his business are based thanks to cheap land/labor, but there are ZERO job opportunities for me or business development opportunities for him)
^^^This.
For every alleged "slacker," living in Mom's basement, there are many more putting off marriage for the same reasons some have always put it off: they want to establish financial stability first.
Sometimes it seems to me like these young people are damned if they do, and damned if they don't, about almost everything.
Nope. I put blame on feminism for the decline of marriage. First thing is first. Marriage can ruin a man. CHild support, alimony. For some guys its not worth it. Than you have women who have these college degrees. Whats the points of getting married to an highly educated woman who has a boat load of debt? Than you have women who have already made families? Whats the point if your are a single guy and already marrying into an ready made family? Trump is changing tax laws, and such laws may force people to marry.
I speak to a lot of kids this age and my friends who say marriage isn't even on the radar. They might live with someone but marrying them isn't needed. A lot of them opt for pets instead of kids because of cost.
We've been yelling at kids for ages about how expensive kids are, how hard being a grown up is. No wonder. At least they listened. The effects of the recession will probably take a while to wear off. Kids right now are just on the net, working odd jobs and buying a cat. I don't blame them. We've all made life seem so fricken scary, they don't even want to try. Fantasy is a much better payoff in their eyes.
Another issue for many is student loan debt . I see a variety of issues .
There is definitely more contract /gig type work .
Right now people just think of Uber but the gig economy will expand to other industries too .
it makes a lot of sense that marriage was more common when people worked for the same company for decades .
I know some people working in the "gig economy " that might be working for half a dozen different companies
The biggest advantage is time flexibility but there are many downfalls such as no health insurance paid for by the company or other benefits . Also most of them involve using your own vehicle which causes a lot of wear and tear.
Without new immigrants it just means a declining birthrate. Just like your country experienced.
Declining birth rate my azz!
When the MTV is normalizing single mothers and a good majority of women in real life or online are 26-32 having 2-3 kids.... to hell with you and your globalist agenda
Nope. I put blame on feminism for the decline of marriage. First thing is first. Marriage can ruin a man. CHild support, alimony. For some guys its not worth it. Than you have women who have these college degrees. Whats the points of getting married to an highly educated woman who has a boat load of debt? Than you have women who have already made families? Whats the point if your are a single guy and already marrying into an ready made family? Trump is changing tax laws, and such laws may force people to marry.
Paid attention to friends and cousins... Alot of them before divorce were filing "injured spouse" for taxes due to inheriting their significant others debt...
Mention this word prenup and watch how fast the other is turned off...
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to hell with you and your globalist agenda