Why Are So Many Millennials Living With Their Parents Instead Of Getting Married And Starting Their Own Families? - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Why Are So Many Millennials Living With Their Parents Instead Of Getting Married And Starting Their Own Families? Posted: 20 Apr 2017   Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG Did you know that the percentage of 18 to 34-year-old Americans that are married and living with a spouse has dropped by more than half since 1975?  Back then, 57 percent of everyone in that age group “lived with a spouse”, but today that number has dropped to just 27 percent.  These numbers come from “the Changing Economics and Demographics of Young Adulthood” report that was just released by the U.S. Census Bureau.  Some are postulating that the reason for this dramatic cultural shift is a phenomenon known as “extended adolescence”, while others fear that large numbers of young men and/or young women are giving up on the concept of marriage altogether. Instead of getting married and starting their own households, many young adults are deciding that living with Mom and Dad is the best approach.  In fact, this new Census Bureau report found that one out of every three 18 to 34-year-old Americans is currently living with their parents… According to the Changing Economics and Demographics of Young Adulthood report for 2016, one in three Americans ages 18 to 34 are living at home with their parents. Coming in second place is living with a spouse (27 per cent), followed by other (i.e. living with a roommate or other relatives, 21 per cent), living with a boyfriend or girlfriend (12 per cent) and living alone (8 per cent). Once the last recession ended, this trend was supposed to start reversing, but instead the number of young adults still living at home has just continued to increase.  This is going to have very serious implications for our looming retirement crisis, and that is something that I am going to write about later today on End Of The American Dream. And a lot of these young adults are not being productive members of society at all.  In fact, this new report from the Census Bureau found that one out of every four 25 to 34-year-old Americans that are currently living at home do not have a job and they are not going to school either. In other words, they need to get a life.  I really like how a recent CNBC editorial made this point… One of the most memorable Saturday Night Live sketches ever was broadcast in 1986 when guest host William Shatner played himself appearing at fictional Star Trek convention. After fielding one childish question after another from costumed fans in their late 20s and 30s, Shatner loses his cool and shouts: “GET A LIFE, will you people? I mean, for crying out loud, it’s just a TV show! … Move out of your parents’ basements! Get your own apartments and GROW THE HELL UP!” Thirty-one years later, it sure seems like all of America needs to heed that message. Here’s why: The Census Bureau now says that more 18-34 year-olds are living with their parents than with a spouse. But a lot of young men these days do not even want to go down the traditional route of marriage, family, career, etc. In fact, a lot of them are forsaking the concept of marriage together.  Author Suzanne Venker says that a lot of these men are blaming their lack of desire to get married on modern women… “When I ask them why, the answer is always the same: women aren’t women anymore.” Feminism, which teaches women to think of men as the enemy, has made women “angry” and “defensive, though often unknowingly.” “Now the men have nowhere to go. It is precisely this dynamic – women good/men bad – that has destroyed the relationship between the sexes. Yet somehow, men are still to blame when love goes awry.” “Men are tired,” Venker wrote. “Tired of being told there’s something fundamentally wrong with them. Tired of being told that if women aren’t happy, it’s men’s fault.” On the flip side, a lot of women are extremely distressed that so few men seem to have the willingness to commit these days.  So many men just want to run around having sex with an endless series of women without ever putting a wedding ring on any of their fingers. Of course many men figure that if they can get some of the best benefits of marriage (sex, companionship, etc.) without having to make a commitment then that is a pretty good deal for them. Personally, I am a huge advocate of marriage, but the rest of society is moving in the exact opposite direction.  According to the Pew Research Center, 44 percent of 18 to 29-year-old Americans now believe that “marriage is becoming obsolete”.  And for a lot more numbers like this, please see my previous article entitled “43 Facts About Love, Sex, Dating And Marriage That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe”. But of course not all young adults that are living at home are doing it for the wrong reasons.  Thanks to our long-term economic decline, it is much more difficult for young people to find good paying jobs today than it was several decades ago.  The following comes from CNS News… “More young men are falling to the bottom of the income ladder,” says the Census Bureau study. “In 1975, only 25 percent of men, aged 25 to 34, had incomes of less than $30,000 per year. By 2016, that share rose to 41 percent of young men (incomes for both years are in 2015 dollars).” I have absolutely no problem at all with young adults that are living at home temporarily for economic reasons.  These Millennials are simply victims of our failing economy, and thus we should not be so quick to judge them. And many of these young people graduate from college already saddled with tremendous amounts of debt. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost of going to college has increased by an astounding 63 percent since 2006.  We assure our youngsters that they will get good paying jobs when they graduate that will enable them to pay off those student loans, but once they do finally graduate many of them are discovering that the good paying jobs that we promised them do not exist. Today, Americans owe more than a trillion dollars on their student loans.  It has become a major national crisis, and it is financially crippling an entire generation. So the next time you hear of a young adult that is still living at home, don’t be so quick to judge until you know the facts. Yes, there are many that need a good kick in the pants to get them going in life, but there are also millions that are simply victims of our ongoing long-term economic collapse.

Why Are Americans Getting Married An Average Of 7 Years Later Than They Did In The 1950s? - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Why Are Americans Getting Married An Average Of 7 Years Later Than They Did In The 1950s? Posted: 24 May 2016   Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG Americans are getting married later and later in life these days.  So precisely why is this happening?  As you will see below, the average age when men and women first get married in the United States is getting perilously close to 30, but in the middle of the last century is was close to 20.  There has been a dramatic cultural shift, and this has resulted in a whole host of unintended consequences.   Because even though people are getting married later, they are still engaging in behaviors that in previous generations were considered reserved for those that had made a permanent commitment.  The family has always been one of the foundational institutions in society, but now it is breaking down at a very alarming pace.  Our young people have been trained to think that getting married, having children and raising a family are not important priorities, and this is showing up in a myriad of various ways. In America today, the average woman is getting married 7.0 years later than she did in 1956, and the average man is getting married 6.7 years later than he did back then.  The following comes from CNBC… The typical U.S. woman now marries at 27.1 years old, the typical man at 29.2, according to census data. That’s up from record lows of 20.1 for women and 22.5 for men in 1956. “They’re concentrating more on school, careers and work and less focused on forming new families, spouses or partners and children,” said Richard Fry, lead author of the report and a senior economist at the Pew Research Center. Fry said of the millennials. At one time, a woman was considered to be an “Old Maid” if she had not married by the age of 25, but in this day and age that is about the time that many women are just getting started seriously looking for a mate. One of the big reasons why men and women are both delaying marriage so much these days is because our young people are constantly being inundated with messages that tell them that it is much more fun to be single.  If you aren’t doing so already, start paying attention to how marriage and parenthood are being portrayed to our young adults on television and in the movies.  In most cases, getting married at a young age is portrayed as being a “mistake”, and having children is often depicted as a good way to ruin your future. And of course a lifestyle that involves sexual promiscuity is almost always portrayed as more desirable than a lifetime commitment to a single person.  Just watch any television show or movie that is targeted to young males in particular.  Being able to “score” often and with as many women as possible is what they are told they should do, and very rarely are they encouraged to value marriage and fatherhood. This dramatic cultural shift that we have seen over the past several decades is having some very serious unintended consequences. For one thing, an increasing number of our young people are choosing to never leave the nest.  In fact, the percentage of our young adults that are living at home now exceeds the percentage of our young adults that are married or are living with a partner… Nearly a third of millennials live with their parents, slightly more than the share of their age group who live with a spouse or partner. For this age group, the researchers say, this is the first time that living at home has overtaken living with a spouse since the U.S. Census began keeping track in 1880. As recently as 2000, nearly 43 percent of young adults, ages 18 to 34, were married or living with a partner. By 2014, that proportion was just 31.6 percent. In 2000, only 23 percent of young adults were living with parents. In 2014, the figure reached 32.1 percent. Another unintended consequence has been a huge rise in the number of unmarried women giving birth to children. When the average age of first marriage was at a record low in 1956, about 5 percent of all babies in America were born to unmarried parents.  Today, more than 40 percent of all babies in America are born to unmarried parents. In addition, just because young adults are not getting married does not mean that they are not looking for outlets for their sexual desires. Of course lots and lots of people are sleeping around, but others are seeking alternative ways to fill what is missing in their lives.  Right now, there are more than four million adult websites on the Internet, and they get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.  This plague has become so widespread that it has been estimated that even 68 percent of all Christian men watch pornography on a regular basis. Clearly we have a major problem. And I haven’t even mentioned the millions of abortions and millions of STD cases that have resulted from the “sexual revolution” that we have witnessed. As the institution of the family has broken down, we have become lonelier, more isolated, less healthy and more prone to addictive behaviors as a society. Could it be possible that previous generations of Americans actually knew what they were doing? Could it be possible that it would be a good thing to teach our young people to value marriage and family? Could it be possible that we are actually designed to get married and have children at a relatively younger age? What we are doing right now is definitely not working.  We have one of the highest divorce rates on the entire planet, the CDC says that there are about 20 million new STD cases each calendar year, we have tens of millions of men that are addicted to pornography, and somewhere around a third of all children in the United States are currently being raised in a home without a father. So is there a solution to this mess? If so, what would that look like? *About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*