Millennials Are Killing The Divorce Lawyer Industry By Staying Married And In Love

BLOOMBERG – Americans under the age of 45 have found a novel way to rebel against their elders: They’re staying married.

New data show younger couples are approaching relationships very differently from baby boomers, who married young, divorced, remarried and so on. Generation X and especially millennials are being pickier about who they marry, tying the knot at older ages when education, careers and finances are on track. The result is a U.S. divorce rate that dropped 18 percent from 2008 to 2016, according to an analysis by University of Maryland sociology professor Philip Cohen.

“The change among young people is particularly striking,” Susan Brown, a sociology professor at Bowling Green State University, said of Cohen’s results. “The characteristics of young married couples today signal a sustained decline [in divorce rates] in the coming years.”

It gets harder by the day to defend millennials.  I don’t know how or why it started but I’ve found myself in a position where I am the guardian of the least liked generation of all time.   It’s the cross I bear.  But let me tell you – it’s a struggle sometimes.  Especially with stories like this.

Growing up, my best friend’s dad was a high powered divorce attorney.  He was basically only my friend because his dad made so much money that his house was sick and his pool was salt water with waterfalls and he had a big back yard where I could smash 500 foot wiffle ball home runs.  The amenities were so incredible that I added the “best” to the friend part to really hammer home the fact that I’d always be invited.  But still.  I appreciated the hard work that his dad did in order to provide me with such a fun place to hang out.  I respect hard work and there are few things harder than dealing with heartbroken, contentious, furious clients who are divorcing each other and trying to take all of the money. I mean it’s not their fault that couples want to divorce.  Somebody needs to mediate and represent and arbitrate.  It’s not like they were personally hand delivering sexy maids to the houses for the husbands to fuck.  They were just the necessary option for people who made their own decisions.

And then guess who comes along to ruin their careers?  Yup, you guessed it.  The selfish, selfish Millennials.  Not rushing into anything and waiting until they’re absolutely sure they want to spend their lives with their significant other…like fucking assholes.  Finding love and deciding to stay with that love and grow old together and have children and raise families as a unit.  Not making their innocent kids have to split their holidays at two different houses.

Now my friend’s dad is staying in a motel by the airport because his house was foreclosed after he couldn’t afford the mortgage and his wife left him for the pool boy making more than him on an hourly wage summer job, ironically causing him to need his own divorce attorney, which he can’t find because they’re all in the motel rooms next to him, jobless.  And his son is out of a best friend because I deleted his number and haven’t responded to his Facebook messages in months since he no longer serves a purpose for me.

Meanwhile, while the millennials are running small mom-and-pop divorce firms out of business, the Boomers are putting in extra effort to make sure the divorce rate stays high enough to support all the grinder divorce attorneys out there.

Young people get the credit for fewer divorces because boomers have continued to divorce at unusually high rates, all the way into their 60s and 70s. From 1990 to 2015, according to Bowling Green’s National Center for Family and Marriage Research, the divorce rate doubled for people aged 55 to 64, and even tripled for Americans 65 and older. Cohen’s results suggest this trend, called “grey divorce,” may have leveled out in the past decade, but boomers are still divorcing at much higher rates than previous generations did at similar ages. (Bloomberg)

I’ll stick with the millennial defending, only because I am dedicated and loyal and never quit what I start.  I’m just saying, if the millennials don’t find me a new friend with a multi-million dollar house in Westchester with a fucking salt water pool, they’re on thin ice with their biggest proponet.

H/t My Dad, everyone on Twitter.