The Complicated Fulfillment Question

What makes adulthood "worth it?"

If you spend some time chronically online in the esoteric corners of the Interwebs, you may have seen Brad Wilcox. He is a professor dude at University of Virginia, where he runs some center for marriage and family. Now he has a book, with the basic premise that people should get married because it’s more indicative of a stable society, and he’s making the rounds promoting it and fighting with anti-marriage people and chatting with Savannah Guthrie and all the stuff you do when you have a book that a few people might care to read. He covers a lot of aspects of marriage and relationships, including various cross-sections of research.

Well, the image associated with this post is from Pew Research and not from Wilcox, although I believe Wilcox has discussed it in some of his media hits. The basic idea is that young people think the path to life fulfillment is a job, not marriage or kids. Moral Panic Time! There’s a few things that need to be unpacked here, though.

Achievement vs. Fulfillment