Daniel A. Cox:
One of the things that we were doing in all the groups that we talked to, we were talking to young single men and young single women, and we would try to get a sense of what their formative experiences were like. What were your parents telling you? … What did your parents emphasize when you were growing up? Did you hear about the importance of getting college education and the importance of being financially stable? A lot of what we heard from folks was like, yeah, their parents were emphasizing this. We had asked for a show of hands, whether it was the men’s groups or women’s groups, everyone was saying, yes, my parents were talking to me about this.
We’re like, okay, well, what about marriage? How many of you are hearing your parents talk about the importance of finding a long-term partner and getting married? And not one person raised their hand in any of these focus groups that their parents talked about this. We asked about the importance of parenthood. How many of your parents were stressing that this really matters, this is important? And again, no one raised their hands.
A couple of the women said that their grandparents had mentioned this, but their parents had not. And in a national representative survey, we took the same question and we got basically the same results: that among this generation, Generation Z, they’re far less likely to have heard about the importance and what it means to live a good life includes being a parent or getting married. It was much more about individual accomplishments and professional achievements, academic achievements. That is what folks are learning.