loan drones

[dragonlady7]

Has anyone else made this connection?
Crippling student loan debt contributes to late transition to adulthood in middle-class American twentysomethings.
I'm nothing like the example in the article-- a young man with over $200k in student loans, his fiancee with $80k-- but I, too, feel that I am not really an adult, that being married and having kids isn't really a realistic option, because I haven't paid off my student loans yet.
I'm doing well-- I think my debt is in the neighborhood of $10k by this point. I've been working hard to pay it down since I got my first job in '03, though I had to defer payments for a year while unemployed. But then, I've had cheap rent, and have not owned a car. Ever.

Z's worse-- he's still over $20k, I think.

Neither of us have more than a bachelor's. I shudder to think what a PhD would set me back.

Has anyone else studied whether this correlates to the American trend of marrying later, buying homes later, having children later or not at all, etc.?

Comments

[soulofbuffalo.livejournal.com]

There's no question in my mind that student loans contribute to people putting off starting families, buying houses, etc. Other contributors: materialism (I lived in a trailer until I was two and a half and turned out fine, but my friends now think they need a nice house, nice furniture and everything to put kids in. Oh and also when they buy a house they go way into debt to fix and furnish it perfectly right away. You should have seen our nasty wallpaper that clashed with the plaid couches before my parents got the money together to remodel!), and also, just maybe, having more choices. More women are going to graduate school. More people are deciding not to have kids at all, or to just adopt. More people are openly gay. All of that means less people getting married at 24, pregnant at 26, three+ kids by early 30s, check check check cause that's just what you do. I'd like to think it's some mixture of debt, immaturity and non conformity.

[jennnlee.livejournal.com]

I like the points you've brought up. Especially the conforming one, which I really agree with.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

You're right about the feeling like it's more important to Have Things-- when my parents moved into their first house, Katy was barely a year old, I was on the way, and they had no hot water, and it was March. They also had no floors, so Katy never learned to crawl-- she went from using a walker straight to actually walking. (Mom worried for a solid two decades that this had somehow impacted her development in some insidious way that would show up later in life.)
I believe I was 13 when I helped Dad put in the hardwood floor that has replaced the cracked linoleum I spent my childhood on.

Does that make younger folks more conformist, or less, that they're waiting until they Have Things before they reproduce?

The other factor is, of course, all my married friends shrugging when I ask if marriage is worth it. "It's a good party," they say. Then they think about it. "But yeah, it's ten grand you could've spent on something else."
Marriage doesn't really mean much nowadays. It just doesn't. People get married to get divorced. I'd get married for the legal aspects that make it easier to have kids, except that getting married is so expensive now that I'd feel I couldn't afford kids if I did. Ha.

Eh, I'm obviously just having a gloomy stressy holiday season. :p

[soulofbuffalo.livejournal.com]

I don't have a strong opinion on marriage, but, for the record, it's "wedding" that costs ten grand. You can get married at City Hall for a whole lot less if it's just the legality you're after.