“Are you ready to settle down?”
That’s the question Yale University student Kyung Mi Lee posted in February 2020 as part of the Yale Daily News article Settling Down: Romance in the Age of Gen Z.
Would Lee and her peers follow the millennial trend of delaying marriage?
Almost two years after writing the article, Lee would give yes for an answer, but for different reasons than his millennial counterparts.
“In my cultural imagination, for millennials to be averse to long-term relationships means people have more temporary romances,” says Lee, 23.
In other words, for Lee, millennials take longer to settle down because they are busy taking advantage of their singleness. For Gen Z, he argues, “people are more averse to long-term relationships because they’re more introspective about the kind of relationships they want to be in.”
Mounting research validates this view: Gen Zers seem to take an especially pragmatic approach to relationships compared to previous generations, and they don’t have as much sex.
hard time to be adults
“(Gen Zers) realize that they may have different partners at different times in their lives who may meet different needs,” explains Julie Arbit, senior vice president of insights at the Vice media group.
Arbit conducted research examining 500 participants from the UK and US (mostly Gen Z, millennials, and some Gen X for comparison).
In this, he found that only one in 10 members of generation Z responded that they were willing to “commit to be committed.”
Other researchers have come to similar circumstances. According to a study of Gen Z in India, for example, 66% of respondents agreed that “not all relationships have to be permanent,” with 70% rejecting “a limiting romantic relationship.”
Researchers and members of Gen Z attribute this to several factors.
First, that this generation is entering adulthood at a particularly tenuous time, marked by the coronavirus pandemic, worsening climate change, and financial instability.
Many feel that they need to achieve stability for themselves before bringing another person into their lives. There’s also the increased access to relationship information online, empowering Gen Z with the language they need to articulate who they are and what they want from a relationship that doesn’t compromise their identity and needs.
“They are more focused on themselves and not out of selfishness. They know that they are responsible for their own success and happiness and that they need to take care of themselves before others,” explains Arbit.
looking for stability
“In the ’60s and ’70s, the average 25-year-old man could support his family on his income without the expectation of his wife working,” says Stephanie Coontz, director of research and public education for the Council on Contemporary Families in America. .
For many members of Gen Z, both the idea of a 25-year-old supporting an entire family and a man expecting his wife to stay home no longer fit contemporary circumstances. And, for some, it even seems laughable.
Instead, Gen Z prioritizes a strong individual financial situation, which slows down the path to marriage, explains Arielle Kuperberg, an associate professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, United States.
“People are taking longer and longer to settle down because they are taking longer and longer to achieve financial stability,” adds the academic.
Lee and his friends agree. He says being part of “the most insecure and financially unstable generation in history” contributes to his desire to achieve “financial independence” before settling down with a long-term partner.
She adds that she and her friends are more likely to prioritize their careers over their relationships in order to achieve a more stable financial state.
“It’s weird to have a friend say ‘I’m going to move to this place so I can be with my partner,'” says Lee. Instead, they focus on what’s best for their careers and how their relationships can fit into that.
Kuperberg’s research on Gen Z agrees with this; has found that younger people building their careers are less likely to date than millennials.
“I don’t think they don’t want to have long relationships. I think they are postponing them”, says the researcher.
Additionally, Kuperberg has found greater instability in young adults, which has led to more and more of them moving back in with their parents because they cannot afford to live alone.
“The increase in more casual relationships and the decrease in more serious relationships is just because it’s harder to form the latter,” says Kuperberg.
Recently, the coronavirus pandemic has also exacerbated the trend of young adults not being able to live independently.
Kuperberg interviewed a Gen Z man in 2020 who moved from Washington DC to North Carolina with his parents after the pandemic hit the country.
This man told investigators he wasn’t planning to date again until he moved back to Washington.
inner search
Since September 2020, the Vice media group conducted a study called Love After Lockdown, made up of 45% of Gen Z respondents. 75% of them were single and had not dated during the pandemic.
Many responded that this was in part because they wanted to take some time together to get to know themselves better before seeking a relationship.
“I started thinking about myself, what I wanted and didn’t want to do… and I learned a lot,” said a Gen Z respondent in Italy.
Another participant in the United States echoed this sentiment: “I am physically distant from everyone and I can take a step back and wonder who I am.”
Of course, this attitude may have developed due to a lack of alternatives during lockdown, rather than Gen Z’s greater penchant for introspection.
However, members of this fifth from all over the world have more resources to determine who they are, including social networks like TikTok, where therapists discussing attachment styles and advice on healthy relationships have become commonplace.
Lee, for example, notes that her little sisters (freshmen and sophomores, respectively) have developed a deep language for talking about their relationships through TikTok.
“Adolescents go around talking about their attachment styles and their sexual and romantic partners using expressions like ‘I have an anxious attachment style,'” says Lee.
This marks a very conscious approach that prioritizes finding someone who makes sense to the individual, rather than just someone who is attractive or interesting.
While these priorities are not unique to Gen Z, this group has a variety of readily accessible resources to more knowledgeably find a partner who is a good fit for them in ways previous generations might not have thought of.
sexual flexibility
The evolution of sexuality and gender roles are another factor.
Among Gen Z there has been a marked decline in adherence to a gender binary and an increase in “people willing to explore their sexuality,” says Kuperberg.
In his research, seen by BBC Worklife, he found a statistic showing that roughly 50% of Gen Z identify as heterosexual and “many say they are heteroflexible.”
This openness to different types of sexual partners and relationships is reminiscent of Arbit’s observations that members of Gen Z are not necessarily looking for their “one and only”; but several people to satisfy different needs, be it romantic, sexual or something else.
“Perhaps our parents have looked for someone of the same religion or political vision,” says Arbit.
“This generation is looking for honesty, passion, and someone who will get them out of bed in the morning…compared to previous generations, they are open to dating different types of people and giving people a chance,” adds the expert.
A sign of change
This holistic approach to relationships differs dramatically from those taken by much older generations.
Coontz of the Council for Contemporary Families says she interviewed several people for her book on women and families in the 1960s, asking them why they decided to get married.
«They were startled and they answered that ‘it was time’. There was a feeling that marriage was something you did to enter adult life. Now it’s the opposite,” says Coontz.
This is a sign of change for generation Z; While marriage was used as a passageway to adult life, today it is a sign that you have already entered it.
Society had been moving in this direction for some time, with each generation becoming more flexible with their ideas about the traditional family and its importance in their lives.
Whether Gen Z is shaping society with these attitudes or whether society is shaping Gen Z is a more difficult question to resolve.
Of course, these patterns are not completely universal. Among college students, Kuperberg found that a member of Gen Z’s race, class, gender and religion can contribute to how they date and seek relationships.
“White people are more prone to casual encounters. People of color are more inclined to form relationships and have more formal dates, “says Kuperberg.
The expert adds that those who come from higher socioeconomic classes are more likely than other demographic groups to engage in casual sexual encounters and form long-term relationships. The latter, probably because “they have more resources” to guarantee them stability.
While many signs point to Gen Z delaying marriage or permanent relationships like their millennial predecessors, their reasons seem to come from a pragmatic approach.
Many millennials have postponed their marriages for practical reasons like fear of divorce (many grew up the children of divorced parents) and because they can’t afford it.
However, Gen Z is inheriting an even more uncertain world as problems that plagued millennials (such as climate change) have become more acute and new ones have appeared (such as the pandemic).
This may imply that taking care of individual stability is the number one priority for generation Z, even more so than for its relatively older predecessors.
“We joke about who will get married first in our group of friends. It’s funny if someone gets engaged in our 20s,” Lee jokes.