The elephant in the room. . .

On the local news channel a month ago was a story on the declining number of 18 year olds heading to college after graduation from high school.  It was replete with the usual stuff -- high cost of education, availability of alternative training for jobs in high demand, and such.  What you did not hear about in this story was the elephant in the room.  The real reason that there are fewer 18 year olds heading to college is that there are fewer 18 year olds.  That is the thing nobody wants to talk about -- at least not the liberals and progressives who dominate the media.  We are missing children in general and not specifically children who want to go to college.  And it is not getting better.

The Pew Research Center survey of registered voters in June of 2024, only one in five Biden/Harris supporters thought that “society is better off if people make marriage and having children a priority.”  Now, lest you think that only Democrats or only liberals or only progressives feel this way, you need to open your eyes.  Our children have learned well the lesson that life is for you and your happiness and it does not matter their politics or their religion, children are increasingly less a part of the future these youth envision for themselves.  And if they do see a family in their future, they see a child and not many children.  

Everyone wants to live rich and meaningful lives but the problem is that fewer and fewer of our youth and our adults believe that marriage and family are part of the rich and meaningful lives they wish to live.  It has shown up in the ever smaller pool of 18 year olds who are headed to college but it will not be changed by talking this age group into giving up their dreams of an enjoyable, well payed job and a life filled with techno toys and the digital tools so essential to their lives.  We will have to aim at younger children to convince them that marriage and family are key to their happiness, to a rich and meaningful life, and an essential part of how they seem themselves both now and down the road.  Furthermore, a risk adverse culture which equates friendship with a screen relationship will need to be convinced that their best lives are personal and interpersonal and in person.

We have gone from a culture in which marriage was presumed to be in everyone's future to one in which it may not be in anyone's future.  As one author put it, the scene today among young singles might make older generations presume that they are the last of those who value marriage and family above all else.  Indeed, as a popular tweet put it, “do married people watch gen z dating and feel like they caught the last chopper out of Nam?”  The future will not look like the past but the past will not have a future unless we teach our children that marriage and children are the shape of things to come not only for the world but for them.