Well I feel somewhat offended. Thanks for damning me to a life of being a lonely bachelor. Do you want to send me some applications for Internet brides from Russia?
Considering I did not get my first kiss and did not have sex until I was out of college and it took a few more years after that to start dating reguarly...let's just say I am a late bloomer.
"1) many of the people who were predisposed to marry already have by that point. A lot of people find chemistry in college — and by the time they’re out, they get married."
I don't think this is true. I know some people who married their college sweethearts or at least I think I do. Most people in my circles seem to massively regret at least one of their college dating choices and chalk it up to hormones, the need for experimentation and discovery, and know admit to doing each other a lot of pain. I know more people who met their spouses in grad school. One of my professors at law school said I was not the type of person to meet their spouse at the school. Take that for what you will, I have no idea what she meant.
Number 2 is true and there is some truth to 3-5 but I think a lot of it can be traced to the on-line dating problem. On-line dating gives the illusion or the possibility of countless options especially in large cities. Hence there is always the feeling of "I can do better" or so I heard and not wanting to invest energy in merely a good date. I.e. a date has to be amazing off the bat or it goes nowhere. This leads to a lot of loneliness.
My mom did not get married until she was 33. Plenty of people do get married later in life.
The question is what will The Great Recession teach us. My friends seem to be split among the doing very well and the doing not-so well with some in the middle but not much.
I grew up in a suburb where almost every parent had a college education or higher. We were all told to get college educations or higher. Deferred gratification was the lesson. Maybe someone like your friend looks like they are doing well at 25 but it is better to be in grad school at 25 and do really well at 45, 55, 60, etc.
There is no moral judgment here. Different strokes for different folks. This is just what many people in my generation (or at least my generation and socio-economic status) were taught while growing up.
BTW, I and I suspect many people with similar backgrounds were firmly trained by my parents not to have kids until we were well settled into our careers.
And you linked to the opposite articles that everyone else was linking to this week.
I thought you would link to TNR's cover piece on how having kids too late will upend American society.
I am 32, single, just starting out on my career, and no marriage or family prospects anywhere in site. These things can change very quickly of course but I would be shocked if I was a dad at 33-34 (my parents were those ages at my birth and I was my mom's first kid). Many of my classmates from high school and college are married, well into their careers, property-owning, and many have kids. I also have friends who have a two month old and live in a tiny two bedroom flat in Queens and now are doing the find a real job waltz. I have a friend with a four month old and is also starting his own business.
I hope everyone comes out alright in the end. What is interesting is that Millenials seems to be getting married much younger than my late Gen X set. Purely anecdotal evidence though.
I had some books in college that were so out of print* that the only available copies were at the reserve desk. Some of these might be available on-line now, others not so much.
*Hernani by Victor Hugo and other bits of dramatic literature.
My broader point on the issue of teaching via apprenticeship is that we need more mentorship in the job structure especially for young employees but very few employers seem to be able to mentor. I can't tell how much of this is through lack of time or a simple non-desire.
One of my professors in law school told the class once that when she was an associate at a big firm, a partner would review everything she (and every other associate) wrote with a red-pen while the associate was in the partner's office.
People who graduated law school more recently do not seem to get this review. Job postings now always ask for people who can work independently. I take work independently as a euphemism for "We want to be able to give you a task and have it be done without asking for help or guidance." Ironically law students and newly minted lawyers are also given tons of lectures about the importance of mentors that we can ask questions to because otherwise we will fuck things up and that would be bad for the clients and us.
I think he is saying that there is still a lot of materials that is not digitized like many books and other research needs. Plus we still need librarians to help teach new students proper research. Also not every student has a laptop or computer.
I am also a romantic sap for libraries of the academic or public source. I think that it is vital for democracy on a local and national scale to support libraries as public spaces for the free flow of information. There is a glory to seeing strangers share a desk and reading books.
My mom was an public elementary school teacher and later education administrator. Though she graduated in a very different time.
As a lawyer, I also have continuing legal education credits and these cost a pretty penny along with bar dues. Bar Dues suffer a bit from price discrimination. I pay just as much as a veteran lawyer making 6 figures or more. Though I also pay as much as a legal aid lawyer making much less than me.
"Definitely, people have glommed on to the idea that education is good, without actually working out what specifically is good about it."
I consider education to be a natural good for reasons that it hopefully builds a society of curious and eager independent thinkers. Keep in mind I went to an undergrad that is a sort of self-selection for the intellectually precocious. Most people would probably have found us intolerable at 18, we loved being surrounded by like-minded souls. It is a special type of student that wants to go to a school like Vassar.
"I think there are good reasons why corporations don’t take apprentices. Remember that apprentices were bound to their masters for a period of many years and were generally paid little beyond room and board. A labour contract like that would be illegal today, and if you don’t like the idea of young people being paid subsistence wages at a job they’re not allowed to quit for several years, I think we’re going to have to leave education as a purchased service."
This is a good point and part of my reasons for wanting these subjects out of the university are snooty. I believe in the liberal-arts education and there was no such thing really as a practical major at Vassar. You could major in a pure science but not engineering. You could major in economics but not business, marketing, or accounting. Art but not Interior Design or Fashion Merchandising. The Drama major required at least half the classes be in dramatic literature, theory, and history. I have a love for "impractical" academics.
I also get snooty at engineer types who dismiss my BA, MFA, and JD as not being an education.
If not separate from university perhaps we can create streamlined programs for those degrees.
I think the United States needs to have a serious discussion about what the point is the point of a university education. Is it to create smart and efficient workers that will help the United States remain competitive in the global economy? Is it to produce citizens who are curious about the world and continue their educations sua sponte after graduation in order to protect Constitutional Government? Both? Neither?
The truth is that a lot of subjects like accounting, business, marketing, do not need to be taught in the university setting. They should be taught via apprenticeship but our corporations have hoisted the responsibility on the education system and this increases student debt. It also seems unfair and unwise to make people who want to be teachers and social workers go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for a professions which are not known for financial gain. We can probably get more people to become teachers if they did not fear the specter of life-long student debt. Same with many other needed but low-paid professions.
My general stance is that the point and purpose of an education is to become a curious and well-rounded citizen but I am told this is quaint. It should also be noted that I attended a small-liberal arts college (Vassar). I needed this kind of higher educational setting. All of my classes (except one or two) were below 30 students. Many were below 20 students. Hence almost everything except language was a seminar without being officially labeled one and we often sat around a table conference style. I would have been lost and drowned at a large university like Pitt, Cal, or even Cornell. In my Masters program, my subsection had 9 people and my law school could roughly be described as being equivalent to a small-liberal arts college because each year was capped at about 230 students. Harvard Law admits about 500-600 students a year.
Many of my classmates in law school attended the UC system. Usually Cal or Santa Cruz. They often looked amazed when I described what Vassar and grad school was like. They found it too intimate to be in classes of 9 or even 20-30. They wanted the large lecture setting where they could be a face in the crowd (or just not show up and still get As.)
In short, the problems of the American system are also its strengths. While my European friends think our system is bonkers*, I think it does provide a wide-range of options that allow for multiple types of learning and experience. As far as I can tell, most other nations do not have institutions like Williams, Vassar, Hampshire, Smith, Oberlin, Kenyon, etc. Maybe the individual colleges at OxBridge are like that but not much else. Our system also allows for people to attend college and university later in life.
*I often need to explain that just because Harvard and Vassar are private colleges and universities, it does not mean that they are for-profit**. A European friend of mine had his mind blown a bit when I told him this. He thought that private universities were just part of the American love affair of capitalism and that Harvard and Yale were no different than a place like the University of Phoenix.
**Of course many private universities have endowments that give a ton of money.
Maybe sexuality was the wrong word but how people express their relationships.
I don't know what the socio-economic status of the Singaporean girl was but it struck me as being interesting that she used the same tones and words that I heard from upper-middle class American women who grew up in the suburbs and were college-educated.
I have never been to Signapore and ancedote is not data but I used to belong to another internet community and there was a young woman from Singapore in the community. She attitudes and behaviors towards sex did not seem too different from a similar American woman (read: Young, college-educated, professional). She talked about her boyfriend in the same tones that I hear American women.
I have no idea whether her parents talked to her or not but it is interesting to theorize whether the Internet will have a homogeneousizing effect on sexuality.
I suppose. In some ways, I think that liberal parents (especially of the upper-middle class professional mode) can be more strict than conservative parents.
Bush II and his wife seemed rather indulgent as parents. I remember during 2004 that one of the step-kids of Kerry said that there were strict rules about watching TV and that they had to write a report about what they saw on TV. My parents banned TV watching during school nights when I was in high school.
The issue with your proposal in the second paragraph is how would emergency responders tell whether someone was wearing their seatbelt or not. Sometimes seatbelts and airbags fail. Also the accident still needs to be cleared whether people were wearing seatbelts or not. If a person needs to be pried from his or her car, they might as well be taken to the hospital and treated. I think your ideal would just create a cottage industry for lawyers arguing whether someone was wearing a seat belt or not. I am not sure whether this is your intended effect but thanks for the work. ;)
Honestly, this is one area where conservatives and liberals tend to disagree on freedom(TM) and the conservative argument just causes me to scratch my head in confusion. I have seen many right-leaning folks (not accusing you) of saying that they wear seatbelts and require their passengers to do the same. However, it seems to cause them temper tantrums that wearing a seat belt or a helmet is the law. They get table-banging, blood-pressure popping angry at the idea and think it is a great tyranny. I just look at them confused. This is what makes them angry? Especially because many of these people are against Same-Sex Marriage and support DOMA. DOMA is an actual and serious abridgment of freedom. People are strange I suppose.
Though for copyright, starting a suit can show other potential infringers that you are willing to litigate and that can have a silencing effect on people.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “When to Get Married, Revisited”
Well I feel somewhat offended. Thanks for damning me to a life of being a lonely bachelor. Do you want to send me some applications for Internet brides from Russia?
Considering I did not get my first kiss and did not have sex until I was out of college and it took a few more years after that to start dating reguarly...let's just say I am a late bloomer.
"1) many of the people who were predisposed to marry already have by that point. A lot of people find chemistry in college — and by the time they’re out, they get married."
I don't think this is true. I know some people who married their college sweethearts or at least I think I do. Most people in my circles seem to massively regret at least one of their college dating choices and chalk it up to hormones, the need for experimentation and discovery, and know admit to doing each other a lot of pain. I know more people who met their spouses in grad school. One of my professors at law school said I was not the type of person to meet their spouse at the school. Take that for what you will, I have no idea what she meant.
Number 2 is true and there is some truth to 3-5 but I think a lot of it can be traced to the on-line dating problem. On-line dating gives the illusion or the possibility of countless options especially in large cities. Hence there is always the feeling of "I can do better" or so I heard and not wanting to invest energy in merely a good date. I.e. a date has to be amazing off the bat or it goes nowhere. This leads to a lot of loneliness.
My mom did not get married until she was 33. Plenty of people do get married later in life.
"
"There are times it bothers me that my youngest won’t be out of college until I’m almost 60"
Don't forget about grad school.
"
The question is what will The Great Recession teach us. My friends seem to be split among the doing very well and the doing not-so well with some in the middle but not much.
"
I think those days are gone.
I grew up in a suburb where almost every parent had a college education or higher. We were all told to get college educations or higher. Deferred gratification was the lesson. Maybe someone like your friend looks like they are doing well at 25 but it is better to be in grad school at 25 and do really well at 45, 55, 60, etc.
There is no moral judgment here. Different strokes for different folks. This is just what many people in my generation (or at least my generation and socio-economic status) were taught while growing up.
"
BTW, I and I suspect many people with similar backgrounds were firmly trained by my parents not to have kids until we were well settled into our careers.
"
And you linked to the opposite articles that everyone else was linking to this week.
I thought you would link to TNR's cover piece on how having kids too late will upend American society.
I am 32, single, just starting out on my career, and no marriage or family prospects anywhere in site. These things can change very quickly of course but I would be shocked if I was a dad at 33-34 (my parents were those ages at my birth and I was my mom's first kid). Many of my classmates from high school and college are married, well into their careers, property-owning, and many have kids. I also have friends who have a two month old and live in a tiny two bedroom flat in Queens and now are doing the find a real job waltz. I have a friend with a four month old and is also starting his own business.
I hope everyone comes out alright in the end. What is interesting is that Millenials seems to be getting married much younger than my late Gen X set. Purely anecdotal evidence though.
On “Is Unbundling the University Such a Bad Thing?”
I had some books in college that were so out of print* that the only available copies were at the reserve desk. Some of these might be available on-line now, others not so much.
*Hernani by Victor Hugo and other bits of dramatic literature.
"
My broader point on the issue of teaching via apprenticeship is that we need more mentorship in the job structure especially for young employees but very few employers seem to be able to mentor. I can't tell how much of this is through lack of time or a simple non-desire.
One of my professors in law school told the class once that when she was an associate at a big firm, a partner would review everything she (and every other associate) wrote with a red-pen while the associate was in the partner's office.
People who graduated law school more recently do not seem to get this review. Job postings now always ask for people who can work independently. I take work independently as a euphemism for "We want to be able to give you a task and have it be done without asking for help or guidance." Ironically law students and newly minted lawyers are also given tons of lectures about the importance of mentors that we can ask questions to because otherwise we will fuck things up and that would be bad for the clients and us.
"
I think he is saying that there is still a lot of materials that is not digitized like many books and other research needs. Plus we still need librarians to help teach new students proper research. Also not every student has a laptop or computer.
I am also a romantic sap for libraries of the academic or public source. I think that it is vital for democracy on a local and national scale to support libraries as public spaces for the free flow of information. There is a glory to seeing strangers share a desk and reading books.
"
My mom was an public elementary school teacher and later education administrator. Though she graduated in a very different time.
As a lawyer, I also have continuing legal education credits and these cost a pretty penny along with bar dues. Bar Dues suffer a bit from price discrimination. I pay just as much as a veteran lawyer making 6 figures or more. Though I also pay as much as a legal aid lawyer making much less than me.
"
"Definitely, people have glommed on to the idea that education is good, without actually working out what specifically is good about it."
I consider education to be a natural good for reasons that it hopefully builds a society of curious and eager independent thinkers. Keep in mind I went to an undergrad that is a sort of self-selection for the intellectually precocious. Most people would probably have found us intolerable at 18, we loved being surrounded by like-minded souls. It is a special type of student that wants to go to a school like Vassar.
"I think there are good reasons why corporations don’t take apprentices. Remember that apprentices were bound to their masters for a period of many years and were generally paid little beyond room and board. A labour contract like that would be illegal today, and if you don’t like the idea of young people being paid subsistence wages at a job they’re not allowed to quit for several years, I think we’re going to have to leave education as a purchased service."
This is a good point and part of my reasons for wanting these subjects out of the university are snooty. I believe in the liberal-arts education and there was no such thing really as a practical major at Vassar. You could major in a pure science but not engineering. You could major in economics but not business, marketing, or accounting. Art but not Interior Design or Fashion Merchandising. The Drama major required at least half the classes be in dramatic literature, theory, and history. I have a love for "impractical" academics.
I also get snooty at engineer types who dismiss my BA, MFA, and JD as not being an education.
If not separate from university perhaps we can create streamlined programs for those degrees.
"
Great essay.
I think the United States needs to have a serious discussion about what the point is the point of a university education. Is it to create smart and efficient workers that will help the United States remain competitive in the global economy? Is it to produce citizens who are curious about the world and continue their educations sua sponte after graduation in order to protect Constitutional Government? Both? Neither?
The truth is that a lot of subjects like accounting, business, marketing, do not need to be taught in the university setting. They should be taught via apprenticeship but our corporations have hoisted the responsibility on the education system and this increases student debt. It also seems unfair and unwise to make people who want to be teachers and social workers go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for a professions which are not known for financial gain. We can probably get more people to become teachers if they did not fear the specter of life-long student debt. Same with many other needed but low-paid professions.
My general stance is that the point and purpose of an education is to become a curious and well-rounded citizen but I am told this is quaint. It should also be noted that I attended a small-liberal arts college (Vassar). I needed this kind of higher educational setting. All of my classes (except one or two) were below 30 students. Many were below 20 students. Hence almost everything except language was a seminar without being officially labeled one and we often sat around a table conference style. I would have been lost and drowned at a large university like Pitt, Cal, or even Cornell. In my Masters program, my subsection had 9 people and my law school could roughly be described as being equivalent to a small-liberal arts college because each year was capped at about 230 students. Harvard Law admits about 500-600 students a year.
Many of my classmates in law school attended the UC system. Usually Cal or Santa Cruz. They often looked amazed when I described what Vassar and grad school was like. They found it too intimate to be in classes of 9 or even 20-30. They wanted the large lecture setting where they could be a face in the crowd (or just not show up and still get As.)
In short, the problems of the American system are also its strengths. While my European friends think our system is bonkers*, I think it does provide a wide-range of options that allow for multiple types of learning and experience. As far as I can tell, most other nations do not have institutions like Williams, Vassar, Hampshire, Smith, Oberlin, Kenyon, etc. Maybe the individual colleges at OxBridge are like that but not much else. Our system also allows for people to attend college and university later in life.
*I often need to explain that just because Harvard and Vassar are private colleges and universities, it does not mean that they are for-profit**. A European friend of mine had his mind blown a bit when I told him this. He thought that private universities were just part of the American love affair of capitalism and that Harvard and Yale were no different than a place like the University of Phoenix.
**Of course many private universities have endowments that give a ton of money.
On “Suck This!”
You introduce them to Stars! This is the obvious answer and Stars are my favorite Canadian band:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55FMOJMhV9s
"
Play Barcuda proudly!
On “The Hypocrisy of Hollwood as a Model for American Society”
I saw that performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and his schlong
"
Maybe sexuality was the wrong word but how people express their relationships.
I don't know what the socio-economic status of the Singaporean girl was but it struck me as being interesting that she used the same tones and words that I heard from upper-middle class American women who grew up in the suburbs and were college-educated.
"
Sigh..............................................................
"
I think your second sentence is one of the best understatements I have ever read.
"
What do they think Jesus did at the wedding where he turned water into wine?
"
I really don't get teatotalling in Christianity for these two reasons:
1. The still read the Torah (I refuse to call it the Old Testament) and Torah presented wine as being good and they are literalists.
2. Didn't Jesus turn Water into Wine as one of his Miracles? How do teatoatlling Evangelicals deal with this issue?
"
This is a fair point.
I have never been to Signapore and ancedote is not data but I used to belong to another internet community and there was a young woman from Singapore in the community. She attitudes and behaviors towards sex did not seem too different from a similar American woman (read: Young, college-educated, professional). She talked about her boyfriend in the same tones that I hear American women.
I have no idea whether her parents talked to her or not but it is interesting to theorize whether the Internet will have a homogeneousizing effect on sexuality.
On “Two Lesser Known Freedom of Speech Cases”
I think longer. I remember those ads from the 1990s!
On “The Hypocrisy of Hollwood as a Model for American Society”
I suppose. In some ways, I think that liberal parents (especially of the upper-middle class professional mode) can be more strict than conservative parents.
Bush II and his wife seemed rather indulgent as parents. I remember during 2004 that one of the step-kids of Kerry said that there were strict rules about watching TV and that they had to write a report about what they saw on TV. My parents banned TV watching during school nights when I was in high school.
"
The issue with your proposal in the second paragraph is how would emergency responders tell whether someone was wearing their seatbelt or not. Sometimes seatbelts and airbags fail. Also the accident still needs to be cleared whether people were wearing seatbelts or not. If a person needs to be pried from his or her car, they might as well be taken to the hospital and treated. I think your ideal would just create a cottage industry for lawyers arguing whether someone was wearing a seat belt or not. I am not sure whether this is your intended effect but thanks for the work. ;)
Honestly, this is one area where conservatives and liberals tend to disagree on freedom(TM) and the conservative argument just causes me to scratch my head in confusion. I have seen many right-leaning folks (not accusing you) of saying that they wear seatbelts and require their passengers to do the same. However, it seems to cause them temper tantrums that wearing a seat belt or a helmet is the law. They get table-banging, blood-pressure popping angry at the idea and think it is a great tyranny. I just look at them confused. This is what makes them angry? Especially because many of these people are against Same-Sex Marriage and support DOMA. DOMA is an actual and serious abridgment of freedom. People are strange I suppose.
"
Though for copyright, starting a suit can show other potential infringers that you are willing to litigate and that can have a silencing effect on people.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.