Our Cultural Norm of Settling Down Is Weird and Doesn’t Work Anymore
Millennials and Gen Z are looking for more than what a settled-down life can give them
He’d been drinking so it probably wasn’t the best time to have a ‘where is your life going’ conversation. But parents are like that, they always choose inopportune moments for an inappropriate question sesh.
“I mean, you can’t travel forever. You’re going to settle down again at some point, aren’t you?”
Ah, settling down. That thing we’re all supposed to do regardless of our situation, current marital status, and whether it suits our personality or not. A guillotine comes down. Life before settling down can be whatever we like. Life after doesn’t change. You get the house, the kids, the car, the career, and stay in formation every day from now until you die.
Urgh.
“Well, Dad, I don’t know just yet. I feel more settled on the road than I ever did in suburbia.”
Then he said something that has noodled me ever since we had this conversation 8 weeks ago.
“How can you possibly feel settled living out of a suitcase?”
I did a bit of Googling before writing this article and the internet is full of definitions of settling down that use words like calm, steady, quiet, getting married, having a regular job.
You buy the house, you’re settled down. You have a ‘steady’ (read corporate 9–5) job, you’re settled down.
All definitions lie in having a stable and singular physical space.
But the world just isn’t like that anymore.
The desire for us Millennials and our younger counterparts, Gen Z, to own property, get married with a $40k wedding and punch out a couple of kids went downstream years ago. The opportunity to do so was snatched away from us and now we realize we don’t want it anyway.
- There are 50% more American digital nomads than there were 18 months ago.
- 34% of Millennials never want to own a home.
- The average UK wedding costs the equivalent of $37,000 and many of us don’t want to get married now anyway.
