Millennials make us collectively uncomfortable. As the youngest and oldest of them hit 29 and 44 respectively this year, they’re far from the youth generation and are burdened with an unjust reputation for never having grown up. Millennials have come to represent a sort of interrupted or static adulthood. An ageing generation of youths.
Irish millennials are having fewer children, and later, than their parents. In the 2022 census, the number of childfree Irish families rose 11 per cent from the 2016 figures. Forgoing parenthood has become a more common choice for some and for others, a more common necessity. We are the first generation to do comparatively worse than our parents. Priced out of home ownership, the theory goes, we spend our disposable income on clinging to youth and reliving childhood nostalgia. We are the consumers of Marvel movies and the progenitors of now ubiquitous infantilised product marketing.
Now, out of this culture emerges a particular kind of social media content by single, childfree millennial women – mostly US-based – which has been growing in popularity. A stark contrast to the aspirational beauty and fashion influencer content that platforms like Instagram cut their teeth on, it is a departure from depicting an unrealistic version of one’s life online.
These women aren’t generally wealthy. They’re in their late 30s and 40s and live average-looking, relatable lives in ordinary homes. Their “a day in the life” videos consist of going to work, tidying the kind of small – usually rented – home that is aspirational for many in a housing market where renting is tough even with two incomes, but not social media aspirational. They make dinner, walk the dog, perhaps check in on an ageing parent and watch Netflix in the evening. They don’t look impeccably fit, styled or groomed. They communicate realistically about their lives, budgets and limitations.
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What’s interesting is how controversial this sort of content appears to be. How strongly people in comments sections seem to feel about these women (who are of course socially expected to be partnered and to have children) not having met that expectation, whether by choice or otherwise. This sort of realistic social media content seems to be contentious particularly because it really does reflect the reality of life for increasing numbers of millennial women, depicting the shifting priorities, financial limitations and life choices shaped by constraints that we are all acutely aware of and living within, but apparently don’t want to see on social media.
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While discomfort with lifestyles that don’t fit traditional moulds is nothing new, there’s more to it than that. In the eyes of wider society, these women are failing. They haven’t met the traditional markers of adulthood – marriage, home ownership, parenthood. They have committed a worse crime still in that these things have not even been sacrificed in the name of some other aspirational goal like great career success or wealth generation. They’re just average women navigating both the high social costs of not having met the key requirements of traditional adulthood and the wider systemic mess: job insecurity, wage stagnation, rising living costs and the average house price exponentially outreaching the average salary.
The comments sections beneath these women’s posts pendulously swing between women in similar situations expressing relief and solidarity at feeling seen, and commenters describing the lives depicted as pathetic, inadequate, or not worth living.
It’s a stark reminder of the fact that the shifting picture of life trajectory these women represent makes us deeply uncomfortable. The traditional picture of adulthood is increasingly unrealistic and, for vast numbers of people, unattainable. This reality produces ageing millennials whose lives may appear frivolous, precarious and self-oriented by the standard of previous generations, but millennials are responding to incentives and disincentives, like every prior generation.
It’s convenient to focus on individuals while ignoring the way things are trending generally, and to hold their choices in contempt. To think, “Why won’t these women grow up?” It’s comforting for some to presume that a 40-year-old without a partner, children or a home of their own just has an inaccurate conception of a good life. This is far easier than to accept that, given the conditions under which we now live, traditional partnership and motherhood or owning a home are simply undesirable or impossible to them under their circumstances.
Millennial choices appear unsatisfactory to some because we have failed to recognise that the nature of independence and adulthood have shifted radically in the last two decades. Adaptability and pragmatism may get women further under challenging social and economic conditions than striving toward an unattainable or impractical traditional ideal which requires (but now often utterly lacks) the support and participation of community, culture and state.
If more women are talking openly about being on their own – and they are – it may be because they perceive themselves to be isolated in the face of contemporary challenges. Why won’t millennial women grow up? It looks to me like they have.
