Are Millennials Playing a Part in the Gray Divorce World?
The Saturday (1/4) edition of the Wall Street Journal featured an article titled “What Happens When a Whole Generation Never Grows Up.” As you might suspect there are more questions than answers about what is happening with Americans aged 28 to 43.
Almost all of us who are living have been raised in a world of rising expectations. Every year was a path (fast or slow) to something better. But things have changed a lot in the last 40 years. In 1980 young people were expected to “settle down” by age 25. Marriage. Career or at least a reliable job. Saving for a house. Plan a family. Education was cheap and the more you had, the better your economic life would be. Yes, we endured recessions, but they were merely “blips” in the playbook of life.
Baby-boomers and Generation Xers are disoriented today. What happened to the playbook we lived by? Why is my/our adult kid still living at home or “between jobs” or struggling to find any of the financial security we took for granted.
The Journal article provides an anecdotal history but the explanations are tougher to find. A big change we don’t credit enough is that we live in a data driven age. In the 1980s data related to changes in sales and inventory was viewed on a quarterly basis. Today, employers and investors are evaluating that information by the day if not the hour. Senior executives employed for 20+ years are suddenly called in to “personnel” and told that their services are no longer needed. Big Lots, a company with nearly 1,000 retail locations is in liquidation. In a data driven age decisions related to employment are made overnight. The idea of a job for life is long past and families are scared. The article notes the concerns of 30-40 year olds about their own future. But the parents of these kids are fretting as well.
In 18th and 19th century America marriage was an economic contract. Divorce brought stigma of inferiority or incompetence. In the 20th century attitudes about divorce changed, to some extent because women who divorced were able to survive financially. Some even achieved wealth and happiness.
Today, Baby boomers and Gen Xers are worried. Even in a full employment economy with the stock market booming, their kids are struggling. Their jobs are insecure or unsatisfying. Many are overwhelmed with student and consumer debt. A house and family seem like goals beyond their grasp. The data furnished by the Journal suggest they are right. Published estimates suggest that 1/3 of Millennials will never marry. Even those who do have substantial income and assets that would seem to project stability don’t feel secure. Only half are currently married and whether married or not fewer and fewer are having children. Almost 10% of people 30-40 are living with a parent. In some instances, it’s because housing is so expensive. In others, staying at home is a means to pay for life’s amenities or to save for the seemly inevitable rainy day of being downsized. The median age of first time home buyers was 29 in 1981. Today that buyer is almost a decade older.
A big factor in this uncertainty is something that was just emerging in 1981; student debt. Many Millennials have crushing amounts of it. There is lots of guilt associated with it because neither the students nor their parents grasped what they were signing up for decades ago. It is only recently that people have started to ask about the return on this form of investment. These obligations dramatically affect housing affordability and parenting plans. Add student debt obligations to health insurance and potential daycare costs and the sum is often equal to a mortgage payment and more.
How does this affect gray divorce? Lots of parents feel guilty that their divorce and the economic decisions it entailed (reduced household income; student education debt) contributed to Millennial uncertainty. Perhaps if the marriage had held, the associated financial challenges could have been mitigated. Other adults, age 60 and up often disagree over what obligation they have to help a 30-40 year old child. Lots of these parents are already providing free daycare and some are subsidizing their 30 something child’s life. This can create huge friction when the one parent says: Let’s winter in Florida” while the other says “We can’t. We are our grandchild’s daycare and need to save for or subsidize day care/private school/future college expenses.” It is not uncommon today to do an initial divorce interview with a parent and child. In some instances, the parent is paying for the 30-40 year old kid’s divorce. In others it is the child who has allied with a parent because they are supporting each other both emotionally and financially. This becomes all the more complicated where there is a blended family. The 30-40 year old adult child grew up “without” resources because mom was then a single parent. But then she had two kids with a new husband and the kids by that relationship are going to private school and skiing in Colorado for spring break.
Guilt weighs heavily on many of us and children of all ages are not above playing it to their advantage, In some instances, that “play” often causes dissension in the gray marriage and that can lead to wounds to marriage that are unlikely to heal.