Why generation Y won’t get married & Why millennials are different

The world seems to regard millennials as a different generation. If this is true, and considering myself as one of them, I would like to ask a simple but difficult Why-question. “Why are we millennials different?“ A quick glance on the internet tells that millennials are lazy, narcissistic, over-competitive and not easily satisfied.

So why do you think generation Y is so different? To start, I’ll give a few examples that, I think have been influential on millennials. In the end I’ll try and elaborate on marriage and why the concept is lacking behind the rapid changes in our society.

Millennials are shaped by technology. The last few decades we have seen that technology has progressed at an exceedingly faster rate. Computers started to go mainstream at the time millennials grew old. Technological advancement progressed further with smartphones, interactive social media, (and of course cryptography).

Born in an era of easy money. Millennials live in an era of low interest rates and easy loans. Just after the second world war, one could go to college, have a job and finance your education with the money you earned. After your education you could start a family where one working person could support the family. Today, we are bombarded by commercials to borrow money “on crazy not to take” low interest rates. Now it seems, everyone has a mortgage, a car loan, and of course student debt.

At the peak of economic crisis. It’s very ironic that millennials, after heavy investments on their education, graduate in a time of economic crisis. It has become significantly difficult to find a good job after graduation and to repay student debts. Maybe this might be an influential factor for their diverse political views and social movements.

Change in family structure. Before, it was normal that the husband earned a living while the woman looked after children. Parents were more influential to their children. Values and personality are largely molded by habits and thoughts in the house. Later on, the structure of the family gradually changed. Schools and other activities outside the family became increasingly more dominant.

Millennials are public schooled. This might be a bit controversial. Instead of choosing the right options that suits us personally, we have put ourselves in a static environment of less mobility to change the diversity of our educative topics and environment. People are taught the same things and the same way everywhere in public schools.

Why are millennials not getting married?

If we look into our old photo albums, and we see our married aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas. We have taken for granted that marriage is a part of life.

But this wasn’t always the case. Marriage wasn’t always about love between a man and a woman, and about starting a family. Marriage used to be about making alliances, creating family ties, or rearranging inheritances. Love and devotion wasn’t necessarily involved and polygamy was common and considered normal.

Wondering about marriage, I came to realize that marriage is a generalization. A generalization that imposes a one size fits all life arrangement. That the rate of divorces has risen the last few decades is maybe not entirely the blame of us, but the result of the lacking concept of marriage. That it has become old fashioned, inflexible, and doesn’t fit with our standards anymore. Millennials who are at the forefront of major societal changes face this issue the most. As our society is continuously evolving, our values too evolves. We are exposed to more information, are more connected to the world, and we are facing technological opportunities and obstacles previous generations didn’t have to deal with. Maybe a solution to this is to change the old traditional concept of marriage. Make it more diverse and flexible so that it can keep pace with us, and give us good reasons to marry again.