A Crisis Of Trust

71 the young adults that we were viewing this IDF trust issues and said that it affected their relationship. This is family policymakers with NC family Pres. John Rustin thanks for joining us this week for family policy matters. Today we are going to discuss a crisis of trust among younger generations that is hindering younger adults from committing to marriage and family life are guest will also discuss how the same trust issue is contributing to the devastating opioid drug crisis we see in America today or guest is Amber lab, a research fellow at the Institute for family studies, affiliate scholar at the Institute for American values and coinvestigator of the love and marriage in middle America project, which explores how working-class young adult relationships and families. She blogs@ibelieveinlove.com and has written for numerous media outlets including the Atlantic on one. First things in the Huffington Post Amber lab. Welcome to family policy matters is great to have you on the show. Thank you. Time great to be here.

Well, we appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to be with us today and it Amber as we begin explain for us what is different today about younger generations.

When it comes to relationships, marriages and children compared to say more seasoned among us wildly on young adults are in general delaying marriage to the average age of marriage for women is now 27, and for men it 29. Yet even though there delaying marriage. They are not necessarily delaying having children on their more likely to have children outside of marriage. So overall, 48% of first birds are to unmarried women.

Most of them in their 20s and these trends also diverge along class lines so they have a strong effect in working-class communities among young adults with no four-year college degree and I think underlying a lot of these trends is this this crisis of trust. So what do you mean when you talk about this crisis of trust. So when I first moved to a working-class community and southwestern Ohio in 2010 interview young adults about their relationships and experiences of having children and starting families. We were just struck by how often young adults would talk about trust issues and to be honest, we didn't really know what that meant exactly. Both of us are from very high trust background that 71% of the young adults that we were viewing brought up this IDF trust issues and said that it affected their relationships and over time as we spend doing follow-up interviews with the sample again adult. We came to see that this crisis of trust is incredibly significant in the way that they form relationships in the three levels of this trust. The institution also.

It's very common to hear young adults talk about their distrust of the government or the church or institutions like that interpersonally. There is a lot of fear about being cheated on, and just talk about not being able to trust their romantic partner and then even on an individual level. We heard young adults say that they couldn't trust themselves.

One young man told us that the biggest obstacle to getting married was not money or some external factor, but actually he didn't trust himself to be faithful to his future wife even though he loved her, so I think that a lot of times on this crisis of trust is very rational response to life circumstances, but it does have a tragic effect on the ability to form a stable attachment to another adult meant to to have that committed marriage was very interesting. I know is we look, comparing the young adults of today versus those of generation or two ago that seem to have at least in some senses more stability and more trust that you just talk about. I think it's as we look back over recent decades, we seen the sexual revolution, increasing growth of the divorce rate something that will talk about little bit expect in a few minutes the drug culture in America has grown more and more it seems that all of these things have certainly spread into the concerns the hesitancy is an endless lack of trust which talk about.

Yes I think so. And maybe I'll just go down the list of industry that you mentioned in and say little bit about each one, but the sexual revolution goes, I think one of the legacies of that just the way it has complicated the courtship script or another words of the past from just meeting somebody to being in a committed relationship with them is is not very straightforward anymore. It's it can often be very ambiguous and I think that can make it more easy for people to get hurt emotionally because of differing expectations and just not believing sure of the status of the relationship event and there's a recent book by Lisa Wade called American hookup and she also kind of addresses some of this and so I think that that can contribute to this crisis of trust when young adults are repeatedly getting hurt in relationships, and then the divorce revolution that for many of the young adults that my husband and I interviewed. This was perhaps the root of their trust issues as they would put it. For example, one young man I spoke with. He said that what really messed him up. He just got messed up and he said what really messed me up with. I'm not having it down in his life, he said, quote that's going to make me grow up and feel like I can't trust nobody in this was a very common sentiment for young adults to stay in either their parents were divorced or maybe their parents had never married at all, and they have been estranged relationship with one of their parents and that template for trust then witnessing and then with drugs. It seems that there are obvious reasons that this would contribute to lack of trust no drug-related crime, and even the way that someone is struggling with addiction.

And you know and love them but yet you don't know if you can believe what they're saying has a profound effect that something has been I since moving to the town that we live and have struggled with because some of these young adults who we've come to know and love, who are also struggling with heroin addiction can just be very difficult to know when someone is telling you the truth, so that that doesn't do something with your trust that you have. The way you approach life and if you're trusting are not with other people. You're listening to policy matters a resource to listen to our radio show online, and someone resources that will be a voice of persuasion in your community to our website and see family.org as we talked about in the past.

The delay of marriage and you said now old average young women are waiting to get married until the 27 admin 20. We also hear about the color of the changing dynamics of relationships as well.

We've heard about couples sliding into marriage. Once they start cohabiting are living together, but you have found that there are an increasing number of couples who have actually just fallen into relationships without any real direct intention of doing so. Talk about this phenomenon a little bit what you think it means for couples and marriage and family or current structure for the sin that we ask couple weeks that would be a very straightforward question of how the windage relationship began and how did that happen. A lot of times we were met with blank looks and people really had to stop and think and they would say this see this thing of it just happened. One young woman told me about how her boyfriend literally moved and one outfit at a time. They never really had a conversation about whether or not they were dating or you know what to call each other but he spent the night. One night, and slowly but just kind of move in one outfit at a time and she said another person described spending the night together and then they just never left each other. They figured that they were in a relationship.

See, I think that this can mean that sometimes people will end up feeling stuck in a relationship that they would not have freely chosen, they taken the time to get to know the other person first and business exhaustion that comes from not having clarity about the this of the relationship and expectations of heartbreaking know one of the things that really shocked me in your relations for some young people just as they expressed it to you that things like handholding and feeling emotions having discussions with them, being the authentic and transparent with each other and Tom's was more difficult and even felt more intimate than actually being sexually active. How is that possible I will.

That was an excellent observation by Lisa Wade, an American hookup. I also did see that in my own interviews I think that people sometimes have sex in such an anonymous can of callused way in order to make it clear that they are seeing this as a meaningless as just a hookup and so then cuddling and handhold holding our tender kiss on the cheek and those actions still retain symbolic meaning as tokens of affection and of love because they require the vulnerability, but hookup culture has really created this distinction in some people's minds between having sex as just a meaningless act versus having some sort of intimate act that shows affection briefly, one general discussion today. I do want to end on a positive note, assuming that we can do that and I certainly think that we just give you an opportunity to tour listeners from your perspective, how can we as a cultural.

How can we as older adults, and mentors are in even younger adults who are friends of people who may be living with these issues of trust and broken relationships and things of that nature. How can we help to foster an easier and healthier path for our peers or friends or children even who wore young adults to becoming committed in relationships and doing things and approaching each other in such a way that younger don't really seem to walk these days, but my be struggling to figure out how to implement. I think I question on that one thing to remember is that the solution is not just one thing, but many things so I'm I like to think of as marriage, ecology notes, everything from having better marriage preparation and character formation to quality on mental health care to better beliefs and values about love, sex, happiness in marriage to jobs and fair work scheduling enough to like involvement in church or a place of worship in the sense of purpose and meaning that can come from belonging somewhere and so I think that back and start with with friendship on think breaking through class lines forming friendships with with those who are most affected by these trends and then working in solidarity with those people.

To address these issues as opposed to kind of swooping in with a prepackaged programming and trying to implement it but really coming alongside young adults and understanding what it is that they feel is blocking the path to marriage and stable marriages and families that they want because I think that is the hope that we can hold onto survey after survey shows that young adult adults still value marriage, they still want marriage and so as we approach this as a culture we can use as a starting point and say you know and perhaps we don't have to expend as much energy convincing people that marriages is good or at least many of these young adults that we can put effort into coming alongside of them and and giving them the place and permission to voice those values that they have for marriage, and to pursue marriage and you can of troubleshoot those obstacles and gather and so 1 Practical Way to do this is there's a program I believe in love the website as I believe in love.com and I've had the opportunity to do some work with man and the mentor program that involves inviting young adults to share their stories about finding and keeping lifelong love and it's just been really neat to be able to form some friendships with young adults who have had difficult family backgrounds but who really want marriage that I would encourage people to check check out I believe in love.com grace and humor were just about out of time, but also in addition, I believe it will.com is there another website or websites that you would suggest and recommended folks visit to learn more about your great work in your research to blog regularly at the Institute for family studies flag that I asked Betty's.org limit with you the website of studies.org to give studies.work was very grateful for all the super work that you don't think so much for thinking it's been a pleasure to you today. You've been listening to family policy matters a production of NZ family to listen to our radio show online for more valuable resources and information about issues important to families in North Carolina website NC family.org and follow us on Twitter and Facebook