Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Are millennials forgetting the formative power of the family?
Are millennials forgetting the formative power of the family?
Mar 18, 2025 12:03 PM

According to a recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau, the values and priorities of young adults are shifting dramatically from those of generations past, particularly when es to work, education, and family.

“Most of today’s Americans believe that educational and economic plishments are extremely important milestones of adulthood,” the study concludes. “In contrast, marriage and parenthood rank low: over half of Americans believe that marrying and having children are not very important in order to e an adult.”

Comparing young adults between 1975 and today (2012-2016), the study highlights a range of shifts in the popular views on what it means to e an adult,” as well as what’s most important and formative throughout that process.

As shown on the following chart, respondents demonstrated a clear preference for full-time work, education, and economic stability well before marriage and family-rearing. (The study defines young adults as 18- to 35-year-olds.)

“What is clear is that most Americans believe young people should plish economic milestones before starting a family,” the study says.

Observed another way, we can see the shift by looking at four key milestones — “getting married, having children, working, and living independently” — from generation to generation.

Alas, the Census study only affirms what University of Virginia sociologist Bradley Wilcox and his fellow researchers have been highlighting for some time now.

“Culturally, young adults have e to see marriage as a ‘capstone’ rather than a ‘cornerstone,’” they write, “that is, something they do after they have all their other ducks in a row, rather than a foundation for launching into adulthood and parenthood.”

For Wilcox and his colleagues, the shift has surely led to certain gains, but overall and in the long run, the trend toward delayed marriage is likely to accelerate the fragmentation of American society.

“We believe that marriage is not for everyone, be they twentysomething or some other age,” they write. “Nevertheless, the decoupling of marriage and parenthood represented by the Great Crossover is deeply worrisome. It fuels economic and educational inequality, not to mention family instability, amid the rising generation.”

Indeed, what at first seems like a e development in economic and educational progress has its roots in a view of progress that’s fundamentally backwards.What might we lose if we, as a society, tend toward putting it last, and not first, treating family and children as a “crowning achievement” (Wilcox’s words) vs. a foundation or a starting point for civilizational success?

In response to these changes, Wilcox prehensive approach, passing economic, educational, civic, and cultural initiatives, to help twentysomething men and women figure out new ways to put the baby carriage after marriage.” Butwhile there are plenty of institutional adjustments that we can and should consider, we can begin by simply remembering (and calling unto remembrance) the formative, transformative power of the family.

As children, the family sets the stage for our service and the scope for our gift-giving, both in work and play. It is in the family where we first learn to love and relate, to order our obligations, and to orient our activities toward others. It is in the basic, mundane exchanges between parent and child, brother and sister, that we learn what it means to truly flourish.

As spouses, marriage brings its own variety of personal and relational formation, offering unique lessons on love and covenant, sacrifice and obligation, freedom and duty.

And as parents, the family has a remarkable “reforming power,” wielding an inescapable and irresistible mix of moral, social, and spiritual transformation. The delay in child-bearing may indeed be dangerous when es to impendingdemographiccollapse, but that’s not even considering the “formation” vacuum we’re bound to see among the adults that are already inhabiting oursocial and economic landscape.

As Herman Bavinck explains in his book, The Christian Family, “The family is a school for the children, but in the first place it is a school for the parents”:

[Children] develop within their parents an entire cluster of virtues, such as paternal love and maternal affection, devotion and self-denial, care for the future, involvement in society, the art of nurturing. With their parents, children place restraints upon ambition, reconcile the contrasts, soften the differences, bring their souls ever closer together, provide them with mon interest that lies outside of them, and opens their eyes and hearts to their surroundings and for their posterity. As with living mirrors they show their parents their own virtues and faults, force them to reform themselves, mitigating their criticisms, and teaching them how hard it is to govern a person.

The family exerts a reforming power upon the parents. Who would recognize in the sensible, dutiful father the carefree youth of yesterday, and who would ever have imagined that the lighthearted girl would later be changed by her child into a mother who renders the greatest sacrifices with joyful acquiescence? The family transforms ambition into service, miserliness into munificence, the weak into strong, cowards into heroes, coarse fathers into mild lambs, tenderhearted mothers into ferocious lionesses. Imagine there were no marriage and family, and humanity would, to use Calvin’s crass expression, turn into a pigsty.

The family isn’t the only place we can learn these lessons, of course. But up until recently, these basic lessonshave been largely “built in” to the human experience, and at a much earlier age.

Such reminders needn’tpoint us toward one-size-fits-all mandates or blueprints for when or whether people should marry or have children. But they ought to remind us of what’s at stake, and that the family is more than a “crowning achievement” or a prize received after a life lived well.

As young adults continue to ponder and asses the importance of various formative “milestones,” and as we seek to prioritize them, in turn, we’d do well to simply pause and remember the “reforming power” of the family, and the joy and freedom it has to contribute to all else – economic, educational, or otherwise.

“Family is the first and foundational ‘yes’ to society because it is the first and foundational ‘yes’ to our nature,” as Evan Koons explains in For in the Life of the World, “to pour ourselves out like Christ, to be gifts, and to love….In family, our character is formed and given to the world.”

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
A holistic view of Christian vocation
In a society where personal identity is conveyed by one’s job title, it is of little wonder that the nation’s youth are so anxious about career choice. But what if your identity is found in Christ? What if living vocationally has nothing to do with finding the “perfect” career? ...
Missiles, threats and sanctions: How should the United States respond to North Korea?
The North Korean people are not the same as the North Korean regime. Photo: “Pyongyang, North Korea” by (stephan) (CC BY-SA 2.0) Today the United Nations Security Council will meet and vote on a resolution to impose new restrictions on North Korea. This resolution is a direct response to recent North Korean missile activity and threats from Kim Jong Un. On July 4, North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile and claimed it could hit any nation on Earth and...
The monopoly markup
Note: This is post #48 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. Ever wonder why pharmaceuticals are so expensive? In this video by Marginal Revolution University, Alex Tabarrok shows how low elasticity of demand results in monopoly markups. This is especially the case with goods that involve the “you can’t take it with you” effect (for example, people with serious medical conditions are relatively insensitive to the price of life-saving drugs) and the “other people’s money” effect (if third...
5 Facts about the 9/11 aftermath
Today marks the 16th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack ever on American soil. Here are five facts you should know about what happened in the aftermath of the events on September 11, 2001: 1. It took 99 days—until December 19, 2001—for thefires at Ground Zeroto be extinguished.Cleanup at Ground Zero wasn’t pleted until May 30, 2002. It took 3.1 million hours of labor to clean up 1.8 million tons of debris at a total cost of cleanup of $750...
Erasing the cross: Public vs. private sector
The European discount grocery chain Lidl stirred controversy by removing the cross from its products’ labels, so as not to give offense. Eagle-eyed consumers noticed that Eirdanous, its Greek food line, featured a picture of a blue-domed Greek Orthodox Church by the sea – but unlike every other such church, its cupola was not topped by a cross. pany Photoshopped the symbol of Christ’s victory over death and Hell off of the Anastasi(in Greek, literally, “resurrection”) Church inSantorini. Perhaps to...
Explainer: What you should know about single-payer healthcare
Today, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is unveiling his legislation for a single-payer healthcare system. Here is what you should know about single-payer systems and Sanders’s proposal: What is single-payer healthcare? In a single-payer healthcare system, the government pays for all medically necessary service for of all citizens, regardless of e or ability to pay. Does the U.S. have a single-payer system? In the U.S. most citizens over the age of 65 and people under 65 who have specific disabilities qualify...
The archbishop of Canterbury eyes a ‘broken’ economy
Defending the free market and advocating for ever-greater access to capital is of paramount importance during uneven economic patches. That is how Christians should ments from Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, who recently said that the economy is “broken.” The archbishop cited familiar economic data of unequal economic growth, youth hopelessness, and questions about wage stagnation. Many of these are part of a ing report from the IPPR’s Commission on Economic Justice, of which he is a member. But...
7 Figures: Income and poverty in the U.S.
The U.S. Census Bureau released its latest report on e and poverty in the United States today. Here are seven figures from the report you should know about: 1. Real median household e increased 3.2 percent between 2015 and 2016—from $ 57,230 to $59,039. (This figure surpasses the previous high reached in 1999.) 2. Real median es in 2016 for family households ($75,062) and nonfamily households ($35,761) increased 2.7 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively, from their 2015 medians. (This is...
The consuming self as tyrant
“Consumerism is, quite precisely, the consuming of life by the things consumed. It is living in a manner that is measured by having rather than being.” -Richard John Neuhaus In a free economy, we each serve distinct roles as both producers and consumers. As producers, we create and serve, leveraging the work of our hands to meet the needs of our neighbors. As consumers, however, we look to ourselves and our own needs. Consumption is good and necessary thing, but...
Upstream: A Conversation on Artist Renee Radell
On the Upstream segment of this week’s Radio Free Acton podcast, I discuss the visual art of Renee Radell with Gregory Wolfe. Radell’s work is the subject of Renee Radell: Web of Circumstance (Predmore Press, 2016, 220 pages, $80), a book presenting a career overview of her artistic efforts. In his review of Web of Circumstance for The University Bookman, Wolfe – founder and editor of Image magazine – determines the panying text by Eleanor Heartney superficial in contrast to...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved