Don Martin

We are seeing other alternatives for formal education, for advanced education and for what that

degree looks like after the fact that doesn't necessarily have much to do with loneliness that has to do with a lot of other factors like finance and government and just what jobs are available like a lot of times we put a lot of weight on unemployment reports but we don't put as much spotlight on like we say oh only five percent of the population is unemployed and yay that's a win

but we aren't actually deep diving into, okay, so the people that are employed, what does that employment mean?

Is everybody working a full-time job?

No.

In fact, quite a large percent of the population are working multiple part-time jobs or multiple jobs without benefits or something like that.

So there's a bigger, more nuanced conversation there.

As far as pastors saying that men aren't fulfilling a role, that starts getting into religion and that starts getting outside of the scope of social science and more into the scope of

what any one religion at any one time says that a person's role in society is or should be.

We do know, just bringing it back to data real quick, we do know that everybody is getting married later in life for a lot of reasons.

It's very expensive to buy a house.

It's very expensive to plan, generally speaking.

The average age to get married when you were my parents' age or my grandparents' age was maybe in your late teens, early 20s.

And now it's in your late 20s, early 30s.

And that number is only going to either peter out or go up because everything is incredibly expensive.

And people are also prioritizing other things.

People are realizing that you don't have to be married to live a fulfilling life anymore.

People have more agency than they used to.

People have more job prospect than they used to.

People have more freedom than they used to.