The Gen Z Romance Recession

**Brian Lehrer** (0:10)
Brian Lehrer on WNYC, what people are calling a romance slump among Gen Z. From 1980 to 2022, the share of 25 to 34-year-olds who are married or living with a partner dropped by almost 10 percentage points among college graduates, and more than 20 points among people without a college degree. And it's not necessarily because people don't want relationships. A majority of single young adults say they do want a long-term partner.
But why are fewer people finding one? There are lots of possible contributing factors, dating apps, changing gender expectations, economic instability, the decline of some of the places where people used to meet and build community. Our guest is Faith Hill, a staff writer at The Atlantic, who recently took a deep dive into what she calls the great romance slump. Hi Faith, welcome back to WNYC.

**Faith Hill** (1:03)
Hi, thanks so much for having me.

**Brian Lehrer** (1:05)
And listeners, I want to open up the phones and I'll text it right away on this. Are you seeing a change in how people your age approach dating and relationships compared to maybe your older siblings or your parents?
212-433-WNYC, if you're single, do you want to be in a relationship or are you happy with your life as it is without one? And if you do want to be in a relationship, how do you meet people and what are your non-negotiables? And for parents of Gen Z and younger millennials who are also in this boat, how does your children's approach to romance compare with your own? And do you think that they're happy? And what do you think they need? 212433 WNYC, 212433 9692 call or text. Faith, I gave some of the stats at the beginning, but how else basically would you characterize the romance slump?

**Faith Hill** (2:06)
Yeah. So of course, romance is a very broad umbrella term. But all these different kinds of forms of romance seem to be on the decline around the same time. So a shrinking share of young adults have a steady partner.
In 2019, 42% of single adults younger than 40 told Pew Research Center that they'd never been in a committed relationship. And a lot of single people say in surveys that they rarely or never go on dates. People are having less sex too. So there's a lot of different kinds of signals of something happening.

**Brian Lehrer** (2:43)
How much of this would you attribute to changing gender roles over time? Like even I saw one article, I think that was in response to the same trend that said, why are fewer women getting married? Because they don't have to.

**Faith Hill** (3:01)
Right. I think it's part of the story, you know, not the whole story. I talked to lots of people for this article. You know, some straight, some queer.
And a lot of people were frustrated with dating. But I did find that talking to people who were, you know, looking for a straight partnership, there was this kind of simmering gender resentment.
You know, a lot of men were kind of feeling inadequate and a little bit resentful about that. Like the standards have kind of changed in a way that I think can be confusing for men. It used to be just that, you know, men were expected to be breadwinners, but now fewer men are earning college degrees. The economy has moved away from stable blue collar jobs. You know, everything is expensive. It's just very difficult for men to support a partner or a family on their own. But the new standards can also feel out of reach. I think a lot of women are really looking for communication and sensitivity and openness and these skills that a lot of boys are not taught from a young age. And sometimes all of those expectations can kind of exist at once. So I talked to a lot of men who feel like they're trying to do all of that. And you know, at the same time, I think a lot of women are feeling really fed up. They've had bad experiences. And a lot of them also just know kind of the broader context that they're living and dating in. You know, they know that women tend to do much more of the domestic labor in a partnership, even when they're the breadwinner. So they're sort of thinking realistically about whether they'll find a man who supports them, who would do an equal share of childcare if they had a kid together.

**Brian Lehrer** (4:50)
And so you've just given a really good description of why both parties, meaning men and women, might be wary in terms of heterosexual relationships. What about in queer relationships?