EDITORS' CORNER
OPINION: Young adults are marrying earlier, embracing conservative beliefs in their search for meaning
There’s an encouraging shift taking place with Gen Z on college campuses. Marriage and family are becoming popular life goals again.
It’s a stark shift from the career-first, “you can do anything if you set your mind to it” (you can’t) messaging that got drummed into my generation, the Millennials.
When I was in college, I remember a much-loved professor shaking her head with pity when she learned that a classmate of mine was engaged during our junior year.
The young woman (who wasn’t in the room at the time) had very obvious talent, and the professor’s reaction conveyed the message that marrying so early would get in the way of what she should really be focused on: her career.
I didn’t tell the professor that I recently had gotten engaged, too. Or that my career goals took a much lower priority than my dream of having a family. I’d learned earlier in life that a lot of women – professors, peers, career women, artists – looked down on me for it.
Today, that career-first message is still there, but it doesn’t seem to have the power that it once did. And there’s evidence that the stigma against marrying early is dying.
Grey Battle, a graduating senior at Yale University, observed this in a recent column at Slate.
“When I left Alabama for Yale, I thought I’d be leaving college weddings behind. I was wrong,” Battle began.
Although hookup culture still exists and career achievements remain a priority (not a bad thing in and of itself), Battle said she also has noticed more classmates getting married before they finish school.
It’s not just her observation either, she noted:
Large universities will always have students who are engaged, married, or parenting, but their numbers are on the rise. Arielle Kuperberg, a demographer and sociologist at the University of Maryland, handles a data set of more than 14,000 undergraduates across 44 colleges, including elite universities. She’s found a 33 percent increase in the number of people who are married in college since 2019. Kuperberg says my generation is more religious and socially conservative than our parents, so of course we’re marrying earlier. “We’re definitely going to see this trend increasing,” she says.
Battle linked the pro-marriage trend to a rise in conservative beliefs and a desire for security, writing:
Yale’s Buckley Institute, which describes itself as a “home for enlightened conservative thought,” has roughly 32 percent more active members than it did in 2022. The number of students affiliated with religious organizations or attending faith-based events has also spiked.
When I ask Maytal Saltiel, Yale University’s chaplain, about an increase in the number of Yale students married before graduation, Saltiel says, “It is certainly more than” the 33 percent increase that Kuperberg found. She chalks it up to an embrace of religious institutions and traditional values, beginning with Trump’s first election. Over her 13 years at Yale, she says previous students knew “the world was not great, but there was more optimism and hope that [it] could be.” For my class, she believes, coupling up early is an attempt at creating security amid international chaos.
Security, yes. But family also creates hope and optimism. A spouse and children don’t just bring hope or security to our lives, either. These values grow out of family relationships and spill out into society by prompting us to strive harder to make this world a better place for those we love.
Academia damaged the Millennial generation by preaching a focus on self and career. It’s something that’s long troubled me, especially when I read about the rates of loneliness and depression, the decline in fertility, and family separations due to politics.
But Battle’s column gives me hope. As a journalist covering higher education, I hear so often about Gen Z’s search for meaning in life. They realize our world is a troubled one, and they’re longing for something more.
That more, I’ve found, comes in part by learning to love our spouses and children even when it’s incredibly difficult. Because they’re worth it. And self-love honestly isn’t very fulfilling in the long run.
It seems that Gen Z is discovering that, too.
MORE: Harvard scholars: Marriage makes women happier and healthier
