> More U.S. men ages 18 to 34 are now living with their parents than with romantic partners.
and
> Research shows that one significant factor women look for in a partner is a steady job. As men’s unemployment rises, their romantic prospects decline. Unsurprisingly, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from 1960 to 2010, the proportion of adults without a college degree who marry plummeted from just over 70 percent to roughly 45 percent.
Seem to imply that this isn't a case of men choosing to stay at home with the kids. I'm curious what the actual data is though.
As the father of 18 year old who is not going to college and instead working as a carpenter, I don't think lumping 18 year olds with 25+ year olds makes much sense. Perhaps I have an antiquated view of family, but I don't feel his "independence" has everything to do with where he lives. I'm more than happy to have him around the house if it allows him to save money and live a better life at, say, 21.
It absolutely makes sense. The idea that an 18 year old would start their own household is an artifact from a small period in our history when 18 year olds could easily get an unskilled job that would afford a decent modest lifestyle. But that only really started in the late 40's and was over by the 70's.
You know one thing I find interesting is you specifically call out "unskilled job", which I think has a point but the OP mentions specifically his son studying to be a carpenter that I would consider a "high skilled" job, even if it is blue collar, and then you suggest there was a small period of time when an 18 yo could provide for a family with unskilled labor.
I then realized that for much of history up until recently by the time a young man was 18 years old he was already a skilled craftsman at his craft to a large extant. The young man would've been training with his father at his craft from the time he was ten years old and so by the time he was 18 would be proficient in what he had to do.
I wonder then is part of the issue we face due to the fact that we spend so much time trying to instill a modern education into youth until they are adults that they have to spend an additional 4-8 years acquiring an actual skill in order to be able to provide value in the workforce?
Yep. And we do it largely because we started from a schooling model built to shape factory workers, and then tried to develop it by aping what the upper classes did - regardless of whether their models could actually scale or were at all desirable in large numbers.
Sadly, doing so also stripped dignity from vocational / blue-collar work - even when it pays (very) well, kids are told that a life in the trades is for the uneducated, ignorant swines.
Ironically, part of this development is led by emancipation of the lower classes themselves: "I break my back every day but my son will study and be a doctor". A sentiment we all admire, but ends up reinforcing the idea that the father's blue-collar work is crap - and that's not how it should be, all workers should have equal dignity and value.
I'm all for equal dignity and value, but I think you are misunderstanding the situation here.
The fact is that money buys better health and familial outcomes. The parents want that for their kids. Manual labor, regardless of how well it pays takes a toll on your body and generally pays less than a lot of the highly sought after knowledge worker jobs.
I really think the rising cost of living is whats driving these kinds of ideas. The parents want their kids to make more money so they can have a better life - a reality in america. Others see this and assume that the blue collar job is bad or something.
If we had an adequate healthcare system that didn't favor the super rich with good outcomes, I would agree. Until then, my kids are going to be encouraged to go into a career where they can make lots of money sitting in an air conditioned office.
I've worked the blue collar tough as fuck jobs, and now I work in an air conditioned office making 15x as much. Objectively, which one is the better job?
I agree, not how it should be, but you gotta get yours.
Also, if you've ever worked in the trades you would know that a large portion of them are ignorant and uneducated. That stereotype exists for a reason. Its just a fact, and they have a tougher time navigating life because of it. I've lived it.
> Also, if you've ever worked in the trades you would know that a large portion of them are ignorant and uneducated. That stereotype exists for a reason. Its just a fact, and they have a tougher time navigating life because of it. I've lived it.
I agree with you there, I think there is a tendency to romanticize the life of a blue collar worker, and thing of them as the noble simple idealized "proletariat", when as you point out the stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason.
But I have to wonder is part of that because of the brain drain in the trades that resulted from everyone going to college and feeling they had to do white collar work. Before a smart, observant, hardworking young man could become an electrician and by virtue of being observant and quick witted could succeeded and excel and become an outstanding electrician that could bring about innovation and elevate his work team. Nowadays though the same hardworking intelligent young man is being told that the trades are for stupid people, and he is too smart for that and wouldn't it be much better to go get a college degree so he can get a "real job". Then twenty years and $50,000 of student debt later he finds himself as a project manager trapped in a standup meeting at 8:00 on a Wednesday morning, hating his life, drowning in unfulfilled despair and wondering what went wrong with his life.
I just think that part of the stereotypes about the trades has become a self fulfilling prophecy.
I have hopes that the invisible hand will provide some corrective feedback. Because at the end of the day, someone has to do the electrical work and the construction work etc. If it can't be done without some amount of IQ the market will adjust for that.
This is already coming to pass in hot real-estate markets where it's almost impossible to get any sort of trade help. It feels like most of the skilled tradesmen (and women) have a plethora of job choices and they by far prefer to build new housing instead of dealing with nitpicky rich people for the same money.
I agree we are in an unstable situation and it will equal out over time. My main concern is the burden it places on us all in the meantime. Those most vulnerable are going to be hit the hardest.
According to this source[1], the average student loan debt for a new 4-year graduate in 2020 is $28,400. Of course, this is highly variable depending on the student, but $150-200k is not typical for a 4-year degree.
There seems to be a bunch of variability here. In support of my original assertion of 150-200k, that site has multiple average debts for different fields in my stated range.
Actually, the article you linked confirms my original statement. Look at the "graduate loan debt" section.
From the article you linked:
Average student loan debt for a professional degree from a private, nonprofit institution $243,300
I have no idea how they got 28k when most every number I see on that page is much larger.
There is a huge, huge difference between the debt you take on in undergrad vs grad programs vs law school vs medical school, etc. You are looking at the numbers for the most expensive programs (that also result in some of the highest paying careers!) to make the case that people have high debt, but those are the minority. They also tend to be the most educated and have the highest future earnings potential. Most people do not advance past an undergraduate degree. The 28k number is far more relevant, and within the article you linked.
Your page says the same number as the parent for a bachelor degree: $28950.
All the other numbers you see that are higher are graduate degrees. Comparing a medical student debt (4+ years more of school beyond the 4 of undergrad, residency, perhaps a specialty on top) to only a 4 year degree is not representative of the vast majority of student debt.
I absolutely understand your POV, I've worked crap jobs too (dropped out of uni), and I have kids who have to suffer through the classist UK education system. But my point is that this was not inevitable, it's the result of societal and individual choices made over the last 40 years.
> if you've ever worked in the trades you would know that a large portion of them are ignorant and uneducated
Yes, and that's why there used to be a view that adult education was to be promoted and encouraged.
My point is that at some point, we just stopped aspiring to a better tomorrow and accepted we're all doomed to live in hell. Which, inevitably, condemned us to a life of pain.
> Manual labor, regardless of how well it pays takes a toll on your body and generally pays less than a lot of the highly sought after knowledge worker jobs
In many places a skilled plumber or electrician earns more than an office worker or even junior engineer. A skilled highway construction worker earns more than the country average. A crane operator makes more than the average software developer. There are many surprises when it comes to blue collar job payment.
I think you're comparing entry level tech jobs to mid to sr level blue collar jobs.
Take the electrician for example. Minimum 4 years of work as an apprentice, then you have to do a year of schooling, pay for it out of pocket, take a test and your making about as much as a entry level developer who only needed to spend 1 year studying in their free time, spent $400 on a laptop, got all their learning for free online, and isn't doing back breaking, more dangerous work. And from there the tech worker's salary is going to go to 150k+ in 3-5 years. You don't even need college to do that anymore.
Same thing with the crane operator. Starting salary for tech is more, requires less time to get started, and the tech worker's salary goes up quick after starting. You don't start out on the path to being a crane operator at 50k+ a year. You start helping doing rigging and spotting for $12 an hour.
I lived both sides of it, trust me. I see where your coming from, some blue collar jobs pay more than you'd think, but in reality there's just no comparison.
Modern factory work is going to need a lot of that "upper-level" knowledge too, due to technical change. Pure "blue-collar" work where one could neglect education altogether is either gone or fast disappearing.
That's going to be severely problematic for those in the bottom 15% of the intelligence distribution when there comes a point that there is nothing in society they could do that wouldn't be actively counter productive.
Modern society and its trajectory seems a fundamentally unsustainable enterprise.
> A sentiment we all admire, but ends up reinforcing the idea that the father's blue-collar work is crap - and that's not how it should be, all workers should have equal dignity and value.
Assuming that value equals price, the only way everyone would have an equal price is if supply and demand were exactly equal across all occupations over a long period of time.
That is not a realistic expectation. And the only way for people (by and large) to be incentivized to do the things where supply is not meeting demand is to have a higher price where supply of labor is more needed than elsewhere.
That's a big assumption. There are lots of careers with social and financial values that diverge, ignoring that would I think miss the point OP is trying to make.
My point is everyone can never have equal “value”. The blue collar father urging their kid to be a doctor is not doing it because he thinks he is inherently less “valuable” than a doctor. The father is urging their kid because the father has experience on the type of quality of life a blue collar father can provide versus a doctor father can provide, which is a function of the price that they can sell their labor at.
You are still being reductive in a way that I think misses the point grandparent was trying to make. It may be true that not everyone's career can have the same value, but it's hopeless to try and define that by paychecks alone - that's just not how society values things.
In other words your argument could works equally well for the father urging their kid to do something that on average won't pay better, but will bring them more respect and social standing.
I find that it is usually purchasing power which results in respect and social standing. What are examples of the opposite, that do not involve being related or networked to someone who does have purchasing power?
If most plumbers started earning top 10% wages in the US, they would have similar social standing to doctors. Even doctors have probably moved down in relative status, where the new ones are basically W2 employees with metrics for a big company.
The example could be replaced by a father encouraging their child to be a scientist rather than an accountant - likely a net financial loss.
Hell, put a noble prize winner (or Olympic gold medallist, or astronaut, or you pick) in a room with a guy who made 50mm on property development. No contest, but chances are the developer is at least 10x as wealthy.
There are examples all around you; might not be why you respect people, but its' what people actually do. Trying to reduce this all to wealth just doesn't stand up to even a little scrutiny, though it's equally clear that wealth does contribute.
When I said unskilled, I meant to distinguish the OP's carpenter son from unskilled jobs. I don't think there has ever been a time before 1945 when the average man was a skilled laborer. A liner worker in a factory or farm-hand isn't skilled labor. For most of history, those people were exploited.
Craftsman usually had a decent living because it took training and there was generally demand. But if you train twice as many electricians, its not like there will be twice as many electrician jobs created. So learning a craft or trade is a great personal strategy, but it not a solution we can universally apply.
I do think we force way too many people into college-track for little benefit and quite a bit of harm.
Some form of Green New Deal would create tons of jobs like that -- people to upgrade furnaces, install heat exchangers, upgrade windows and insulation, and manufacture all of the above. Republicans used to be all about creating jobs like this... I'm not holding my breath, but if a post-trump era is less toxic and the parties can sit down together, it could do marvels for our economy.
> But if you train twice as many electricians, its not like there will be twice as many electrician jobs created. So learning a craft or trade is a great personal strategy, but it not a solution we can universally apply.
I don't know that I agree with that, right now at least on the data I have available and the anecdata I have observed there is a serious shortage of skilled blue color work, plumber, carpenter, electrician, etc. so there is definitely a shift that would be beneficial for society at large and individuals.
But let's explore this idea a little bit more, right now we are used to the idea that there are X jobs for Y persons, especially in white color work. This seems to derive largely from the fact that white color work is focused not on production of goods and services but in the production of information (and to some extant bullsh*). For example there are only so many marketing jobs out there because there are only so much marketing a company needs done. Sure adding your first 3 marketers may increase your revenue by 50% but adding your 300th marketer probably isn't going to increase your income at all, in fact it's likely it might actually be a negative investment. The problem is the marketer doesn't actually add a resources to the world, they aren't producing marketing widgets, they merely identify and optimize existing distribution channels, and help others become aware of your company, and there is only so much you can do in that area, there is only so much inefficiency that can be optimized away.
Contrast this instead with a plumber. You hire your first plumber he can do say 5 jobs a day, if you hire 3 more plumbers you can do 20 jobs a day now. Well let's suppose later on you hire another plumber he still adds the value to do 5 more jobs a day. Now you may say that there are only so many plumbing jobs out there, only so many people have their 3 year old push a bouncy ball down the toilet, but the plumber is also working on new housing and new business, the plumber isn't just optimizing the existing pie they are causing the overall size of the pie itself to increase. Now there does of course exist some sort of maximum to this, but after reading World War Z that explores this concept in quite a bit of depth (and has no similarity to the movie at all) I've realized that if society did collapse I as a software engineer have absolutely no real or applicable skills, whereas an electrician or a carpenter, they will be able to keep on doing their job as they were now, because they are creating actual wealth, not just optimizing existing wealth generation activities.
My point being a society with an overabundance of electricians, carpenters and plumbers is probably better off than a society with an overabundance of project managers, paralegals, and risk analysts.
I largely agree. My grandfather grew up on a farm, graduated 8th grade, then continued to work the farm while mining coal with the other men in his family. That wasn't uncommon in his time.
An 18 year old can easily get a "unskilled" job what will give you a modest lifestyle. There are ~20 cities in America where this isn't possible but just about everywhere else it's completely possible. There is a shortage of tradesman across the country. Are you capable of doing relatively simple math, showing up on time, and working hard? There's a decent job for you in a midwestern city where you can buy a house for $120,000.
> The idea that an 18 year old would start their own household is an artifact from a small period in our history when 18 year olds could easily get an unskilled job that would afford a decent modest lifestyle.
I think this is the root of a lot of people's frustrations around housing, and adulthood. For most our history it was expected that you would have multiple generations sharing a household. The idea that you move out of your family's house the second you turn 18 or finish college is a relatively new idea. As parent commenter points out, this was really only the norm for two generations, suggesting that that, and not our current situation, is the historical outlier.
Living with your family for a while allows you to save money and help your parents out after they spent the better part of two decades raising you.
I'm wildly uncomfortable with normalising the idea (that is far too normal already) that you owe your parents a thing for raising you.
We have a lot of choices in this life, but whether I get brought into it isn't one.
I have no expectations of what my son will or will not help me with in the future and will try as hard as possible to set him up well - because he didn't have a choice in his circumstance, I and solely I did.
I’m doing the same for our family, but it would seem kind of weird (and, frankly, disappointing) if after doing that, that if my wife and/or fell on hard times that the kids wouldn’t pitch in to help in return.
> I'm wildly uncomfortable with normalising the idea (that is far too normal already) that you owe your parents a thing for raising you.
Wow. This is wild to me. My grandfather was an orphan, most likely because his parents weren't married(if he were alive today, he'd be well over 100).
I am absolutely grateful that my parents have done their best to raise me to be the intelligent, caring person I am, and to take care not to perpetuate the misdeeds of their parents(which, being Boomers, were numerous). As both someone who suffers from depression and identifies as a materialist, it is probably the single thing I am most grateful for, and certainly the most profound intangible in my life. The feeling that I owe them is honestly one of the fundamental things that keeps me going.
If your parents are decent to you and showed care with how you were raised I absolutely think that you owe them. Having a functional, caring family is one of the greatest privileges one can have in life. You know who I don't owe anything too? The people who put my grandfather up for adoption.
This is spot on. Multigenerational housing used to be the norm, not a symbol of failure.
Why we all think it's a great idea to leave our families at 18 and pay high rents so that we can live with strangers we found on the internet is beyond me.
The thing is, the people that do the systems planning of our economy and social structure have an incentive for every man to move into a productive lifestyle the minute he turns 18. But there's a misalignment of incentives; what appears productive for society is not productive for the young men in question.
So of course, in print, there's a crisis of young men staying at home with their parents til they're 30. But for young men, there's a crisis of incentive. Why on earth would a young man want to go give half his waking life to barely pay his own rent, then run on the treadmill that is modern online dating for, at best, meaningless hedonistic interactions with maybe, maybe not, women he's attracted to?
What it comes down to is that men have no incentive to do anything other than low effort, intangible self service, because the other alternative is just a more expensive version of the exact same thing.
I have a family to support. If I realized just how bad the corporate world was, I would have stayed single, bought some land, and quit my job once I had enough money saved for a safety net so I could do a low effort job.
Much of our life’s joy comes from what amounts to “meaningless hedonistic interactions”. It’s not that surprising that after having a taste of that in college or early adulthood that people sign up for that trade. I did, and I’d do it again.
I've had my share of them too. They're great. It's not going to motivate me to try to one day afford a 4 bedroom house though, if that's all the future has in store for me. You're not getting career men with those prospects.
Oh come on. I'm not talking about the Illuminati here, I'm talking about the heads, advisers and important employees of executive departments like HUD, the Treasury, the FED, things like that. If you'd done a little thinking before responding maybe you'd have considered that. Unless you think our society is just entirely unmanaged?
You could perhaps have stated it as politicians and bureaucrats instead of "people", which would have made it more obvious to the reader you meant the government at large.
Aspects of it, absolutely. It's not even a secret, I'm not talking about some secret conspiracy. Social structures are largely a game of incentives, and the government agencies have a pretty powerful toolkit as far as incentives go.
Here's an example, it is openly stated that the government maintains an inflation rate to discourage saving and encourage spending to stimulate the economy. This is a deliberate attempt to influence the culture of the US, and it works. We have a consumer culture where everyone buys services and cheap stuff and nobody saves money, the stated goal of these fiscal policies.
Your claim was that there are people 'manipulating our social structure' and instead of backing up a bold claim you backed off and just made the claim that people don't save enough money. If you don't want people to push back on what you say, don't say hyperbolic nonsense. This is a common pattern people fall into.
They don't say what they mean, they say come bizarre abstract exaggeration to get a reply or reaction, then completely back off from what they originally said, then get mad that they are asked to explain their original claim.
I never said "manipulating" although without the negative connotation of the word it's semantics. And I haven't backed off a single thing.
I didn't claim people don't save enough money. I claimed that it is fiscal policy of our government and has been for decades to stimulate the economy by discouraging saving and encouraging spending via debasement of currency. Discouraging saving and encouraging spending is manipulation of social structure. I fail to see where your disagreement lies in that statement. You did not address my example at all, you just dismissed it entirely. I restated it here to give you an opportunity to correct that if you want.
I can give you more examples of government managing social structure if you like. In some instances the social and cultural impacts are secondary effects, often unintended consequences, but in many cases they're deliberate and openly stated, such as the example I've already given.
What exactly do you think government means when they call themselves "government"? What does it mean to govern a society, population, land mass or nation?
Alright, I can't tell if you're being difficult on purpose or by accident, so I'm going to explain my example very simply, "draw it with crayons" so to speak.
Monetary inflation is planned. there are men, in the US that would be the board of the FED, that try to decide what the inflation rate will be using interest rates to borrow from them. They target certain rates because they want certain social and economic consequences of the conditions they impose.
This is one example. Draw me a picture of how that's not systems planning our social structure.
Now, to answer your question, yes, there are people that do treat our society like a system and do systems planning to attempt to create desired social, cultural and economic outcomes. These people collectively form what is known as government. This is not a matter of contention, it is not a controversial statement, this is literally their stated goal, their mission for existing and what we pay them to do.
Now let me ask you a question: what exactly do you think a government does?
It seems like you are just making a gigantic reach by saying 'money affects everything' so by some sort of hop scotch free association, inflation (the thing you actually seem to care about) affects 'social structure' (the nonsense you are bringing into the discussion because you don't feel listened to)
Inflation was an example, and "the nonsense I'm bringing into the discussion because I don't feel listened to" is the statement I made in the first comment that you replied to that started this thread.
Anyway, unless you're going to reply to a statement I made, answer a question I asked or actually state your disagreement with anything I've said there's not a discussion here to be had.
the statement I made in the first comment that you replied to that started this thread.
I know, but it turns out you are really just upset about inflation. You haven't connected that in any real way to claims of "system planning our social structure".
There are good reasons in response to: "Why we all think it's a great idea to leave our families at 18 and pay high rents so that we can live with strangers we found on the internet is beyond me," though personally I also don't believe that multigenerational housing is a symbol of failure, and often lets a person save a lot of money.
It's more difficult to maintain a romantic relationship when living with family (especially if both partners live with family), and it can also delay life skills (e.g. learning how to cook at home, clean, and generally learn to live more independently; though it's possible to deliberately learn this while living with family, it becomes a necessity to learn after moving out).
There are definitely some benefits to living on one's own for a while, but I do not think we should continue to view as the only viable option, or even the default for that matter.
Being pressured to move out of your parents' home ASAP is largely an American phenomenon I think. Maybe parts of Europe as well?
In many parts of the world, the point where you are expected to (and socially pressured to) move out of your parents home is marriage. Of course there are exceptions, like moving to a faraway city for a job, etc.
Whereas I see many American youths bleeding away their income on rent and expenses while living 10 minutes away from their parents' home.
The statistic uses "now" which implies a change over time, so they have been grouped together for while and it may be difficult to separate this group from past studies.
This does bring up an important concept of "emerging adulthood" [0]. Where in modern day societies there seem to be a time period where young adults do what you are describing. There seem to be some of this coupled with some young men not being able to find purpose in life as evidence by the increase in suicide and drug use in the that group.
Sure, it can be a great arrangement. It will slow down his dating prospects though, who can host if a relationship gets serious is a common discussion in dating.
Dating for the 18-21 cohort, outside of the university setting, is already very challenging. Truth be told, some of the women my son has dated in this cohort also live at home.
Multigenerational households are the default in many countries/cultures with many young adults - even high earning ones like doctors, hedge funders, or FAANG SWEs -continuing to live with their parents until marriage. They manage to get in relationships and date just fine. The logistics can be different of course.
Further, I think it is largely undesirable for people in their late teens or early 20s to be living with romantic partners. Breakups are way more complicated when you also lose your housing.
People don't get good at stuff unless they practice
At some point you need to just do these adult things in order to get good. Delaying doesn't change that much. Better to get the practice over with as soon as possible.
Travelling with a partner is a better bet. Involves a lot of the testing scenarios that living with someone brings: decisions, shared finances, putting in effort, cleanliness in shared space (roadtrip car, motel rooms) etc. But worst case you've wasted a week and a smaller amount of money.
If most women are optimising unemployed men out of dating / marriage then men being unemployed has far more significant consequences for men than women. Women are all about equality for access to employment but then complain that there aren't enough suitable men with jobs. The more a woman earns the smaller her dating pool becomes. Perhaps she could be more flexible in partner selection? There are outliers but the data suggests women are very traditional in very particular ways. Whereas the situation for men has been to marry down. But no such expectation for women. Its an interesting little bit of hypocracy.
There's a heap of complexity around this. Society needs to shift and work this out. Its only been around a century. The answers are not so simple.
> The more a woman earns the smaller her dating pool becomes. Perhaps she could be more flexible in partner selection?
This will take more than a generation to solve. Culturally this is not acceptable for women. Women are looked down upon for dating men who make less than them.
For the next 20-30 years, women will continue to shame themselves and others for dating men of “lower” or even equal value.
> Perhaps she could be more flexible in partner selection?
My experience suggests that people are rarely more flexible than they need to be to meet their goals. And: why should they be?
This results in some amount of assortive mating (of the social, rather than genetic, variety), but I don’t see a likely path out of this. It’s the human version of “birds of a feather”.
More of all 18-34 year olds are staying with their parents, not just men[0], so this may be a problem of unavailable housing or some other non-gender specific problem.
I'd really like to see that broken down year by year. 18 is rather young to be living with a partner, and not at all out of the norm to be living with parents (many 18 year olds are still attending high school, others are in junior college, others are working and possibly saving up to move out).
> the proportion of adults without a college degree who marry plummeted from just over 70 percent to roughly 45 percent.
seems to be the answer is right here - college. Historically the basic level of necessary education has been increasing. 4 year grammar school couple centuries ago to the K-12 30 years ago, and today it is "K-16", i.e. K-12 plus college. Not having college today is more and more like not having GRE several decades ago.
and
> Research shows that one significant factor women look for in a partner is a steady job. As men’s unemployment rises, their romantic prospects decline. Unsurprisingly, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of data from 1960 to 2010, the proportion of adults without a college degree who marry plummeted from just over 70 percent to roughly 45 percent.
Seem to imply that this isn't a case of men choosing to stay at home with the kids. I'm curious what the actual data is though.