Americans of all ages are increasingly skeptical of the American dream. As a new crop of shiny young people graduate from high school, college and professional schools this month, we wanted to ask: What might a new vision for the future look like?
The old version of the dream seems increasingly irrelevant for people in their teens and 20s. Sociologists call it the success sequence: graduate from college, get a job, get married, have children, in that order. Buying a house for those kids to run around in is supposed to be the capstone.
But with untenable costs locking many out of the housing market and parts of the country becoming uninsurable because of potential climate damage, homeownership is no longer a top goal for everyone.
Because finding the right job can prove difficult and many entry-level jobs could be vulnerable to artificial intelligence, some Americans in their 20s and 30s sought the solace of steady, unglamorous government work … until this year, when the so-called Department of Government Efficiency took a wrecking ball to federal jobs. It’s not just the federal work force that’s in disarray; our entire democracy seems more precarious than it’s been in a long time.
More people are questioning the value of higher education than in recent memory, with only a quarter of Americans saying that college is extremely or very important. Nearly 50 percent of Americans “say it’s less important today than it was in the past for someone to have a four-year degree in order to get a well-paying job,” according to Pew Research.
“Gen Z on Marriage: In This Economy?” read a headline in The Wall Street Journal last year, and it could also act as a mission statement for people in their 20s, who are either putting off or forgoing marriage and babies entirely.
That doesn’t mean we Americans don’t have aspirations. I want to hear from readers under 30 about what their American dreams look like. It could be a lot like the old one — or it could be an entirely new idea of a satisfying future. We may quote from your response in a future story or project.
End Notes
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I have been thinking about this newsletter about how American boys have become less supportive of gender equality, by the data analyst David Waldron. “The long-running Monitoring the Future study has been surveying eighth and 10th graders since 1991, and shows a sharp drop in the proportion of eighth and 10th graders that believe in gender equality in the last five years,” Waldron explains. Surprisingly, a lot of the usual explanations — screen time, video games — don’t seem to be associated with the decrease. The one factor that seems correlated with a decrease in feminist views is religiousness: Boys who say religion is “important in their life” seem to be driving the decline.
My other theory is that in times of crisis — like a pandemic — attitudes toward gender roles become more traditional. Perhaps this effect was magnified in homes that already had a conservative bent.
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Relatedly, my colleague Claire Cain Miller is doing a series about the state of American men and boys. She wants to hear from you about it.
Feel free to send me your theories about boys’ attitudes here.
Jessica Grose is an Opinion writer for The Times, covering family, religion, education, culture and the way we live now.
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