About three quarters of America’s youngest adults believe they can lead fulfilling lives without children — the highest share of any generation on record.
That staggering statistic comes from Barna’s newly minted study on adults in Generation Z, those born between 1999 and 2015. The survey, “The State of Today’s Family,” reveals they are delaying marriages because of economic concerns and emotional stressors.
“Young adults today report high levels of anxiety, uncertainty, and emotional complexity in their daily lives — factors that may shape how they approach long-term decisions like marriage,” researchers noted. “Rising costs of housing, education, and daily life likely add to that calculus, making the timing of marriage feel consequential in a way it may not have for earlier generations.”
The group questioned more than 3,500 adults in August 2024 and found that 74% of Gen Z respondents said they can have fulfilling lives without kids and just 67% said marriage is critical for raising children in a stable environment, marking the lowest percentage among any surveyed generation.
According to the just-released data, many young adults in the U.S. are rethinking the philosophy of previous generations, which seemed to value entering into marriages at young ages. Instead, Gen Z adults are placing greater priority on emotional readiness, financial stability, and certainty of long-term relational viability before stepping into marriage.
While Pastor Mike Novotny, author of the new book, “Newlywed: A Christian Guide for Loving Year One,” made clear marriage isn’t a requirement for a thriving spiritual life — noting Jesus Himself wasn’t married — he does challenge the thinking of young adults delaying marriage.
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“I worship a guy who was single for all of His life, so I want to be really careful not to paint a picture you have to get married and you have to get married young,” he told CBN News. “Jesus didn’t.”
Novotny also referenced the Apostle Paul, who called his own singleness a gift allowing him to focus more intently on the work of spreading the Gospel.
The pastor then said, though, that delaying marriage to establish oneself is not inherently better than the alternative of “the opportunity to grow together.”
“I got married when I was 22,” he said. “[My wife] Kim had just turned 22. And the fact that we could be young together, get our first home together, learn how to do chores together, learn how to make a budget together — I think it would be harder to like have our own independent lives and then try to have to compromise on a thousand things, because we both have the way that we do [those things].”
Novotny went on to say, “Marriage is one of God’s best earthly gifts. It shows up on the first pages of the Bible, even in the Garden of Eden. So don’t let the culture tell you that it’s some lesser thing and that a thriving career or making money or having a bigger — like that stuff is good, but, in my experience, marriage is great and it deserves to be a priority on our list.”
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