Grounds for hope maybe? And will we see the same shift in this country? from the New York Times: The Way We Live Now: Beyond the Pleasure Principle By ANN HULBERT Published: March 11, 2007
It is a point of pride among baby boomers that after our kids leave home, we enjoy a continuing closeness with them that our parents rarely had with us. We certainly do keep in touch: 80 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds had talked to their parents in the past day, according to "A Portrait of Generation Next," a recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center in tandem with MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. Yet if the survey is any guide, Gen Nexters aren't getting the credit they deserve for being as many of them told pollsters they felt they were "unique and distinct." It is not easy carving out your niche in the shadow of parents who still can't get over what an exceptional generation they belong to. So what is special about Gen Nexters? Don't count on them to capture their own quintessence. "The words and phrases they used varied widely," the Pew researchers noted, "ranging from `lazy' to `crazy' to `fun.' " But if you look closely, what makes Gen Nexters sui generis and perhaps more mysterious than their elders appreciate are their views on two divisive social topics, abortion and gay marriage. On the by-now-familiar red-and-blue map of the culture wars, positions on those issues are presumed to go hand in hand: those on the right oppose both as evidence of a promiscuous society and those on the left embrace them as rights that guarantee privacy and dignity. Yet as a group, Gen Nexters seem to challenge the package deals. Young Americans, it turns out, are unexpectedly conservative on abortion but notably liberal on gay marriage. Given that 18- to 25- year-olds are the least Republican generation (35 percent) and less religious than their elders (with 20 percent of them professing no religion or atheism or agnosticism), it is curious that on abortion they are slightly to the right of the general public. Roughly a third of Gen Nexters endorse making abortion generally available, half support limits and 15 percent favor an outright ban. By contrast, 35 percent of 50- to 64-year-olds support readily available abortions. On gay marriage, there was not much of a generation gap in the 1980s, but now Gen Nexters stand out as more favorably disposed than the rest of the country. Almost half of them approve, compared with under a third of those over 25. It could simply be, of course, that some young people are pro-gay marriage and others are pro-life and that we can expect more of the same old polarized culture warfare ahead of us. But what if Gen Nexters, rather than being so, well, lazy, are forging their own new crossover path? When I contacted John Green, an expert on religious voters who is currently working at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, he said that pollsters hadn't tackled that question. But after crunching some numbers, he suggested that there might indeed be a middle way in the making. Many individual Gen Nexters hold what seem like divergent views on homosexuality and government involvement with morality either liberal on one while being conservative on the other or else confirmed in their views on one question while ambivalent on the other. Oh, how these young people can confound us! All this could amount to no more than what the experts call a "life-cycle effect": Gen Nexters may hold heterogeneous views now because they are exploring diverse values that may congeal in more conventional ways as they get older. But a more intriguing possibility is that it is a "cohort effect," a distinctive orientation that will stick with them. Liberals could take heart that perhaps homosexual marriage has replaced abortion as the new "equality issue" for Gen Nexters, suggested John Russonello, a Washington pollster whose firm is especially interested in social values; Gen Nexters may have grown up after the back-alley abortion era, but they haven't become complacent about sexual rights. Conservatives might take comfort from a different hypothesis that Green tried out: maybe Gen Nexters have been listening to their parents' lectures about responsibility. Don't do things that make you have an abortion, young people may have concluded, and do welcome everyone into the social bulwark of family responsibility. Put the two perspectives together, and an ethos emerges that looks at once refreshingly pragmatic and yet still idealistic. On one level, Gen Nexters sound impatient with a strident stalemate between entrenched judgments of behavior; after all, experience tells them that in the case of both abortion and gay rights, life is complicated and intransigence has only impeded useful social and political compromises. At the same time, Gen Nexters give every indication of being attentive to the moral issues at stake: they aren't willing to ignore what is troubling about abortion and what is equally troubling about intolerant exclusion. A hardheadedness, but also a high- mindedness and softheartedness, seems to be at work. And to risk what might be truly wishful thinking, maybe there are signs here that Gen Nexters are primed to do in the years ahead what their elders have so signally failed to manage: actually think beyond their own welfare to worry about of all things the next generation. For when you stop to consider it, at the core of Gen Nexters' seemingly discordant views on these hot-button issues could be an insistence on giving priority to children's interests. Take seriously the lives you could be creating: the Gen Next wariness of abortion sends that message. Don't rule out for any kid who is born the advantage of being reared by two legally wedded parents: that is at least one way to read the endorsement of gay marriage. However you end up sorting out the data, fun or crazy wouldn't be how I would describe the Gen Next mix. Judged against the boomers' own past or present, though, the outlook definitely looks unique. Ann Hulbert, a contributing writer, is the author of "Raising America."
