Boomers, Millennials and Stereotypes
18th May 2024
In general, then, it is worthwhile for Schmitz to compare what a typical “midlife crisis” meant for Baby Boomers, as compared to what it means for younger Americans. As he points out, before you get divorced, you first have to get married, and the under-40 cohort has historically low marriage rates. In particular, Millennials have tended to delay marriage and, especially among college-educated women, to delay childbearing to such an age that becoming a mother may require medical intervention, if it is even still biologically possible. Whereas, by comparison, when I was living the bachelor life back in the 1980s, I was being countercultural — because in the Bible Belt, most folks still got married in their late teens or early 20s — nowadays, it would be countercultural to marry young.
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Think about the phrase “the black community,” which is used to imply a monolithic commonality of interest among the 46 million black people in America. “The black community” is viewed as generally poor and oppressed, simply because of statistics, i.e., comparing group averages. Certainly it is true that, on average, black people have lower incomes than white people, but to turn this statistical comparison into a definitive description of “the black community” is unfair to those black individuals who strive to be more than average.
Commonly referred to by me as The Aggregation Fallacy.