Does Gen Z still want to get married? | The Generation Z Shift: Conversations

Description

These audio examine how Gen Z is redefining marriage by shifting it from a mandatory social requirement to a deliberate personal choice. Although young Europeans are delaying marriage due to financial instability and longer education periods, research indicates that the desire for the institution remains high. The data highlights a disconnect between emotional commitment and institutional formalization, as cohabitation and parenthood frequently occur before or without legal marriage. Consequently, marriage is no longer seen as the primary marker of adulthood or relationship legitimacy. Instead, it has become an intentional milestone that young adults value for its symbolic meaning rather than its previous status as a social obligation. Ultimately, the text suggests that Gen Z is not rejecting commitment but is negotiating new meanings for traditional life transitions.

The Gen Z Shift: European leadership decoded

An essential audio series by Benoît Vancauwenberghe, founder of 20Something, realized by an AI podcast by NotebookKLM. This is the indispensable resource for HR Leaders and Managers across Europe. We cut through the noise, providing actionable insights on how Gen Z is fundamentally reshaping leadership, work, and talent strategy. Packed with cutting-edge research and consulting experience.

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Transcription

Speaker #0
Welcome to the Gen Z Shift. This weekly podcast decodes Generation Z and Generation Alpha for leaders, brands, and changemakers. Based on the research and articles of Benoit van Kallenberg, a European expert on Generation Z, Generation Alpha, and brand culture, each episode helps you understand the generations reshaping how we work, consume, connect, and live. Because the future isn't coming. It's already here.
Speaker #1
It really is already here, you know. And it requires a pretty fundamental shift in how we interpret. All those signals younger generations are sending us.
Speaker #0
Yeah, and that is exactly the core of our mission today. We are exploring a super fascinating piece of research from Benoit van Kouwenberger's 20-something series.
Speaker #1
Which is such a great series for understanding these shifts.
Speaker #0
Totally. So our focus for this custom deep dive is to understand exactly how Gen Z views adulthood, specifically through the lens of a very traditional institution, marriage.
Speaker #1
Ah, yes. The ultimate classic milestone.
Speaker #0
Right. We really want to decode whether these milestones still carry the same meaning for young people today or if if the entire framework of growing up has just completely changed.
Speaker #1
Which is an essential analysis for anyone listening, right? Whether you manage young teams or you design products for this demographic or even if you just want to understand the shifting culture.
Speaker #0
Oh, absolutely.
Speaker #1
Because the assumptions we carry into those interactions are often just completely outdated.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Think about the assumptions we're fed when we think about growing up. Society essentially hands us this vintage, heavily programmed GPS device.
Speaker #1
I love that analogy. A societal GPS.
Speaker #0
Right. And it has exactly one route hardwired into it. You finish your education. You get a stable job. You move out of your parents' house, find a partner, get married, buy a house, and have children.
Speaker #1
Yep, the classic script.
Speaker #0
Exactly. And it demands that you hit those waypoints in that exact rigid order.
Speaker #1
And if you attempt to deviate from that sequence, or even if you just take too long on one segment of the journey, that societal GPS immediately starts flashing warning signs at you.
Speaker #0
Recalibrating. Recalibrating.
Speaker #1
Exactly. It expects you to get back on the sanctioned road because historically that sequence was basically the only universally recognized way to prove you were actually an adult.
Speaker #0
But when you look at Generation Z today, it feels like they've just tossed that GPS out the window. I mean, we are bum- with these sensational apocalyptic headlines.
Speaker #1
Oh, constantly. You see them everywhere.
Speaker #0
On every major news outlet, commentators claiming that, you know, marriage is dying out, that young people simply refuse to grow up, or that this generation has completely abandoned the whole concept of commitment.
Speaker #1
Right. But the paradox here is that the actual demographic data tells a radically different story.
Speaker #0
Okay, let's unpack this. Because the narrative assumes that since they aren't walking down the aisle at 24, they must just hate the institution, right?
Speaker #1
Yeah, we tend to conflate a delay in a behavior with a complete rejection of it. We really have to start by dismantling that initial massive assumption, the idea that Gen Z simply doesn't want to get married.
Speaker #0
Because when researchers actually ask them what they want, the picture completely flips. There's this massive 2025 study that pulled representative data from 33 different European countries.
Speaker #1
33? Wow, that's a huge sample.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's huge. And the researchers specifically focused on how 18 to 34-year-olds imagine their ideal major life transitions. Leaving home, cohabitation, marriage, parenthood.
Speaker #1
And what did they find?
Speaker #0
Well, across all those countries, young Europeans still broadly consider it the absolute ideal to cohabit, get married, and have kids during their
Speaker #1
20s. What's fascinating here is that operative word, ideal. Their internal compass is still firmly pointing toward that traditional milestone.
Speaker #0
Right. But the friction happens when that ideal timeline collides with modern economic and structural realities. It makes me think of wanting to buy your first home.
Speaker #1
Oh, that's a great comparison.
Speaker #0
Like, just because the crushing realities of the modern housing market force you to save up for a decade longer than your parents did, that doesn't mean your fundamental desire to own a home has vanished. The desire is totally intact. The timeline simply got stretched by forces way outside of your control.
Speaker #1
That analogy perfectly captures the difference between observing a surface-level behavior and actually understanding the underlying intention.
Speaker #0
Yeah, because if you're just looking at the surface.
Speaker #1
Right. If you were a brand strategist or an HR leader looking only at the behavior, you see fewer 25-year-olds married today than 30 years ago.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
So you might mistakenly conclude that marriage is losing its cultural relevance entirely.
Speaker #0
And then you make all the wrong moves. You stop marketing to young couples or... You change how you structure family benefits.
Speaker #1
Exactly. But behavior is always constrained by what is actually feasible in the moment.
Speaker #0
Because the landscape they are navigating to reach that milestone is fundamentally hostile compared to what previous generations dealt with.
Speaker #1
Oh, incredibly hostile. Consider the structural hurdles today. Housing costs consume a massively disproportionate percentage of young incomes.
Speaker #0
Oh, yeah. The rent is astronomical everywhere.
Speaker #1
Right. And to remain competitive in a knowledge economy, people are staying in the education system much longer. That delays their entry into the full-time workforce.
Speaker #0
Plus, work environments themselves offer far less long-term financial security now. It's all contract work or the gig economy.
Speaker #1
Exactly. So building the financial foundation that society traditionally demands before marriage, it simply takes much longer. The road to the milestone is just way steeper, but the milestone itself hasn't lost its appeal.
Speaker #0
And we actually have the hard demographic evidence to back that up. The Eurostat data, the statistical office of the European Union. validates that exact structural delay.
Speaker #1
Oh, the long-term study, right.
Speaker #0
Yeah, they track data over a 20-year period from 2004 to 2024. And over those two decades, the mean age at first marriage increased in every single one of the 20 EU countries where they had comparable data.
Speaker #1
A continent-wide shift in the timeline. It's wild. It's happening regardless of local cultural differences.
Speaker #0
A profound shift. By 2024, if you look at countries like Spain and Sweden, the delay is incredibly stark. Women were getting married for the first time at an average age of 35.2.
Speaker #1
Wow.
Speaker #0
And for Swedish men, the average age was 37.4.
Speaker #1
That is significantly later than previous decades.
Speaker #0
Yeah, there is some regional variance, obviously. Like, Romania sits at the younger end of the spectrum, with women averaging 28.4 and men at 31.5. But the overarching undeniable trend across the board is a severe delay.
Speaker #1
But this brings up a really crucial point. If the average age is pushing well into the mid-30s in many major economies, we need to ask what happens to a society during that gap.
Speaker #0
Right. Because if people still desire the milestone but the road takes 15 years longer to travel, how are they navigating relationships in the interim?
Speaker #1
Yeah. What are they actually doing for those 15 years?
Speaker #0
Oh, wait. That's exactly the pushback you hear, right? If they are delaying marriage into their mid-30s, are they just casually dating or hooking up for a decade and a half? How does a relationship become, you know, serious without the paperwork?
Speaker #1
That assumption brings us to some incredibly revealing data out of France, and it completely shatters the idea that young people have abandoned committed relationships.
Speaker #0
Tell me about this French study.
Speaker #1
This comes from the INDD Envy Study, conducted by the French Institute for Demographic Studies. They looked at a massive sample size of over 10,000 French youth between the ages of 18 and 29.
Speaker #0
Oh, wow. So they are looking directly at that gap period. Those crucial years where previous generations were heavily married, but this generation is mostly waiting.
Speaker #1
Exactly. And they found that 66% of these young adults had been in a couple during the previous 12 months.
Speaker #0
Two-thirds of them.
Speaker #1
Two-thirds. While hookup culture and casual relationships certainly exist, the data shows that the traditional monogamous couple remains the dominant form of intimate relationship for this generation. They are absolutely forming serious bonds.
Speaker #0
But the architecture of those bonds is entirely different, isn't it?
Speaker #1
Completely different. It is entirely deinstitutionalized. Among those young adults who were in a couple, fewer than one-third had even lived together. And when we look at legal bindings, it gets even lower. Only 9% were in a PACES. That's the French Civil Solidarity Pact, basically a civil union. And a mere 7% were actually married.
Speaker #0
So you have 66% in a relationship, but only 7% utilizing the traditional legal mechanism of marriage. That is a massive disconnect.
Speaker #1
It really is. But here is the statistic that bridges that disconnect. Despite the near total lack of legal or institutional binding, 77% of those young people describe themselves as being very much in love with their partner.
Speaker #0
Wait, really? 77%?
Speaker #1
Yeah. And another 17% stated they were quite in love.
Speaker #0
So you have over 90% of coupled young adults expressing deep, profound emotional commitment, while only 7% have a marriage certificate.
Speaker #1
If we connect this to the bigger picture. It tells us that for Gen Z, the emotional contract is completely divorced from the government contract.
Speaker #0
Oh, that's a great way to put it.
Speaker #1
So this generation, emotional commitment arrives years, sometimes decades, before institutional commitment. They just do not require an external legal validation to prove to themselves or to their community that their relationship is real and serious.
Speaker #0
That fundamentally changes how leaders and organizations need to view the young adults they interact with. Like if you're an HR director, you might have an employee who's. Relationship is practically a marriage in every emotional and logistical sense, but they don't have the certificate you traditionally require for spousal benefits.
Speaker #1
Exactly. The policies don't match the reality.
Speaker #0
Or if you're a brand marketing a product to young families, you have to recognize that the modern family unit might not have matching last names or an official wedding anniversary, but they possess the exact same purchasing power and collective decision making as a married couple from 1995.
Speaker #1
you really have to respect the internal validity of their choices. Because marriage has lost its monopoly on commitment, it is no longer the sole gatekeeper to being taken seriously as a couple.
Speaker #0
Here's where it gets really interesting, though. If marriage has lost that monopoly, we have to look at its primary modern alternative. Over the last few decades, living together cohabitation has become completely mainstream.
Speaker #1
Oh, absolutely. It's the norm now.
Speaker #0
So it seems logical to assume that if you can live together, share expenses, and be deeply committed without marrying, then cohabitation would just simply kill the need for marriage altogether.
Speaker #1
It is a very common logical leap. People observe the rising social acceptance of cohabitation and interpret it as undeniable evidence that marriage is on a terminal decline.
Speaker #0
They see them as rivals.
Speaker #1
Yes, exactly. They view the two institutions as bitter rivals in a zero-sum game where the success of one necessitates the destruction of the other. But when researchers actually measure these attitudes concurrently, A much more nuanced dynamic emerges.
Speaker #0
Yeah, I was looking at a 2025 study that tackled this exact presumed rivalry. They analyzed data from over 48,000 people.
Speaker #1
48,000, that's huge. Yeah,
Speaker #0
massive. And it spanned across five diverse European countries, Austria, Czechia, Estonia, Germany, and Norway.
Speaker #1
Nice cross-section.
Speaker #0
Right. And they tracked attitudes across two distinct time periods. Comparing data from 2004 to 2009 with more recent data from 2020 to 2023. If the rivalry theory held true, you would expect marriage to be viewed as increasingly obsolete as time went on, right?
Speaker #1
Because cohabitation became more common.
Speaker #0
Exactly. But they did not find a universal sweeping movement away from marriage. In fact, in countries like Czechia and Estonia, the data showed people actually became less likely to consider marriage outdated in recent years.
Speaker #1
Less likely. That's incredible. So while their acceptance of cohabitation remained incredibly high or even increased, they essentially separated the two ideas in their minds.
Speaker #0
Yes. They decoupled them entirely.
Speaker #1
Because cohabitation and marriage no longer compete. They serve different psychological functions now.
Speaker #0
How so?
Speaker #1
Well, a young person today can fundamentally believe that living together without marrying is completely legitimate for society while simultaneously holding a deep personal desire to eventually marry.
Speaker #0
Oh, I see.
Speaker #1
You might choose to cohabit for eight years before proposing. or you might decide that marriage adds no tangible value to your specific dynamic and bypass it entirely.
Speaker #0
It shifts from a binary either requirement to a yes and menu of options.
Speaker #1
The defining characteristic of this generational shift is the presence of choice. There was a smaller 2025 study focused on 462 Gen Z university students in Poland that perfectly illustrates this menu concept.
Speaker #0
What did the Polish study find?
Speaker #1
Well, while local cultural and religious context obviously influence the specific percentages, the overarching psychological pattern is highly instructive. The Polish students broadly accepted every single relationship model presented to them.
Speaker #0
So they were open to everything.
Speaker #1
Yes. They viewed remaining single as a valid life path. They viewed long-term cohabitation as valid. But despite accepting all those alternatives, marriage still emerged as their absolute preferred relationship model.
Speaker #0
So accepting an alternative does not automatically mean rejecting the traditional ideal.
Speaker #1
Exactly. In previous generations, that societal GPS offered a set menu. You took the marriage road or you were heavily stigmatized. Gen Z has built an a la carte menu. Right. They respect all the choices, which ironically allows them to value marriage, not because they're forced into it, but because they can actively select it from among other equally valid options.
Speaker #0
So what does this all mean? If you don't need marriage to validate your emotional commitment and you don't need it to justify living together with a partner, what purpose does the institution actually serve today?
Speaker #1
To answer that, we really have to examine the final, heavily guarded milestone of the traditional adult script, parenthood.
Speaker #0
Historically, marriage was the strict, non-negotiable prerequisite for having children. It was the institutional gateway to building a family.
Speaker #1
It was the only acceptable gateway.
Speaker #0
But the Eurostat data reveals just how thoroughly that gateway has been dismantled. The numbers on this are just staggering. In 2024, 41% of all births across the European Union occurred outside of marriage.
Speaker #1
41%, almost half.
Speaker #0
And that is just the average. In countries like France, Bulgaria, and Portugal, the share of births outside of marriage was approaching or even exceeding 60%.
Speaker #1
60%. This raises an important question because the magnitude of that cultural shift really cannot be overstated. Marriage is no longer a requirement to reach the most monumental traditional milestone of adult life.
Speaker #0
Right.
Speaker #1
You don't need a marriage certificate to legitimize intimacy. You don't need it to cohabit. You don't need it to prove your maturity. And you don't even need it to legitimize parenthood.
Speaker #0
The obligation has been entirely removed from the equation. It's completely optional.
Speaker #1
And this transition from a default obligation to a completely free choice. creates a profound psychological paradox.
Speaker #0
Okay, I'm listening.
Speaker #1
When a milestone sits inside that rigid societal GPS route, you often execute it simply because it's the next prescribed step. You get married because you want a house or because you want kids, and society tells you marriage is the toll booth you have to pass through to get those things.
Speaker #0
You do it because it's the default setting. It's just what you do.
Speaker #1
But when that sequence is broken, and marriage is no longer the toll booth to anything else, the decision to marry becomes infinitely more intentional. Losing its obligatory character doesn't render marriage meaningless. It actually concentrates its meaning.
Speaker #0
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker #1
If you do not have to marry to be taken seriously or to live with your partner or to have a family, then the act of standing in front of your community and declaring, I want to do this, is a massive, deliberate assertion of personal agency.
Speaker #0
That changes the entire framing of the wedding itself. It's no longer the starting line of adult life. It's a... conscious celebration of a bond that has already been proven over years of shared reality.
Speaker #1
Exactly. It moves from being a prerequisite to being a deeply personal decision.
Speaker #0
There is a trap here, though, for anyone analyzing this data. When some commentators see statistics showing that Gen Z still values and desires marriage, they immediately declare a conservative backlash.
Speaker #1
Oh, yes. The return to tradition narrative.
Speaker #0
Right. I read a recent British survey reported by The Times that perfectly sets up this trap. It surveyed 18 to 27-year-olds and found that nearly two-thirds considered marriage to be important, while only one in five considered it irrelevant.
Speaker #1
And people immediately jumped to conclusions with that.
Speaker #0
They really do. The research also noted this generation reports having less casual sex than young adults from two decades ago.
Speaker #1
It is incredibly easy to look at those data points through a traditional lens and conclude that Gen Z is retreating to the values of the 1950s. But that is a dangerous misinterpretation of the signals.
Speaker #0
Because valuing the structure of the institution does not mean accepting the historical baggage that came with it.
Speaker #1
Exactly. Stating that marriage is an important ideal does not equate to a desire for traditional gender roles. It doesn't mean a return to the rigid division of labor where one partner is the sole breadwinner and the other manages the domestic sphere.
Speaker #0
Right. They aren't striving for the relationship model of their grandparents. No,
Speaker #1
not at all.
Speaker #0
It's kind of like inheriting an old historic house. They love the architectural bones, they love the facade, but they intend to completely gut the interior and modernize the floor plan to suit how they actually live today.
Speaker #1
That's the perfect way to look at it. Yeah. Want to keep the institution, but they demand the right to entirely renegotiate the internal contract. Gen Z values marriage, but they fundamentally reject the premise that everyone needs it to live a fulfilling life.
Speaker #0
So we circle back to the central question of this deep dive. Does Generation Z still want to get married?
Speaker #1
The demographic data and the psychological research strongly indicate that yes, they do. But that yes comes with a massive culture-shifting caveat.
Speaker #0
Which is?
Speaker #1
Marriage has been permanently stripped of its monopoly on commitment and adulthood. For Gen Z, staying single is a complete and valid identity. Long-term cohabitation is a destination, not just a waiting room. Raising children outside a wedlock is a normal, accepted family structure. They aren't postponing adulthood. They're simply separating the reality of being an adult from the historical symbols that used to govern it. Exactly.
Speaker #0
They don't need the vintage car to prove they're financially stable. And they don't need a marriage certificate to prove their relationship is profound and enduring.
Speaker #1
By removing the societal pressure to use marriage as a proof of concept, the institution becomes deeply, intensely personal. It asks young people to look inward rather than outward.
Speaker #0
So the question shifts.
Speaker #1
Right. It shifts from what does society expect of me to. What do I want this commitment to mean for my specific relationship? They haven't abandoned marriage. They have elevated it from a societal expectation to an active, deliberate choice.
Speaker #0
They have completely taken over the programming of their own GPS. Which brings me to you, listening right now. I want you to consider that old societal map we discussed at the beginning of this deep dive. Look closely at your own life, your career, and the specific milestones you are currently chasing. Are you pursuing those goals because they are expected of you, simply to signal your status and success to the outside world? Or are you actively, intentionally choosing them because of what they genuinely mean to you on the inside? It's a subtle shift in perspective, but it changes absolutely everything about how you navigate your future.
Speaker #1
If you want to explore these generational shifts further, discover Benoit's book, The Gen Z Shift. Why today's leaders keep acting on the wrong signals, available now in English on Amazon and as an audiobook. Thank you for listening, and see you next week for a new topic.

About The Generation Z Shift: Conversations

An audio series extending the ideas behind Benoit Vancauwenberghe’s bestselling book, The Gen Z Shift: Why Today's Leaders Keep Acting on the Wrong Signals

How are Gen Z and Gen Alpha reshaping the way we work, lead, and build organizations?

The Generation Z Shift: Conversations explores the signals, tensions and changes emerging across today’s workplaces. Inspired by Benoit Vancauwenberghe’s work with younger generations, his 20something articles, research, and consulting experience, each episode turns one idea into a short, accessible conversation.

The series looks at questions such as why loyalty is changing, what younger generations expect from leadership, how feedback culture is evolving, why disengagement can be a signal rather than the problem itself, and what organizations need to rethink to stay relevant.

This audio series expands on the world behind The Gen Z Shift. It is not the audiobook, but a complementary series designed to explore the ideas, observations, and generational shifts shaping work, leadership, and culture. Created from Benoit’s original content and produced in an AI-generated conversational format using NotebookLM. Listen, question your assumptions, and learn to read the signals differently.

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

About The Generation Z Shift: Conversations

An audio series extending the ideas behind Benoit Vancauwenberghe’s bestselling book, The Gen Z Shift: Why Today's Leaders Keep Acting on the Wrong Signals

How are Gen Z and Gen Alpha reshaping the way we work, lead, and build organizations?

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Description

The Gen Z Shift: European leadership decoded

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
Welcome to the Gen Z Shift. This weekly podcast decodes Generation Z and Generation Alpha for leaders, brands, and changemakers. Based on the research and articles of Benoit van Kallenberg, a European expert on Generation Z, Generation Alpha, and brand culture, each episode helps you understand the generations reshaping how we work, consume, connect, and live. Because the future isn't coming. It's already here.
Speaker #1
It really is already here, you know. And it requires a pretty fundamental shift in how we interpret. All those signals younger generations are sending us.
Speaker #0
Yeah, and that is exactly the core of our mission today. We are exploring a super fascinating piece of research from Benoit van Kouwenberger's 20-something series.
Speaker #1
Which is such a great series for understanding these shifts.
Speaker #0
Totally. So our focus for this custom deep dive is to understand exactly how Gen Z views adulthood, specifically through the lens of a very traditional institution, marriage.
Speaker #1
Ah, yes. The ultimate classic milestone.
Speaker #0
Right. We really want to decode whether these milestones still carry the same meaning for young people today or if if the entire framework of growing up has just completely changed.
Speaker #1
Which is an essential analysis for anyone listening, right? Whether you manage young teams or you design products for this demographic or even if you just want to understand the shifting culture.
Speaker #0
Oh, absolutely.
Speaker #1
Because the assumptions we carry into those interactions are often just completely outdated.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Think about the assumptions we're fed when we think about growing up. Society essentially hands us this vintage, heavily programmed GPS device.
Speaker #1
I love that analogy. A societal GPS.
Speaker #0
Right. And it has exactly one route hardwired into it. You finish your education. You get a stable job. You move out of your parents' house, find a partner, get married, buy a house, and have children.
Speaker #1
Yep, the classic script.
Speaker #0
Exactly. And it demands that you hit those waypoints in that exact rigid order.
Speaker #1
And if you attempt to deviate from that sequence, or even if you just take too long on one segment of the journey, that societal GPS immediately starts flashing warning signs at you.
Speaker #0
Recalibrating. Recalibrating.
Speaker #1
Exactly. It expects you to get back on the sanctioned road because historically that sequence was basically the only universally recognized way to prove you were actually an adult.
Speaker #0
But when you look at Generation Z today, it feels like they've just tossed that GPS out the window. I mean, we are bum- with these sensational apocalyptic headlines.
Speaker #1
Oh, constantly. You see them everywhere.
Speaker #0
On every major news outlet, commentators claiming that, you know, marriage is dying out, that young people simply refuse to grow up, or that this generation has completely abandoned the whole concept of commitment.
Speaker #1
Right. But the paradox here is that the actual demographic data tells a radically different story.
Speaker #0
Okay, let's unpack this. Because the narrative assumes that since they aren't walking down the aisle at 24, they must just hate the institution, right?
Speaker #1
Yeah, we tend to conflate a delay in a behavior with a complete rejection of it. We really have to start by dismantling that initial massive assumption, the idea that Gen Z simply doesn't want to get married.
Speaker #0
Because when researchers actually ask them what they want, the picture completely flips. There's this massive 2025 study that pulled representative data from 33 different European countries.
Speaker #1
33? Wow, that's a huge sample.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's huge. And the researchers specifically focused on how 18 to 34-year-olds imagine their ideal major life transitions. Leaving home, cohabitation, marriage, parenthood.
Speaker #1
And what did they find?
Speaker #0
Well, across all those countries, young Europeans still broadly consider it the absolute ideal to cohabit, get married, and have kids during their
Speaker #1
20s. What's fascinating here is that operative word, ideal. Their internal compass is still firmly pointing toward that traditional milestone.
Speaker #0
Right. But the friction happens when that ideal timeline collides with modern economic and structural realities. It makes me think of wanting to buy your first home.
Speaker #1
Oh, that's a great comparison.
Speaker #0
Like, just because the crushing realities of the modern housing market force you to save up for a decade longer than your parents did, that doesn't mean your fundamental desire to own a home has vanished. The desire is totally intact. The timeline simply got stretched by forces way outside of your control.
Speaker #1
That analogy perfectly captures the difference between observing a surface-level behavior and actually understanding the underlying intention.
Speaker #0
Yeah, because if you're just looking at the surface.
Speaker #1
Right. If you were a brand strategist or an HR leader looking only at the behavior, you see fewer 25-year-olds married today than 30 years ago.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
So you might mistakenly conclude that marriage is losing its cultural relevance entirely.
Speaker #0
And then you make all the wrong moves. You stop marketing to young couples or... You change how you structure family benefits.
Speaker #1
Exactly. But behavior is always constrained by what is actually feasible in the moment.
Speaker #0
Because the landscape they are navigating to reach that milestone is fundamentally hostile compared to what previous generations dealt with.
Speaker #1
Oh, incredibly hostile. Consider the structural hurdles today. Housing costs consume a massively disproportionate percentage of young incomes.
Speaker #0
Oh, yeah. The rent is astronomical everywhere.
Speaker #1
Right. And to remain competitive in a knowledge economy, people are staying in the education system much longer. That delays their entry into the full-time workforce.
Speaker #0
Plus, work environments themselves offer far less long-term financial security now. It's all contract work or the gig economy.
Speaker #1
Exactly. So building the financial foundation that society traditionally demands before marriage, it simply takes much longer. The road to the milestone is just way steeper, but the milestone itself hasn't lost its appeal.
Speaker #0
And we actually have the hard demographic evidence to back that up. The Eurostat data, the statistical office of the European Union. validates that exact structural delay.
Speaker #1
Oh, the long-term study, right.
Speaker #0
Yeah, they track data over a 20-year period from 2004 to 2024. And over those two decades, the mean age at first marriage increased in every single one of the 20 EU countries where they had comparable data.
Speaker #1
A continent-wide shift in the timeline. It's wild. It's happening regardless of local cultural differences.
Speaker #0
A profound shift. By 2024, if you look at countries like Spain and Sweden, the delay is incredibly stark. Women were getting married for the first time at an average age of 35.2.
Speaker #1
Wow.
Speaker #0
And for Swedish men, the average age was 37.4.
Speaker #1
That is significantly later than previous decades.
Speaker #0
Yeah, there is some regional variance, obviously. Like, Romania sits at the younger end of the spectrum, with women averaging 28.4 and men at 31.5. But the overarching undeniable trend across the board is a severe delay.
Speaker #1
But this brings up a really crucial point. If the average age is pushing well into the mid-30s in many major economies, we need to ask what happens to a society during that gap.
Speaker #0
Right. Because if people still desire the milestone but the road takes 15 years longer to travel, how are they navigating relationships in the interim?
Speaker #1
Yeah. What are they actually doing for those 15 years?
Speaker #0
Oh, wait. That's exactly the pushback you hear, right? If they are delaying marriage into their mid-30s, are they just casually dating or hooking up for a decade and a half? How does a relationship become, you know, serious without the paperwork?
Speaker #1
That assumption brings us to some incredibly revealing data out of France, and it completely shatters the idea that young people have abandoned committed relationships.
Speaker #0
Tell me about this French study.
Speaker #1
This comes from the INDD Envy Study, conducted by the French Institute for Demographic Studies. They looked at a massive sample size of over 10,000 French youth between the ages of 18 and 29.
Speaker #0
Oh, wow. So they are looking directly at that gap period. Those crucial years where previous generations were heavily married, but this generation is mostly waiting.
Speaker #1
Exactly. And they found that 66% of these young adults had been in a couple during the previous 12 months.
Speaker #0
Two-thirds of them.
Speaker #1
Two-thirds. While hookup culture and casual relationships certainly exist, the data shows that the traditional monogamous couple remains the dominant form of intimate relationship for this generation. They are absolutely forming serious bonds.
Speaker #0
But the architecture of those bonds is entirely different, isn't it?
Speaker #1
Completely different. It is entirely deinstitutionalized. Among those young adults who were in a couple, fewer than one-third had even lived together. And when we look at legal bindings, it gets even lower. Only 9% were in a PACES. That's the French Civil Solidarity Pact, basically a civil union. And a mere 7% were actually married.
Speaker #0
So you have 66% in a relationship, but only 7% utilizing the traditional legal mechanism of marriage. That is a massive disconnect.
Speaker #1
It really is. But here is the statistic that bridges that disconnect. Despite the near total lack of legal or institutional binding, 77% of those young people describe themselves as being very much in love with their partner.
Speaker #0
Wait, really? 77%?
Speaker #1
Yeah. And another 17% stated they were quite in love.
Speaker #0
So you have over 90% of coupled young adults expressing deep, profound emotional commitment, while only 7% have a marriage certificate.
Speaker #1
If we connect this to the bigger picture. It tells us that for Gen Z, the emotional contract is completely divorced from the government contract.
Speaker #0
Oh, that's a great way to put it.
Speaker #1
So this generation, emotional commitment arrives years, sometimes decades, before institutional commitment. They just do not require an external legal validation to prove to themselves or to their community that their relationship is real and serious.
Speaker #0
That fundamentally changes how leaders and organizations need to view the young adults they interact with. Like if you're an HR director, you might have an employee who's. Relationship is practically a marriage in every emotional and logistical sense, but they don't have the certificate you traditionally require for spousal benefits.
Speaker #1
Exactly. The policies don't match the reality.
Speaker #0
Or if you're a brand marketing a product to young families, you have to recognize that the modern family unit might not have matching last names or an official wedding anniversary, but they possess the exact same purchasing power and collective decision making as a married couple from 1995.
Speaker #1
you really have to respect the internal validity of their choices. Because marriage has lost its monopoly on commitment, it is no longer the sole gatekeeper to being taken seriously as a couple.
Speaker #0
Here's where it gets really interesting, though. If marriage has lost that monopoly, we have to look at its primary modern alternative. Over the last few decades, living together cohabitation has become completely mainstream.
Speaker #1
Oh, absolutely. It's the norm now.
Speaker #0
So it seems logical to assume that if you can live together, share expenses, and be deeply committed without marrying, then cohabitation would just simply kill the need for marriage altogether.
Speaker #1
It is a very common logical leap. People observe the rising social acceptance of cohabitation and interpret it as undeniable evidence that marriage is on a terminal decline.
Speaker #0
They see them as rivals.
Speaker #1
Yes, exactly. They view the two institutions as bitter rivals in a zero-sum game where the success of one necessitates the destruction of the other. But when researchers actually measure these attitudes concurrently, A much more nuanced dynamic emerges.
Speaker #0
Yeah, I was looking at a 2025 study that tackled this exact presumed rivalry. They analyzed data from over 48,000 people.
Speaker #1
48,000, that's huge. Yeah,
Speaker #0
massive. And it spanned across five diverse European countries, Austria, Czechia, Estonia, Germany, and Norway.
Speaker #1
Nice cross-section.
Speaker #0
Right. And they tracked attitudes across two distinct time periods. Comparing data from 2004 to 2009 with more recent data from 2020 to 2023. If the rivalry theory held true, you would expect marriage to be viewed as increasingly obsolete as time went on, right?
Speaker #1
Because cohabitation became more common.
Speaker #0
Exactly. But they did not find a universal sweeping movement away from marriage. In fact, in countries like Czechia and Estonia, the data showed people actually became less likely to consider marriage outdated in recent years.
Speaker #1
Less likely. That's incredible. So while their acceptance of cohabitation remained incredibly high or even increased, they essentially separated the two ideas in their minds.
Speaker #0
Yes. They decoupled them entirely.
Speaker #1
Because cohabitation and marriage no longer compete. They serve different psychological functions now.
Speaker #0
How so?
Speaker #1
Well, a young person today can fundamentally believe that living together without marrying is completely legitimate for society while simultaneously holding a deep personal desire to eventually marry.
Speaker #0
Oh, I see.
Speaker #1
You might choose to cohabit for eight years before proposing. or you might decide that marriage adds no tangible value to your specific dynamic and bypass it entirely.
Speaker #0
It shifts from a binary either requirement to a yes and menu of options.
Speaker #1
The defining characteristic of this generational shift is the presence of choice. There was a smaller 2025 study focused on 462 Gen Z university students in Poland that perfectly illustrates this menu concept.
Speaker #0
What did the Polish study find?
Speaker #1
Well, while local cultural and religious context obviously influence the specific percentages, the overarching psychological pattern is highly instructive. The Polish students broadly accepted every single relationship model presented to them.
Speaker #0
So they were open to everything.
Speaker #1
Yes. They viewed remaining single as a valid life path. They viewed long-term cohabitation as valid. But despite accepting all those alternatives, marriage still emerged as their absolute preferred relationship model.
Speaker #0
So accepting an alternative does not automatically mean rejecting the traditional ideal.
Speaker #1
Exactly. In previous generations, that societal GPS offered a set menu. You took the marriage road or you were heavily stigmatized. Gen Z has built an a la carte menu. Right. They respect all the choices, which ironically allows them to value marriage, not because they're forced into it, but because they can actively select it from among other equally valid options.
Speaker #0
So what does this all mean? If you don't need marriage to validate your emotional commitment and you don't need it to justify living together with a partner, what purpose does the institution actually serve today?
Speaker #1
To answer that, we really have to examine the final, heavily guarded milestone of the traditional adult script, parenthood.
Speaker #0
Historically, marriage was the strict, non-negotiable prerequisite for having children. It was the institutional gateway to building a family.
Speaker #1
It was the only acceptable gateway.
Speaker #0
But the Eurostat data reveals just how thoroughly that gateway has been dismantled. The numbers on this are just staggering. In 2024, 41% of all births across the European Union occurred outside of marriage.
Speaker #1
41%, almost half.
Speaker #0
And that is just the average. In countries like France, Bulgaria, and Portugal, the share of births outside of marriage was approaching or even exceeding 60%.
Speaker #1
60%. This raises an important question because the magnitude of that cultural shift really cannot be overstated. Marriage is no longer a requirement to reach the most monumental traditional milestone of adult life.
Speaker #0
Right.
Speaker #1
You don't need a marriage certificate to legitimize intimacy. You don't need it to cohabit. You don't need it to prove your maturity. And you don't even need it to legitimize parenthood.
Speaker #0
The obligation has been entirely removed from the equation. It's completely optional.
Speaker #1
And this transition from a default obligation to a completely free choice. creates a profound psychological paradox.
Speaker #0
Okay, I'm listening.
Speaker #1
When a milestone sits inside that rigid societal GPS route, you often execute it simply because it's the next prescribed step. You get married because you want a house or because you want kids, and society tells you marriage is the toll booth you have to pass through to get those things.
Speaker #0
You do it because it's the default setting. It's just what you do.
Speaker #1
But when that sequence is broken, and marriage is no longer the toll booth to anything else, the decision to marry becomes infinitely more intentional. Losing its obligatory character doesn't render marriage meaningless. It actually concentrates its meaning.
Speaker #0
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker #1
If you do not have to marry to be taken seriously or to live with your partner or to have a family, then the act of standing in front of your community and declaring, I want to do this, is a massive, deliberate assertion of personal agency.
Speaker #0
That changes the entire framing of the wedding itself. It's no longer the starting line of adult life. It's a... conscious celebration of a bond that has already been proven over years of shared reality.
Speaker #1
Exactly. It moves from being a prerequisite to being a deeply personal decision.
Speaker #0
There is a trap here, though, for anyone analyzing this data. When some commentators see statistics showing that Gen Z still values and desires marriage, they immediately declare a conservative backlash.
Speaker #1
Oh, yes. The return to tradition narrative.
Speaker #0
Right. I read a recent British survey reported by The Times that perfectly sets up this trap. It surveyed 18 to 27-year-olds and found that nearly two-thirds considered marriage to be important, while only one in five considered it irrelevant.
Speaker #1
And people immediately jumped to conclusions with that.
Speaker #0
They really do. The research also noted this generation reports having less casual sex than young adults from two decades ago.
Speaker #1
It is incredibly easy to look at those data points through a traditional lens and conclude that Gen Z is retreating to the values of the 1950s. But that is a dangerous misinterpretation of the signals.
Speaker #0
Because valuing the structure of the institution does not mean accepting the historical baggage that came with it.
Speaker #1
Exactly. Stating that marriage is an important ideal does not equate to a desire for traditional gender roles. It doesn't mean a return to the rigid division of labor where one partner is the sole breadwinner and the other manages the domestic sphere.
Speaker #0
Right. They aren't striving for the relationship model of their grandparents. No,
Speaker #1
not at all.
Speaker #0
It's kind of like inheriting an old historic house. They love the architectural bones, they love the facade, but they intend to completely gut the interior and modernize the floor plan to suit how they actually live today.
Speaker #1
That's the perfect way to look at it. Yeah. Want to keep the institution, but they demand the right to entirely renegotiate the internal contract. Gen Z values marriage, but they fundamentally reject the premise that everyone needs it to live a fulfilling life.
Speaker #0
So we circle back to the central question of this deep dive. Does Generation Z still want to get married?
Speaker #1
The demographic data and the psychological research strongly indicate that yes, they do. But that yes comes with a massive culture-shifting caveat.
Speaker #0
Which is?
Speaker #1
Marriage has been permanently stripped of its monopoly on commitment and adulthood. For Gen Z, staying single is a complete and valid identity. Long-term cohabitation is a destination, not just a waiting room. Raising children outside a wedlock is a normal, accepted family structure. They aren't postponing adulthood. They're simply separating the reality of being an adult from the historical symbols that used to govern it. Exactly.
Speaker #0
They don't need the vintage car to prove they're financially stable. And they don't need a marriage certificate to prove their relationship is profound and enduring.
Speaker #1
By removing the societal pressure to use marriage as a proof of concept, the institution becomes deeply, intensely personal. It asks young people to look inward rather than outward.
Speaker #0
So the question shifts.
Speaker #1
Right. It shifts from what does society expect of me to. What do I want this commitment to mean for my specific relationship? They haven't abandoned marriage. They have elevated it from a societal expectation to an active, deliberate choice.
Speaker #0
They have completely taken over the programming of their own GPS. Which brings me to you, listening right now. I want you to consider that old societal map we discussed at the beginning of this deep dive. Look closely at your own life, your career, and the specific milestones you are currently chasing. Are you pursuing those goals because they are expected of you, simply to signal your status and success to the outside world? Or are you actively, intentionally choosing them because of what they genuinely mean to you on the inside? It's a subtle shift in perspective, but it changes absolutely everything about how you navigate your future.
Speaker #1
If you want to explore these generational shifts further, discover Benoit's book, The Gen Z Shift. Why today's leaders keep acting on the wrong signals, available now in English on Amazon and as an audiobook. Thank you for listening, and see you next week for a new topic.

About The Generation Z Shift: Conversations

An audio series extending the ideas behind Benoit Vancauwenberghe’s bestselling book, The Gen Z Shift: Why Today's Leaders Keep Acting on the Wrong Signals

How are Gen Z and Gen Alpha reshaping the way we work, lead, and build organizations?

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

About The Generation Z Shift: Conversations

An audio series extending the ideas behind Benoit Vancauwenberghe’s bestselling book, The Gen Z Shift: Why Today's Leaders Keep Acting on the Wrong Signals

How are Gen Z and Gen Alpha reshaping the way we work, lead, and build organizations?

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

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The Gen Z Shift: European leadership decoded

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Transcription

Speaker #0
Welcome to the Gen Z Shift. This weekly podcast decodes Generation Z and Generation Alpha for leaders, brands, and changemakers. Based on the research and articles of Benoit van Kallenberg, a European expert on Generation Z, Generation Alpha, and brand culture, each episode helps you understand the generations reshaping how we work, consume, connect, and live. Because the future isn't coming. It's already here.
Speaker #1
It really is already here, you know. And it requires a pretty fundamental shift in how we interpret. All those signals younger generations are sending us.
Speaker #0
Yeah, and that is exactly the core of our mission today. We are exploring a super fascinating piece of research from Benoit van Kouwenberger's 20-something series.
Speaker #1
Which is such a great series for understanding these shifts.
Speaker #0
Totally. So our focus for this custom deep dive is to understand exactly how Gen Z views adulthood, specifically through the lens of a very traditional institution, marriage.
Speaker #1
Ah, yes. The ultimate classic milestone.
Speaker #0
Right. We really want to decode whether these milestones still carry the same meaning for young people today or if if the entire framework of growing up has just completely changed.
Speaker #1
Which is an essential analysis for anyone listening, right? Whether you manage young teams or you design products for this demographic or even if you just want to understand the shifting culture.
Speaker #0
Oh, absolutely.
Speaker #1
Because the assumptions we carry into those interactions are often just completely outdated.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Think about the assumptions we're fed when we think about growing up. Society essentially hands us this vintage, heavily programmed GPS device.
Speaker #1
I love that analogy. A societal GPS.
Speaker #0
Right. And it has exactly one route hardwired into it. You finish your education. You get a stable job. You move out of your parents' house, find a partner, get married, buy a house, and have children.
Speaker #1
Yep, the classic script.
Speaker #0
Exactly. And it demands that you hit those waypoints in that exact rigid order.
Speaker #1
And if you attempt to deviate from that sequence, or even if you just take too long on one segment of the journey, that societal GPS immediately starts flashing warning signs at you.
Speaker #0
Recalibrating. Recalibrating.
Speaker #1
Exactly. It expects you to get back on the sanctioned road because historically that sequence was basically the only universally recognized way to prove you were actually an adult.
Speaker #0
But when you look at Generation Z today, it feels like they've just tossed that GPS out the window. I mean, we are bum- with these sensational apocalyptic headlines.
Speaker #1
Oh, constantly. You see them everywhere.
Speaker #0
On every major news outlet, commentators claiming that, you know, marriage is dying out, that young people simply refuse to grow up, or that this generation has completely abandoned the whole concept of commitment.
Speaker #1
Right. But the paradox here is that the actual demographic data tells a radically different story.
Speaker #0
Okay, let's unpack this. Because the narrative assumes that since they aren't walking down the aisle at 24, they must just hate the institution, right?
Speaker #1
Yeah, we tend to conflate a delay in a behavior with a complete rejection of it. We really have to start by dismantling that initial massive assumption, the idea that Gen Z simply doesn't want to get married.
Speaker #0
Because when researchers actually ask them what they want, the picture completely flips. There's this massive 2025 study that pulled representative data from 33 different European countries.
Speaker #1
33? Wow, that's a huge sample.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's huge. And the researchers specifically focused on how 18 to 34-year-olds imagine their ideal major life transitions. Leaving home, cohabitation, marriage, parenthood.
Speaker #1
And what did they find?
Speaker #0
Well, across all those countries, young Europeans still broadly consider it the absolute ideal to cohabit, get married, and have kids during their
Speaker #1
20s. What's fascinating here is that operative word, ideal. Their internal compass is still firmly pointing toward that traditional milestone.
Speaker #0
Right. But the friction happens when that ideal timeline collides with modern economic and structural realities. It makes me think of wanting to buy your first home.
Speaker #1
Oh, that's a great comparison.
Speaker #0
Like, just because the crushing realities of the modern housing market force you to save up for a decade longer than your parents did, that doesn't mean your fundamental desire to own a home has vanished. The desire is totally intact. The timeline simply got stretched by forces way outside of your control.
Speaker #1
That analogy perfectly captures the difference between observing a surface-level behavior and actually understanding the underlying intention.
Speaker #0
Yeah, because if you're just looking at the surface.
Speaker #1
Right. If you were a brand strategist or an HR leader looking only at the behavior, you see fewer 25-year-olds married today than 30 years ago.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
So you might mistakenly conclude that marriage is losing its cultural relevance entirely.
Speaker #0
And then you make all the wrong moves. You stop marketing to young couples or... You change how you structure family benefits.
Speaker #1
Exactly. But behavior is always constrained by what is actually feasible in the moment.
Speaker #0
Because the landscape they are navigating to reach that milestone is fundamentally hostile compared to what previous generations dealt with.
Speaker #1
Oh, incredibly hostile. Consider the structural hurdles today. Housing costs consume a massively disproportionate percentage of young incomes.
Speaker #0
Oh, yeah. The rent is astronomical everywhere.
Speaker #1
Right. And to remain competitive in a knowledge economy, people are staying in the education system much longer. That delays their entry into the full-time workforce.
Speaker #0
Plus, work environments themselves offer far less long-term financial security now. It's all contract work or the gig economy.
Speaker #1
Exactly. So building the financial foundation that society traditionally demands before marriage, it simply takes much longer. The road to the milestone is just way steeper, but the milestone itself hasn't lost its appeal.
Speaker #0
And we actually have the hard demographic evidence to back that up. The Eurostat data, the statistical office of the European Union. validates that exact structural delay.
Speaker #1
Oh, the long-term study, right.
Speaker #0
Yeah, they track data over a 20-year period from 2004 to 2024. And over those two decades, the mean age at first marriage increased in every single one of the 20 EU countries where they had comparable data.
Speaker #1
A continent-wide shift in the timeline. It's wild. It's happening regardless of local cultural differences.
Speaker #0
A profound shift. By 2024, if you look at countries like Spain and Sweden, the delay is incredibly stark. Women were getting married for the first time at an average age of 35.2.
Speaker #1
Wow.
Speaker #0
And for Swedish men, the average age was 37.4.
Speaker #1
That is significantly later than previous decades.
Speaker #0
Yeah, there is some regional variance, obviously. Like, Romania sits at the younger end of the spectrum, with women averaging 28.4 and men at 31.5. But the overarching undeniable trend across the board is a severe delay.
Speaker #1
But this brings up a really crucial point. If the average age is pushing well into the mid-30s in many major economies, we need to ask what happens to a society during that gap.
Speaker #0
Right. Because if people still desire the milestone but the road takes 15 years longer to travel, how are they navigating relationships in the interim?
Speaker #1
Yeah. What are they actually doing for those 15 years?
Speaker #0
Oh, wait. That's exactly the pushback you hear, right? If they are delaying marriage into their mid-30s, are they just casually dating or hooking up for a decade and a half? How does a relationship become, you know, serious without the paperwork?
Speaker #1
That assumption brings us to some incredibly revealing data out of France, and it completely shatters the idea that young people have abandoned committed relationships.
Speaker #0
Tell me about this French study.
Speaker #1
This comes from the INDD Envy Study, conducted by the French Institute for Demographic Studies. They looked at a massive sample size of over 10,000 French youth between the ages of 18 and 29.
Speaker #0
Oh, wow. So they are looking directly at that gap period. Those crucial years where previous generations were heavily married, but this generation is mostly waiting.
Speaker #1
Exactly. And they found that 66% of these young adults had been in a couple during the previous 12 months.
Speaker #0
Two-thirds of them.
Speaker #1
Two-thirds. While hookup culture and casual relationships certainly exist, the data shows that the traditional monogamous couple remains the dominant form of intimate relationship for this generation. They are absolutely forming serious bonds.
Speaker #0
But the architecture of those bonds is entirely different, isn't it?
Speaker #1
Completely different. It is entirely deinstitutionalized. Among those young adults who were in a couple, fewer than one-third had even lived together. And when we look at legal bindings, it gets even lower. Only 9% were in a PACES. That's the French Civil Solidarity Pact, basically a civil union. And a mere 7% were actually married.
Speaker #0
So you have 66% in a relationship, but only 7% utilizing the traditional legal mechanism of marriage. That is a massive disconnect.
Speaker #1
It really is. But here is the statistic that bridges that disconnect. Despite the near total lack of legal or institutional binding, 77% of those young people describe themselves as being very much in love with their partner.
Speaker #0
Wait, really? 77%?
Speaker #1
Yeah. And another 17% stated they were quite in love.
Speaker #0
So you have over 90% of coupled young adults expressing deep, profound emotional commitment, while only 7% have a marriage certificate.
Speaker #1
If we connect this to the bigger picture. It tells us that for Gen Z, the emotional contract is completely divorced from the government contract.
Speaker #0
Oh, that's a great way to put it.
Speaker #1
So this generation, emotional commitment arrives years, sometimes decades, before institutional commitment. They just do not require an external legal validation to prove to themselves or to their community that their relationship is real and serious.
Speaker #0
That fundamentally changes how leaders and organizations need to view the young adults they interact with. Like if you're an HR director, you might have an employee who's. Relationship is practically a marriage in every emotional and logistical sense, but they don't have the certificate you traditionally require for spousal benefits.
Speaker #1
Exactly. The policies don't match the reality.
Speaker #0
Or if you're a brand marketing a product to young families, you have to recognize that the modern family unit might not have matching last names or an official wedding anniversary, but they possess the exact same purchasing power and collective decision making as a married couple from 1995.
Speaker #1
you really have to respect the internal validity of their choices. Because marriage has lost its monopoly on commitment, it is no longer the sole gatekeeper to being taken seriously as a couple.
Speaker #0
Here's where it gets really interesting, though. If marriage has lost that monopoly, we have to look at its primary modern alternative. Over the last few decades, living together cohabitation has become completely mainstream.
Speaker #1
Oh, absolutely. It's the norm now.
Speaker #0
So it seems logical to assume that if you can live together, share expenses, and be deeply committed without marrying, then cohabitation would just simply kill the need for marriage altogether.
Speaker #1
It is a very common logical leap. People observe the rising social acceptance of cohabitation and interpret it as undeniable evidence that marriage is on a terminal decline.
Speaker #0
They see them as rivals.
Speaker #1
Yes, exactly. They view the two institutions as bitter rivals in a zero-sum game where the success of one necessitates the destruction of the other. But when researchers actually measure these attitudes concurrently, A much more nuanced dynamic emerges.
Speaker #0
Yeah, I was looking at a 2025 study that tackled this exact presumed rivalry. They analyzed data from over 48,000 people.
Speaker #1
48,000, that's huge. Yeah,
Speaker #0
massive. And it spanned across five diverse European countries, Austria, Czechia, Estonia, Germany, and Norway.
Speaker #1
Nice cross-section.
Speaker #0
Right. And they tracked attitudes across two distinct time periods. Comparing data from 2004 to 2009 with more recent data from 2020 to 2023. If the rivalry theory held true, you would expect marriage to be viewed as increasingly obsolete as time went on, right?
Speaker #1
Because cohabitation became more common.
Speaker #0
Exactly. But they did not find a universal sweeping movement away from marriage. In fact, in countries like Czechia and Estonia, the data showed people actually became less likely to consider marriage outdated in recent years.
Speaker #1
Less likely. That's incredible. So while their acceptance of cohabitation remained incredibly high or even increased, they essentially separated the two ideas in their minds.
Speaker #0
Yes. They decoupled them entirely.
Speaker #1
Because cohabitation and marriage no longer compete. They serve different psychological functions now.
Speaker #0
How so?
Speaker #1
Well, a young person today can fundamentally believe that living together without marrying is completely legitimate for society while simultaneously holding a deep personal desire to eventually marry.
Speaker #0
Oh, I see.
Speaker #1
You might choose to cohabit for eight years before proposing. or you might decide that marriage adds no tangible value to your specific dynamic and bypass it entirely.
Speaker #0
It shifts from a binary either requirement to a yes and menu of options.
Speaker #1
The defining characteristic of this generational shift is the presence of choice. There was a smaller 2025 study focused on 462 Gen Z university students in Poland that perfectly illustrates this menu concept.
Speaker #0
What did the Polish study find?
Speaker #1
Well, while local cultural and religious context obviously influence the specific percentages, the overarching psychological pattern is highly instructive. The Polish students broadly accepted every single relationship model presented to them.
Speaker #0
So they were open to everything.
Speaker #1
Yes. They viewed remaining single as a valid life path. They viewed long-term cohabitation as valid. But despite accepting all those alternatives, marriage still emerged as their absolute preferred relationship model.
Speaker #0
So accepting an alternative does not automatically mean rejecting the traditional ideal.
Speaker #1
Exactly. In previous generations, that societal GPS offered a set menu. You took the marriage road or you were heavily stigmatized. Gen Z has built an a la carte menu. Right. They respect all the choices, which ironically allows them to value marriage, not because they're forced into it, but because they can actively select it from among other equally valid options.
Speaker #0
So what does this all mean? If you don't need marriage to validate your emotional commitment and you don't need it to justify living together with a partner, what purpose does the institution actually serve today?
Speaker #1
To answer that, we really have to examine the final, heavily guarded milestone of the traditional adult script, parenthood.
Speaker #0
Historically, marriage was the strict, non-negotiable prerequisite for having children. It was the institutional gateway to building a family.
Speaker #1
It was the only acceptable gateway.
Speaker #0
But the Eurostat data reveals just how thoroughly that gateway has been dismantled. The numbers on this are just staggering. In 2024, 41% of all births across the European Union occurred outside of marriage.
Speaker #1
41%, almost half.
Speaker #0
And that is just the average. In countries like France, Bulgaria, and Portugal, the share of births outside of marriage was approaching or even exceeding 60%.
Speaker #1
60%. This raises an important question because the magnitude of that cultural shift really cannot be overstated. Marriage is no longer a requirement to reach the most monumental traditional milestone of adult life.
Speaker #0
Right.
Speaker #1
You don't need a marriage certificate to legitimize intimacy. You don't need it to cohabit. You don't need it to prove your maturity. And you don't even need it to legitimize parenthood.
Speaker #0
The obligation has been entirely removed from the equation. It's completely optional.
Speaker #1
And this transition from a default obligation to a completely free choice. creates a profound psychological paradox.
Speaker #0
Okay, I'm listening.
Speaker #1
When a milestone sits inside that rigid societal GPS route, you often execute it simply because it's the next prescribed step. You get married because you want a house or because you want kids, and society tells you marriage is the toll booth you have to pass through to get those things.
Speaker #0
You do it because it's the default setting. It's just what you do.
Speaker #1
But when that sequence is broken, and marriage is no longer the toll booth to anything else, the decision to marry becomes infinitely more intentional. Losing its obligatory character doesn't render marriage meaningless. It actually concentrates its meaning.
Speaker #0
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker #1
If you do not have to marry to be taken seriously or to live with your partner or to have a family, then the act of standing in front of your community and declaring, I want to do this, is a massive, deliberate assertion of personal agency.
Speaker #0
That changes the entire framing of the wedding itself. It's no longer the starting line of adult life. It's a... conscious celebration of a bond that has already been proven over years of shared reality.
Speaker #1
Exactly. It moves from being a prerequisite to being a deeply personal decision.
Speaker #0
There is a trap here, though, for anyone analyzing this data. When some commentators see statistics showing that Gen Z still values and desires marriage, they immediately declare a conservative backlash.
Speaker #1
Oh, yes. The return to tradition narrative.
Speaker #0
Right. I read a recent British survey reported by The Times that perfectly sets up this trap. It surveyed 18 to 27-year-olds and found that nearly two-thirds considered marriage to be important, while only one in five considered it irrelevant.
Speaker #1
And people immediately jumped to conclusions with that.
Speaker #0
They really do. The research also noted this generation reports having less casual sex than young adults from two decades ago.
Speaker #1
It is incredibly easy to look at those data points through a traditional lens and conclude that Gen Z is retreating to the values of the 1950s. But that is a dangerous misinterpretation of the signals.
Speaker #0
Because valuing the structure of the institution does not mean accepting the historical baggage that came with it.
Speaker #1
Exactly. Stating that marriage is an important ideal does not equate to a desire for traditional gender roles. It doesn't mean a return to the rigid division of labor where one partner is the sole breadwinner and the other manages the domestic sphere.
Speaker #0
Right. They aren't striving for the relationship model of their grandparents. No,
Speaker #1
not at all.
Speaker #0
It's kind of like inheriting an old historic house. They love the architectural bones, they love the facade, but they intend to completely gut the interior and modernize the floor plan to suit how they actually live today.
Speaker #1
That's the perfect way to look at it. Yeah. Want to keep the institution, but they demand the right to entirely renegotiate the internal contract. Gen Z values marriage, but they fundamentally reject the premise that everyone needs it to live a fulfilling life.
Speaker #0
So we circle back to the central question of this deep dive. Does Generation Z still want to get married?
Speaker #1
The demographic data and the psychological research strongly indicate that yes, they do. But that yes comes with a massive culture-shifting caveat.
Speaker #0
Which is?
Speaker #1
Marriage has been permanently stripped of its monopoly on commitment and adulthood. For Gen Z, staying single is a complete and valid identity. Long-term cohabitation is a destination, not just a waiting room. Raising children outside a wedlock is a normal, accepted family structure. They aren't postponing adulthood. They're simply separating the reality of being an adult from the historical symbols that used to govern it. Exactly.
Speaker #0
They don't need the vintage car to prove they're financially stable. And they don't need a marriage certificate to prove their relationship is profound and enduring.
Speaker #1
By removing the societal pressure to use marriage as a proof of concept, the institution becomes deeply, intensely personal. It asks young people to look inward rather than outward.
Speaker #0
So the question shifts.
Speaker #1
Right. It shifts from what does society expect of me to. What do I want this commitment to mean for my specific relationship? They haven't abandoned marriage. They have elevated it from a societal expectation to an active, deliberate choice.
Speaker #0
They have completely taken over the programming of their own GPS. Which brings me to you, listening right now. I want you to consider that old societal map we discussed at the beginning of this deep dive. Look closely at your own life, your career, and the specific milestones you are currently chasing. Are you pursuing those goals because they are expected of you, simply to signal your status and success to the outside world? Or are you actively, intentionally choosing them because of what they genuinely mean to you on the inside? It's a subtle shift in perspective, but it changes absolutely everything about how you navigate your future.
Speaker #1
If you want to explore these generational shifts further, discover Benoit's book, The Gen Z Shift. Why today's leaders keep acting on the wrong signals, available now in English on Amazon and as an audiobook. Thank you for listening, and see you next week for a new topic.

About The Generation Z Shift: Conversations

An audio series extending the ideas behind Benoit Vancauwenberghe’s bestselling book, The Gen Z Shift: Why Today's Leaders Keep Acting on the Wrong Signals

How are Gen Z and Gen Alpha reshaping the way we work, lead, and build organizations?

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

About The Generation Z Shift: Conversations

An audio series extending the ideas behind Benoit Vancauwenberghe’s bestselling book, The Gen Z Shift: Why Today's Leaders Keep Acting on the Wrong Signals

How are Gen Z and Gen Alpha reshaping the way we work, lead, and build organizations?

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Description

The Gen Z Shift: European leadership decoded

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Transcription

Speaker #0
Welcome to the Gen Z Shift. This weekly podcast decodes Generation Z and Generation Alpha for leaders, brands, and changemakers. Based on the research and articles of Benoit van Kallenberg, a European expert on Generation Z, Generation Alpha, and brand culture, each episode helps you understand the generations reshaping how we work, consume, connect, and live. Because the future isn't coming. It's already here.
Speaker #1
It really is already here, you know. And it requires a pretty fundamental shift in how we interpret. All those signals younger generations are sending us.
Speaker #0
Yeah, and that is exactly the core of our mission today. We are exploring a super fascinating piece of research from Benoit van Kouwenberger's 20-something series.
Speaker #1
Which is such a great series for understanding these shifts.
Speaker #0
Totally. So our focus for this custom deep dive is to understand exactly how Gen Z views adulthood, specifically through the lens of a very traditional institution, marriage.
Speaker #1
Ah, yes. The ultimate classic milestone.
Speaker #0
Right. We really want to decode whether these milestones still carry the same meaning for young people today or if if the entire framework of growing up has just completely changed.
Speaker #1
Which is an essential analysis for anyone listening, right? Whether you manage young teams or you design products for this demographic or even if you just want to understand the shifting culture.
Speaker #0
Oh, absolutely.
Speaker #1
Because the assumptions we carry into those interactions are often just completely outdated.
Speaker #0
Yeah. Think about the assumptions we're fed when we think about growing up. Society essentially hands us this vintage, heavily programmed GPS device.
Speaker #1
I love that analogy. A societal GPS.
Speaker #0
Right. And it has exactly one route hardwired into it. You finish your education. You get a stable job. You move out of your parents' house, find a partner, get married, buy a house, and have children.
Speaker #1
Yep, the classic script.
Speaker #0
Exactly. And it demands that you hit those waypoints in that exact rigid order.
Speaker #1
And if you attempt to deviate from that sequence, or even if you just take too long on one segment of the journey, that societal GPS immediately starts flashing warning signs at you.
Speaker #0
Recalibrating. Recalibrating.
Speaker #1
Exactly. It expects you to get back on the sanctioned road because historically that sequence was basically the only universally recognized way to prove you were actually an adult.
Speaker #0
But when you look at Generation Z today, it feels like they've just tossed that GPS out the window. I mean, we are bum- with these sensational apocalyptic headlines.
Speaker #1
Oh, constantly. You see them everywhere.
Speaker #0
On every major news outlet, commentators claiming that, you know, marriage is dying out, that young people simply refuse to grow up, or that this generation has completely abandoned the whole concept of commitment.
Speaker #1
Right. But the paradox here is that the actual demographic data tells a radically different story.
Speaker #0
Okay, let's unpack this. Because the narrative assumes that since they aren't walking down the aisle at 24, they must just hate the institution, right?
Speaker #1
Yeah, we tend to conflate a delay in a behavior with a complete rejection of it. We really have to start by dismantling that initial massive assumption, the idea that Gen Z simply doesn't want to get married.
Speaker #0
Because when researchers actually ask them what they want, the picture completely flips. There's this massive 2025 study that pulled representative data from 33 different European countries.
Speaker #1
33? Wow, that's a huge sample.
Speaker #0
Yeah, it's huge. And the researchers specifically focused on how 18 to 34-year-olds imagine their ideal major life transitions. Leaving home, cohabitation, marriage, parenthood.
Speaker #1
And what did they find?
Speaker #0
Well, across all those countries, young Europeans still broadly consider it the absolute ideal to cohabit, get married, and have kids during their
Speaker #1
20s. What's fascinating here is that operative word, ideal. Their internal compass is still firmly pointing toward that traditional milestone.
Speaker #0
Right. But the friction happens when that ideal timeline collides with modern economic and structural realities. It makes me think of wanting to buy your first home.
Speaker #1
Oh, that's a great comparison.
Speaker #0
Like, just because the crushing realities of the modern housing market force you to save up for a decade longer than your parents did, that doesn't mean your fundamental desire to own a home has vanished. The desire is totally intact. The timeline simply got stretched by forces way outside of your control.
Speaker #1
That analogy perfectly captures the difference between observing a surface-level behavior and actually understanding the underlying intention.
Speaker #0
Yeah, because if you're just looking at the surface.
Speaker #1
Right. If you were a brand strategist or an HR leader looking only at the behavior, you see fewer 25-year-olds married today than 30 years ago.
Speaker #0
Yeah.
Speaker #1
So you might mistakenly conclude that marriage is losing its cultural relevance entirely.
Speaker #0
And then you make all the wrong moves. You stop marketing to young couples or... You change how you structure family benefits.
Speaker #1
Exactly. But behavior is always constrained by what is actually feasible in the moment.
Speaker #0
Because the landscape they are navigating to reach that milestone is fundamentally hostile compared to what previous generations dealt with.
Speaker #1
Oh, incredibly hostile. Consider the structural hurdles today. Housing costs consume a massively disproportionate percentage of young incomes.
Speaker #0
Oh, yeah. The rent is astronomical everywhere.
Speaker #1
Right. And to remain competitive in a knowledge economy, people are staying in the education system much longer. That delays their entry into the full-time workforce.
Speaker #0
Plus, work environments themselves offer far less long-term financial security now. It's all contract work or the gig economy.
Speaker #1
Exactly. So building the financial foundation that society traditionally demands before marriage, it simply takes much longer. The road to the milestone is just way steeper, but the milestone itself hasn't lost its appeal.
Speaker #0
And we actually have the hard demographic evidence to back that up. The Eurostat data, the statistical office of the European Union. validates that exact structural delay.
Speaker #1
Oh, the long-term study, right.
Speaker #0
Yeah, they track data over a 20-year period from 2004 to 2024. And over those two decades, the mean age at first marriage increased in every single one of the 20 EU countries where they had comparable data.
Speaker #1
A continent-wide shift in the timeline. It's wild. It's happening regardless of local cultural differences.
Speaker #0
A profound shift. By 2024, if you look at countries like Spain and Sweden, the delay is incredibly stark. Women were getting married for the first time at an average age of 35.2.
Speaker #1
Wow.
Speaker #0
And for Swedish men, the average age was 37.4.
Speaker #1
That is significantly later than previous decades.
Speaker #0
Yeah, there is some regional variance, obviously. Like, Romania sits at the younger end of the spectrum, with women averaging 28.4 and men at 31.5. But the overarching undeniable trend across the board is a severe delay.
Speaker #1
But this brings up a really crucial point. If the average age is pushing well into the mid-30s in many major economies, we need to ask what happens to a society during that gap.
Speaker #0
Right. Because if people still desire the milestone but the road takes 15 years longer to travel, how are they navigating relationships in the interim?
Speaker #1
Yeah. What are they actually doing for those 15 years?
Speaker #0
Oh, wait. That's exactly the pushback you hear, right? If they are delaying marriage into their mid-30s, are they just casually dating or hooking up for a decade and a half? How does a relationship become, you know, serious without the paperwork?
Speaker #1
That assumption brings us to some incredibly revealing data out of France, and it completely shatters the idea that young people have abandoned committed relationships.
Speaker #0
Tell me about this French study.
Speaker #1
This comes from the INDD Envy Study, conducted by the French Institute for Demographic Studies. They looked at a massive sample size of over 10,000 French youth between the ages of 18 and 29.
Speaker #0
Oh, wow. So they are looking directly at that gap period. Those crucial years where previous generations were heavily married, but this generation is mostly waiting.
Speaker #1
Exactly. And they found that 66% of these young adults had been in a couple during the previous 12 months.
Speaker #0
Two-thirds of them.
Speaker #1
Two-thirds. While hookup culture and casual relationships certainly exist, the data shows that the traditional monogamous couple remains the dominant form of intimate relationship for this generation. They are absolutely forming serious bonds.
Speaker #0
But the architecture of those bonds is entirely different, isn't it?
Speaker #1
Completely different. It is entirely deinstitutionalized. Among those young adults who were in a couple, fewer than one-third had even lived together. And when we look at legal bindings, it gets even lower. Only 9% were in a PACES. That's the French Civil Solidarity Pact, basically a civil union. And a mere 7% were actually married.
Speaker #0
So you have 66% in a relationship, but only 7% utilizing the traditional legal mechanism of marriage. That is a massive disconnect.
Speaker #1
It really is. But here is the statistic that bridges that disconnect. Despite the near total lack of legal or institutional binding, 77% of those young people describe themselves as being very much in love with their partner.
Speaker #0
Wait, really? 77%?
Speaker #1
Yeah. And another 17% stated they were quite in love.
Speaker #0
So you have over 90% of coupled young adults expressing deep, profound emotional commitment, while only 7% have a marriage certificate.
Speaker #1
If we connect this to the bigger picture. It tells us that for Gen Z, the emotional contract is completely divorced from the government contract.
Speaker #0
Oh, that's a great way to put it.
Speaker #1
So this generation, emotional commitment arrives years, sometimes decades, before institutional commitment. They just do not require an external legal validation to prove to themselves or to their community that their relationship is real and serious.
Speaker #0
That fundamentally changes how leaders and organizations need to view the young adults they interact with. Like if you're an HR director, you might have an employee who's. Relationship is practically a marriage in every emotional and logistical sense, but they don't have the certificate you traditionally require for spousal benefits.
Speaker #1
Exactly. The policies don't match the reality.
Speaker #0
Or if you're a brand marketing a product to young families, you have to recognize that the modern family unit might not have matching last names or an official wedding anniversary, but they possess the exact same purchasing power and collective decision making as a married couple from 1995.
Speaker #1
you really have to respect the internal validity of their choices. Because marriage has lost its monopoly on commitment, it is no longer the sole gatekeeper to being taken seriously as a couple.
Speaker #0
Here's where it gets really interesting, though. If marriage has lost that monopoly, we have to look at its primary modern alternative. Over the last few decades, living together cohabitation has become completely mainstream.
Speaker #1
Oh, absolutely. It's the norm now.
Speaker #0
So it seems logical to assume that if you can live together, share expenses, and be deeply committed without marrying, then cohabitation would just simply kill the need for marriage altogether.
Speaker #1
It is a very common logical leap. People observe the rising social acceptance of cohabitation and interpret it as undeniable evidence that marriage is on a terminal decline.
Speaker #0
They see them as rivals.
Speaker #1
Yes, exactly. They view the two institutions as bitter rivals in a zero-sum game where the success of one necessitates the destruction of the other. But when researchers actually measure these attitudes concurrently, A much more nuanced dynamic emerges.
Speaker #0
Yeah, I was looking at a 2025 study that tackled this exact presumed rivalry. They analyzed data from over 48,000 people.
Speaker #1
48,000, that's huge. Yeah,
Speaker #0
massive. And it spanned across five diverse European countries, Austria, Czechia, Estonia, Germany, and Norway.
Speaker #1
Nice cross-section.
Speaker #0
Right. And they tracked attitudes across two distinct time periods. Comparing data from 2004 to 2009 with more recent data from 2020 to 2023. If the rivalry theory held true, you would expect marriage to be viewed as increasingly obsolete as time went on, right?
Speaker #1
Because cohabitation became more common.
Speaker #0
Exactly. But they did not find a universal sweeping movement away from marriage. In fact, in countries like Czechia and Estonia, the data showed people actually became less likely to consider marriage outdated in recent years.
Speaker #1
Less likely. That's incredible. So while their acceptance of cohabitation remained incredibly high or even increased, they essentially separated the two ideas in their minds.
Speaker #0
Yes. They decoupled them entirely.
Speaker #1
Because cohabitation and marriage no longer compete. They serve different psychological functions now.
Speaker #0
How so?
Speaker #1
Well, a young person today can fundamentally believe that living together without marrying is completely legitimate for society while simultaneously holding a deep personal desire to eventually marry.
Speaker #0
Oh, I see.
Speaker #1
You might choose to cohabit for eight years before proposing. or you might decide that marriage adds no tangible value to your specific dynamic and bypass it entirely.
Speaker #0
It shifts from a binary either requirement to a yes and menu of options.
Speaker #1
The defining characteristic of this generational shift is the presence of choice. There was a smaller 2025 study focused on 462 Gen Z university students in Poland that perfectly illustrates this menu concept.
Speaker #0
What did the Polish study find?
Speaker #1
Well, while local cultural and religious context obviously influence the specific percentages, the overarching psychological pattern is highly instructive. The Polish students broadly accepted every single relationship model presented to them.
Speaker #0
So they were open to everything.
Speaker #1
Yes. They viewed remaining single as a valid life path. They viewed long-term cohabitation as valid. But despite accepting all those alternatives, marriage still emerged as their absolute preferred relationship model.
Speaker #0
So accepting an alternative does not automatically mean rejecting the traditional ideal.
Speaker #1
Exactly. In previous generations, that societal GPS offered a set menu. You took the marriage road or you were heavily stigmatized. Gen Z has built an a la carte menu. Right. They respect all the choices, which ironically allows them to value marriage, not because they're forced into it, but because they can actively select it from among other equally valid options.
Speaker #0
So what does this all mean? If you don't need marriage to validate your emotional commitment and you don't need it to justify living together with a partner, what purpose does the institution actually serve today?
Speaker #1
To answer that, we really have to examine the final, heavily guarded milestone of the traditional adult script, parenthood.
Speaker #0
Historically, marriage was the strict, non-negotiable prerequisite for having children. It was the institutional gateway to building a family.
Speaker #1
It was the only acceptable gateway.
Speaker #0
But the Eurostat data reveals just how thoroughly that gateway has been dismantled. The numbers on this are just staggering. In 2024, 41% of all births across the European Union occurred outside of marriage.
Speaker #1
41%, almost half.
Speaker #0
And that is just the average. In countries like France, Bulgaria, and Portugal, the share of births outside of marriage was approaching or even exceeding 60%.
Speaker #1
60%. This raises an important question because the magnitude of that cultural shift really cannot be overstated. Marriage is no longer a requirement to reach the most monumental traditional milestone of adult life.
Speaker #0
Right.
Speaker #1
You don't need a marriage certificate to legitimize intimacy. You don't need it to cohabit. You don't need it to prove your maturity. And you don't even need it to legitimize parenthood.
Speaker #0
The obligation has been entirely removed from the equation. It's completely optional.
Speaker #1
And this transition from a default obligation to a completely free choice. creates a profound psychological paradox.
Speaker #0
Okay, I'm listening.
Speaker #1
When a milestone sits inside that rigid societal GPS route, you often execute it simply because it's the next prescribed step. You get married because you want a house or because you want kids, and society tells you marriage is the toll booth you have to pass through to get those things.
Speaker #0
You do it because it's the default setting. It's just what you do.
Speaker #1
But when that sequence is broken, and marriage is no longer the toll booth to anything else, the decision to marry becomes infinitely more intentional. Losing its obligatory character doesn't render marriage meaningless. It actually concentrates its meaning.
Speaker #0
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker #1
If you do not have to marry to be taken seriously or to live with your partner or to have a family, then the act of standing in front of your community and declaring, I want to do this, is a massive, deliberate assertion of personal agency.
Speaker #0
That changes the entire framing of the wedding itself. It's no longer the starting line of adult life. It's a... conscious celebration of a bond that has already been proven over years of shared reality.
Speaker #1
Exactly. It moves from being a prerequisite to being a deeply personal decision.
Speaker #0
There is a trap here, though, for anyone analyzing this data. When some commentators see statistics showing that Gen Z still values and desires marriage, they immediately declare a conservative backlash.
Speaker #1
Oh, yes. The return to tradition narrative.
Speaker #0
Right. I read a recent British survey reported by The Times that perfectly sets up this trap. It surveyed 18 to 27-year-olds and found that nearly two-thirds considered marriage to be important, while only one in five considered it irrelevant.
Speaker #1
And people immediately jumped to conclusions with that.
Speaker #0
They really do. The research also noted this generation reports having less casual sex than young adults from two decades ago.
Speaker #1
It is incredibly easy to look at those data points through a traditional lens and conclude that Gen Z is retreating to the values of the 1950s. But that is a dangerous misinterpretation of the signals.
Speaker #0
Because valuing the structure of the institution does not mean accepting the historical baggage that came with it.
Speaker #1
Exactly. Stating that marriage is an important ideal does not equate to a desire for traditional gender roles. It doesn't mean a return to the rigid division of labor where one partner is the sole breadwinner and the other manages the domestic sphere.
Speaker #0
Right. They aren't striving for the relationship model of their grandparents. No,
Speaker #1
not at all.
Speaker #0
It's kind of like inheriting an old historic house. They love the architectural bones, they love the facade, but they intend to completely gut the interior and modernize the floor plan to suit how they actually live today.
Speaker #1
That's the perfect way to look at it. Yeah. Want to keep the institution, but they demand the right to entirely renegotiate the internal contract. Gen Z values marriage, but they fundamentally reject the premise that everyone needs it to live a fulfilling life.
Speaker #0
So we circle back to the central question of this deep dive. Does Generation Z still want to get married?
Speaker #1
The demographic data and the psychological research strongly indicate that yes, they do. But that yes comes with a massive culture-shifting caveat.
Speaker #0
Which is?
Speaker #1
Marriage has been permanently stripped of its monopoly on commitment and adulthood. For Gen Z, staying single is a complete and valid identity. Long-term cohabitation is a destination, not just a waiting room. Raising children outside a wedlock is a normal, accepted family structure. They aren't postponing adulthood. They're simply separating the reality of being an adult from the historical symbols that used to govern it. Exactly.
Speaker #0
They don't need the vintage car to prove they're financially stable. And they don't need a marriage certificate to prove their relationship is profound and enduring.
Speaker #1
By removing the societal pressure to use marriage as a proof of concept, the institution becomes deeply, intensely personal. It asks young people to look inward rather than outward.
Speaker #0
So the question shifts.
Speaker #1
Right. It shifts from what does society expect of me to. What do I want this commitment to mean for my specific relationship? They haven't abandoned marriage. They have elevated it from a societal expectation to an active, deliberate choice.
Speaker #0
They have completely taken over the programming of their own GPS. Which brings me to you, listening right now. I want you to consider that old societal map we discussed at the beginning of this deep dive. Look closely at your own life, your career, and the specific milestones you are currently chasing. Are you pursuing those goals because they are expected of you, simply to signal your status and success to the outside world? Or are you actively, intentionally choosing them because of what they genuinely mean to you on the inside? It's a subtle shift in perspective, but it changes absolutely everything about how you navigate your future.
Speaker #1
If you want to explore these generational shifts further, discover Benoit's book, The Gen Z Shift. Why today's leaders keep acting on the wrong signals, available now in English on Amazon and as an audiobook. Thank you for listening, and see you next week for a new topic.

About The Generation Z Shift: Conversations

An audio series extending the ideas behind Benoit Vancauwenberghe’s bestselling book, The Gen Z Shift: Why Today's Leaders Keep Acting on the Wrong Signals

How are Gen Z and Gen Alpha reshaping the way we work, lead, and build organizations?

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

About The Generation Z Shift: Conversations

An audio series extending the ideas behind Benoit Vancauwenberghe’s bestselling book, The Gen Z Shift: Why Today's Leaders Keep Acting on the Wrong Signals

How are Gen Z and Gen Alpha reshaping the way we work, lead, and build organizations?

Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

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