life course

Since the turn of the millennium, Americans over 55 have been giving more financial help to their adult children than ever before, with much of this assistance going to support things like their grandchildren’s education, living expenses, and medical bills. However, this growth in intergenerational giving has forced many grandparents to tap into their own savings to pay it forward.

In an interview for The Atlantic, sociologist Kathleen Gerson explains that sometimes grandparents provide help to the younger generations, even if doing so comes at a cost to themselves.

“Financial managers advise the elderly to hold on to the money they’ve saved, to use it to care for themselves in old age, to avoid becoming the responsibility of their children”… But many grandparents have a hard time listening to this advice, she said, because they can see that their children and grandchildren are even more financially insecure than they are.”

Robust social programs benefiting senior citizens, like Social Security, likely provide a sense of economic security that makes them feel capable of giving. Yet, while the social safety net has all but eliminated poverty among the elderly, dwindling support for social programs supporting children and families has left children in a more precarious position than their elders. As a result, Gerson explains, grandparents across the United States are “stepping into the void” to provide for the younger generations.

Giving money serves two functions, Gerson said—it’s “a way of expressing love,” and a way to help ensure “that your children’s children will have a decent spot in the world.”

But not all grandparents bear an equal burden in supporting the youngest generation. African American and Latino grandparents are more likely than white grandparents to spend money on schooling, to help out with living expenses, and to indulge their grandchildren when they ask for things. And, working and middle class Baby Boomers are more likely than wealthier peers to tap into their own savings or delay retirement.

Because grandparents are unequally equipped to provide financial support, doing so takes a greater personal toll on some than on others. Paradoxically, if we want to improve seniors’ quality of life in their golden years, an effective way to do it is by bolstering social programs to prevent poverty among the young.

Winter break is a time for students and faculty alike to hunker down after a long semester, spend time with family and friends, and relax. But if you’re a woman in your 20s or 30s, you’ve probably been cornered by at least one relative who tells you your biological clock is ticking. And while Aunt Helen may be right, it turns out there’s at least one big benefit for women who wait to start a family.

Recent research featured in the Huffington Post indicates that women in their 40s are actually healthier if they have their first child after age 24. Sociologist Kristi Williams and her colleagues followed 3,348 women for nearly 30 years, collecting self-reported health data. They found that women who had their first child between the ages of 25 and 35 reported better health at age 40 than women who had their first child between ages 15 and 19 or 20 and 24 (and there was no significant health difference at age 40 between these two younger groups).
Read the full article here.

Picture a family holiday dinner. Food is on the table, everyone is gathered together, and a high school or college student is text messaging under the table. Upon prodding questions about the recipient—“Are you dating?”—the irritated adolescent might glance up just long enough to mumble, “We’re just talking.”

Sociology professor Kathy Hull shares her thoughts about the changing relationship landscape with the Star Tribune. A generation or two ago the word “dating” often meant a casual, nonexclusive relationship involving the occasional dinner and movie without commitment. That idea has changed. Hull explains,

“Going on a date now has more significance, when the option of hooking up or just hanging out in a group-friend setting is more prevalent. When people say they’re dating someone, it usually means they’re in a relationship.”

Hull suggests the shift in terms has come out of an extended transition to adulthood, with more young adults pursuing college and delaying marriage and family until they’ve secured a stable job. After graduation, Hull says, many millennials decide to start dating in the traditional sense.

“It’s not until they leave college that some people go back to the idea of using dates as a way to check out potential partners, rather than a way to get into a committed relationship.”

With so many waiting to play the game of love, it appears they may, to some degree, forget how—perhaps one more driver behind the rise of online dating.

Isn’t it ironic that “much of our ‘independence,’ where it exists, is made possible by supports and resources that have been provided by others”? In an interview with the Washington Post, Oregon State’s Richard A. Settersten, Jr. calls attention to one important instance of this irony: the rigid tie between the “independence” of young people and leaving the home. For Settersten, Jr., common (and paranoid) misunderstandings about “permanent” and “alarming” generational trends in living at home are problematic not simply because they are inaccurate, but because they point to a misguided ideal of “independence.”

To clarify how patterns in young adult living arrangements have varied over time, he notes:

This isn’t new. If we look back over the last century, we can see that the rush out of the parental home was a post-World War II phenomenon, and proportions have been growing since 1970…. What’s remarkable about the early adult years today is not that young people live with parents but that they live without a spouse…. Marriage and parenting now culminate the process of becoming adult rather than start it.

Settersten, Jr. also clarifies who chooses to live at home and why. He indicates that men of every age group are more likely to live with parents, mentioning their higher rates of dropping out of school, unemployment, and a higher average age of marriage as possible reasons why. Individuals of disadvantaged groups also tend to live at home at greater rates—possibly because they are more likely to live in high-cost metropolitan areas or because young people in their culture are expected to contribute to family resources. Moreover, according to Settersten, Jr.,

For many families, living at home is a strategic choice that permits young adults to attend or reduce the cost of higher education, take internships, or create a nest egg. (It may also be necessary for paying down student loans.) For them, it’s not about being locked out of the labor market, but about building a more secure economic future.

So before tossing aside the “boomerang generation” as dependent “failures to launch,” consider how peculiar it is “that we expect young people to somehow strive for complete independence when those of us who are no longer young realize that adult life is heavily conditioned by relationships with other people.” Settersten, Jr. has a point.

To learn how this notion of independence is affecting older adults, check out Stacy Torres’s article on Families as They Really Are.

For a different take on the role of the economy in millenials’ living arrangements, see this article by Lisa Wade.

If you’re a teacher, here’s a great lesson by Kia Heise to start a class conversation about living alone as a ‘rite of passage’ into adulthood.

As people approach midlife, the days of youthful exploration, when life felt like one big blind date, are fading. Schedules compress, priorities change and people often become pickier in what they want in their friends… [later] people realize how much they have neglected to restock their pool of friends only when they encounter a big life event, like a move, say, or a divorce.

More fish, sure, but are there always more friends in the sea? In its Sunday edition, The New York Times considers the expansive, but shallow pools of friends, associates, and colleagues–the slackening social networks–so many notice with a start in middle age.

As external conditions change, it becomes tougher to meet the three conditions that sociologists since the 1950s have considered crucial to making close friends: proximity; repeated, unplanned interactions; and a setting that encourages people to let their guard down and confide in each other, said Rebecca G. Adams, a professor of sociology and gerontology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. This is why so many people meet their lifelong friends in college, she added.

The article goes on to cite, beyond graduation, increasing couple-dom, divergent careers (even best friends can grow apart when one has mortgage troubles while the other can’t decide whether to spend one month or two in St. Bart’s), parenthood, and the pickiness engendered by self-discovery as reasons adults find themselves with fewer friends–and fewer avenues to find new ones–once they’re out of college and early career stages.

The good news, though, is that social scientists like psychologist Linda L. Carstensen have found that, as friend numbers dwindle (though perhaps not on Facebook), those remaining friendships grow closer.  In fact, Marla Paul, author of The Friendship Crisis, tells the Times, “The bar is higher than when we were younger and were willing to meet almost anyone for a margarita,” but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. People may find that they have just enough time to invest in real, lasting, fruitful friendships with this culled group.

Or, they might follow advice given by others in the Times: go on a search to fill specific “friend niches” or even launch back into the incredibly social, unattached behavior of their early 20s. Exhaustive, to be sure, but quite possibly exhausting.