Today's 20-year-olds are increasingly living outside their parents' schedules. The previous generation at this age had to work hard and get married, but today's younger generation is diligently studying, finding themselves and in no hurry to leave their parents' homeland. Rigid gender roles are also being eliminated: men are no longer required to earn an income early for the family, and women are no longer expected to marry quickly. And maturity is confidently pushed back 30 years.
Sociologists compare four generations in their 20s. This is the peak of the so-called formative years, when the foundations of adult life are laid. We look at the reform generation, whose youth was in the turbulent 1990s, the older and younger millennials, who grew up in the more stable but distinct 2000s and 2010s, and the zoomers, who entered adulthood in the 2020s.
If nearly half of reform generation 20-year-olds have paid jobs, only a quarter of their Zoomer colleagues have paid jobs. At the same time, the rate of young people not going to school or working increased sharply, up to 35%. Women's employment did not decrease much, but among them, the proportion of 20-year-olds who had never been married increased from 53% to 85%, and those who became mothers at this age decreased by half. Marriage and parenthood are no longer the mandatory initiation of adulthood but become its conscious outcome.
Young people are now rationalizing their life decisions by first seeking to achieve financial and psychological stability. Continued by Candidate of Sociological Sciences, Deputy Director of the Higher School of Contemporary Social Sciences at Moscow State University. Lomonosov Oleg Sorokin:
Oleg Sorokin Candidate of Sociological Sciences, Deputy Director of the Higher School of Modern Social Sciences of Moscow University. Lomonosov “In previous types of societies, people started their working careers early, because of different life expectancies – 40-60 years. The second reason is because today, to get a position of status and do interesting work, it is necessary to have certain skills characteristic of the creative economy. And the creative economy is designed to create innovation. A person wants to be educated and then there is demand on the labor market. And the third reason is is social psychology, because in modern society we cannot guarantee that a person will have a house, a long-term job, or a stable salary. Therefore, a person in these conditions has a more realistic approach to the issue of starting a family, choosing a career, the field in which he will study.
On the one hand, the problem of generations is eternal, on the other hand, recently people have begun to pay more attention to it: this topic is raised on social networks, in the media, in scientific research. And this has a very simple explanation, Alexander Rikel, associate professor of the Department of Psychology at Moscow State University, points out:
Alexander Rikel Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Moscow State University “If we talk about generations as social groups united by some common unique experience, and not just about 20-year-olds or 40-year-olds, it seems that this experience is becoming increasingly rich. The banal idea is that life is accelerating, the number of events happening in the world is increasing, the unique experiences that people receive are becoming more and more intense, so every people start to differ more from each other. children and parents even extend to siblings and younger siblings. Because the difference of ten years is so significant that you don't understand what's on your older or younger brother's phone or why he's wearing that outfit.
For the Alpha generation born after 2010, experts have quite positive predictions. According to them, children who master the digital environment right from the cradle will be better able to adapt to the conditions of the creative economy. They take a more conscious approach in choosing skills for future self-realization. But their main rival will be artificial intelligence, which will push Alphas to choose creative professions. Perhaps this same generation, finding its place more quickly, will be able to return to earlier family formation and active parenthood, reversing the trend of late adulthood. But this is not certain.
