Whatever Happened to Sleeping Around?
Richard Kew on Youth & Traditionalism
There is always at least one good article in American Demographics for understanding how we might shape the Church’s mission in response to today’s challenges, and with its description of the “retro-styling” of the Millennial Generation, the February 1999 issue was no exception. According to AD, the new world the rising generations are attempting to make is one that is based on more traditional ideals—the question is whether those ideals are just a fad or style or are something deeper, a longing for or an insight into traditional truths we can nurture until they are deeper.
“Generation Y,” the “Millennial Generation,” and “Echo Boomers” are all names given by advertising types to the generation now in elementary, middle, and high schools, and whose first cohort is starting to invade college campuses. While it is a tricky business to generalize about generations, there do seem to be certain characteristics that predominate with certain cohorts.
The Millennials’ predecessor, Generation X, was born roughly between the assassination of JFK and the mid-1980s. They came into the world as the mood of the American people was turning sour. Some have called them “throwaway” kids: the products of more broken homes, more two-income families, and more television watching than any other generation in history. They have lived with a crime epidemic, a rising consciousness of environmental degradation, the AIDS crisis, and any number of other negative trends. Generation X is the first generation to have had millions of their number aborted out of existence, and the first for whom sensuality is normality.
Their predecessors, the Baby Boomers, thought they could remake the world, and the litter and mess they are leaving behind is not unlike the filth in the fields at Woodstock after the crowds had all gone home. The rising generations have had to live with the negative consequences of this. Xers see themselves as a “clean-up generation,” picking up the mess left in the wake of Boomer profligacy.
The first truly postmodern generation, Millennials are less pessimistic than their immediate elders, reflecting, perhaps, that they were born as America was rediscovering that children ought to be cared for—these are the “Baby on Board” kids. They are team players, and tend to take friendships and relationships extremely seriously. Family is important to them, and rather than kicking over the traces of the past, they honor it, crave it, and are eager to become engrossed in its traditions. A young Catholic Millennial who sat beside me on a plane not long ago told me how much he yearned for the solemnity of the Latin Mass—while at the same time he dressed in a style that probably made his poor mother’s hair stand up on end.
Retro-Millennials
According to AD, the Millennial generation are also increasingly “retro” in their dating and mating styles, their attitudes toward relationships being more like their grandparents’ than the do-your-own-thing approach of their Boomer parents. The early “adopters,” that is, the pioneers of the lifestyle trends of their generation, are starting to embrace a decidedly more traditional set of values in their cultural expressions, and their younger peers are likely to follow them in this.
One puzzled Boomer sociologist is reported to have scratched her head and said, “My 20-year-old daughter won’t live with her boyfriend. . . . She’s talking about marrying him.” Horror of horrors! Meanwhile the old-style wedding industry is just waiting for the bonanza that will accompany the marrying of this young woman and her friends.
“These kids are fed up with the superficialities of life,” reported one article in AD. “They have not had a lot of stability in their lives. It’s a backlash, a return to tradition and ritual. And that includes marriage. It’s all about finding the ‘right one’—as opposed to sleeping around.” The article went on to suggest that we’re “heading for a second coming of family values. And with it boosted sales of white wedding gowns, subscriptions to bridal magazines, and perhaps a future surge in sales of Pampers.”
What does this mean? “This generation is very much into the spirituality of love,” said Kirsty Doig, vice president of Youth Intelligence, a market research and trend forecasting group. “They’re much more optimistic than Generation X. . . . They know they’ll find their soul mate.”
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