Last year at a funeral, Jan met a college classmate, and they shared condensed versions of their lives. Both had two children, but her friend a decade later. The conversation naturally veered to grandchildren. The classmate had just welcomed her first grandchild; we were watching our first go to college.
Because we tend to socialize with adults with similar lives, our circle consists of (long) married couples with children around 40 and grandchildren nearing adulthood. But beginning with Boomers, such groups have dissipated. Life patterns were altered by a series of factors to make a typical sequence of graduation, marriage, parenting, empty-nesting, parent-caring and retirement less typical.
SHIFTING SOCIAL PATTERNS
Contraception, female workforce success, later marriages and fewer children all shifted social patterns so age is no longer a predictor of life activities. For example:
- The average age of first childbirth jumped from 21 to 27 since 1970. In addition, the midpoint age of birth mothers rose from 24 to 27 since 1999.
- The divorce rate, which doubled from 1960 to 1980, is now only 2.3 per 1,000, but the marriage rate has plummeted to a record 60% lower than 1970.
- Children of second marriages often have older parents, especially fathers.
- All the while, not having children has become progressively more popular among oncoming generations.
THE “NEW FAMILY”
Bleachers now hold fewer grandparents. Friendships among parents with common- age children are rarer. Family now manifests itself as a constant re-invention of intergenerational roles.
The life-stage delays are cumulative. A father at 40 might not see grandchildren or even a daughter- or son-in-law if offspring copy parental timing. For their children, this modern life path will be the archetype, not an unsettling shift.
Golden years will be front-loaded in the 20s. Cohorts will be caring for infants and parents simultaneously. Generations will mesh differently and probably less. Adult relationships will shrink to just adjacent generations. Above all, trade-offs will accompany every plan to override natural and previously traditional life mile-markers.
LESS OVERLAP ON THE FARM
Our efforts to make our farms ongoing businesses and family legacies will have fewer schedules to emulate. Each family will face unique, complex choices to bridge the new gaps caused by less life overlap. This choose-your-own-ending paradigm is not better or worse, but it is real, and often wistfully and belatedly recognized.
