Millennial and Gen Z parents are struggling

Kyle Taylor doesn't have a village.

The Alabama-based 26-year-old and his girlfriend were delighted when their daughter was born a year ago, but nowadays they are feeling a bit lost. To make ends meet, Taylor has been spending a lot of time at work. And while his girlfriend stays at home, Taylor's schedule and the needs of the baby have left them stretched thin. But none of Taylor's friends are parents, and most don't plan on having kids, leaving them unsure how to chip in with a newborn. Growing up, Taylor always heard about the proverbial village it takes to raise a child. Now that he actually has one, he realizes there is no village anymore.

"There's already this kind of disconnect for us. People aren't thinking in terms of like, how can I support my friend?" he said. "Rather, I think they're just kind of grateful that they're not in my situation of having someone to care for."

Millennial and Gen Z parents are finding themselves isolated. Maybe they've moved away from their family in search of a well-paying job or cheaper rent. When parents are close by, they're often still working and don't have time to pitch in with childcare. Outside the family tree, many of their peers either can't afford or are choosing not to have kids, making it harder for them to understand what their new-parent friends are dealing with. And raising children is becoming increasingly expensive, adding an economic weight to their worries.

"We've been left with kind of a wreckage of an economy here in the states. It's tough," he told me. "It's really, really tough living paycheck to paycheck, like most people, and not really getting a whole lot of support or feeling like people my age really understand."

The new paradigm of parenthood is made up of a series of impossible decisions: leaving jobs, moving away from friends or families, or working longer hours to make ends meet. Natalie Groff, a 33-year-old mother of four, summed up her cohort's dilemma succinctly: "The way things are right now, it's pretty messed up and the odds are definitely stacked against us."

The cost for (pa)rents is too damn high

Millennials have spent the past two decades trying to find their economic footing — two recessions, a college-debt crisis, a pandemic, and the worst labor market in a half-century didn't make it easy. But they and Gen Zers behind them have finally caught up to previous generations in terms of their income, Jean Twenge, a psychologist and the author of "Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future," told me.

"The good news is that median incomes for younger adults are at all-time highs, even when adjusted for inflation," Twenge said. "And that's partially because more millennials and Gen Zers went to college and got a college degree, and folks who get those degrees make more money."

But while their incomes have climbed, the price of all kinds of child-rearing essentials has skyrocketed even higher. The cost of childcare has tripled since 1991, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and research by economists at Bank of America found that the average family was spending over $700 a month on care as of September, a figure 32% higher than in 2019. Even as childcare workers grapple with low pay and tough conditions, a report from the Department of Labor found that the precarious system of underfunded childcare — which relies on "overburdened families and underpaid childcare workers" — meant that childcare is unaffordable almost everywhere in the US.

"Childcare prices are untenable for families across all care types, age groups, and county population sizes," the report, released in January, said.

Childcare isn't even the start of increasingly expensive child-rearing expenses. Since 1997, the price of baby food and formula has more than doubled, with NielsenIQ data showing the price of diapers rising by almost 22% from 2018 to 2022 alone. As fast as the money comes in from the pay raises that millennials and Gen Zers have secured, for parents the money goes right back out. That may explain why the younger generations are falling behind on their debt payments. America's 18- to 29-year-olds are seeing about twice as much debt going into serious delinquency compared with those ages 50 to 59 and 60 to 69.

These realities can force many millennial and Gen Z parents to make tough choices. Most of the income gains made by young people, Twenge said, have come from women's salaries. More women are graduating from college and seeing their incomes start to catch up. But that can be a double-edged sword for young heterosexual couples: It doesn't make sense to forgo either parent's high salary, so they have to wrangle incredibly expensive childcare instead. A family in New York City with just one young child, for instance, would have to make $300,000 a year for their childcare costs to meet federal affordability standards. And the longer-term boom in women's career opportunities means the mothers and grandmothers who might have previously been available to pitch in care are no longer available, because they're working.

Take Groff, the mother of four: When her old workplace shuttered, she became a stay-at-home parent again, which alleviated the cost of after-school care. The savings were so significant that when a supervisor job opportunity came up, the salary wouldn't be enough to break even for the cost of childcare. So she's once again working as a stay-at-home mom while studying for a master's degree.

"In some ways, it was very comforting to come back home," she said. "But in other ways it's just like, OK, I know this is what I can do for my family at this time, but I almost have this master's degree — and when am I going to use it?"

Rep. Jimmy Gomez, a Democrat from California who helped found the Congressional Dads Caucus, knows these struggles personally. Gomez is the father of a 13-month-old who briefly went viral in January after being pictured strapped onto his father's chest during the first chaotic round of House Speaker votes. Gomez told me that what we're seeing right now "is just a ton of pressure on parents when it comes to making ends meet."

He's not exempt from that pressure — his family is paying nearly $2,700 a month for just three days of childcare a week. At the same time, Gomez added, the average American family that rents their home is now considered rent-burdened, meaning they spend at least 30% of their income on housing. Between childcare and rent, two major expenses can easily eat up over half of a family's income.

"That means less money for a 401(k), savings, college, starting a small business, repairs to your house. Just the basic stuff becomes more and more difficult," he said. "So the stress is real, especially for Gen Z and millennials."

Taylor, the Gen Z parent, said he understood this problem deeply. After the birth of his daughter, his job and salary didn't really change, but his expenses did. He says his family is living paycheck to paycheck and just "hemorrhaging money."

"I have a fairly decent job. It would be good for a single person with no kids," he said, adding that there was "just no disposable income, basically, between rent and groceries."

The loss of a village

Beyond the financial pressures of modern parenting, there is also another fundamental problem: isolation. The kinds of places that encouraged community and allowed young parents to meet one another have been disappearing, especially as suburbs — renowned for their sprawl — see more Gen Zers and millennials moving in. And even the definition of a "young parent" is changing: In 1990, the median mother in the US had her first child at age 27; as of 2019, that age had risen to 30.

Just look at one proxy for a lost village: how often kids are walking to school. It's become a familiar joking refrain that, back in the day, everyone would make their hikes to school. But there's truth to that. The share of kids usually walking and biking to school has fallen — from 48% in 1969 to about 10% in 2017. By 2017, about 54% of kids were traveling to school in private vehicles, with bus transport coming in at a distant second at 33.2%. At the same time, over half of Americans lived in childcare deserts as of 2018, areas where the number of children outnumbered licensed care slots by at least three to one — meaning that parents have to go farther, or pay more, or stay home to access care.

And, as of 2018, just 16% of Americans in a Pew Research Center survey reported feeling very attached to their communities. Younger Americans seemed particularly detached, with just 8% of 18- to 29-year-olds saying they were very attached to their local community, and 13% of those ages 30 to 49 saying the same.

This increasing sense of isolation is seeping across society even though Gen Zers and millennials want to be near one another and the things that they enjoy. An April survey of 2,000 urban adults from the National Association of Realtors found nearly half of millennials said they considered living in a walkable community to be very important, with both Gen Zers and millennials saying they'd rather live closer to public transit than a highway. Millennials with kids said they'd happily trade a smaller yard for a walkable community, and both cohorts said they'd pay more to live in a walkable community. But, at the same time, young parents are fleeing those walkable cities for the towns next door. With the rise of remote work — which has been a boon for care-strapped parents, but not so much for us as humans who need socialization — the cheaper suburbs and exurbs make sense for cash-strapped parents.

The lack of support is even beginning to factor into young people's decisions on whether to have a family at all. Over half of Gen Z and 47% of millennials surveyed by Deloitte in late 2022 said they expected starting a family to become harder — or outright impossible. This hopelessness has reinforced the dissipation of the village. Since younger parents are now "the exception rather than the rule," Twenge said, the share of people with peers going through the same stage of parenting has shrunk. Over the past few years, the birth rate among 40- to 45-year-olds has slowly been ticking up; it's even more pronounced for those ages 35 to 39. At the same time, the birth rates for those ages 20 to 34 have all fallen.

Recently, Rep. Brittany Pettersen of Colorado, a Democratic millennial who has a young kid, was able to experience the type of village that is all too rare these days. When she visited a friend's house, the houses were clustered around a communal area with a playground, grass, and tables where kids could go play.

"People come out and bring their food out and help each other watch their kids," she said. It was a simple reality, but one that showed the way that things could be.

"We just have to rethink the many ways in which we've made this much more difficult," Pettersen told me. Her generation, she said, is dealing with "so many of the failed policies" that have led to a village like that feeling out of reach.

So why are these physical villages so rare? Pettersen blames failed tax policies: "When we continue to cut taxes for the most wealthy and we don't reinvest back in communities for the critical services to level the playing field for regular people, we just continue to see this opportunity gap increasing."

For generations that are already spending less time with others — and are experiencing higher rates of depression, coupled with fun activities becoming increasingly financially out of reach — the lack of a peer cohort of parents may be another social blow.

"They are spending less time with people face to face, and that can be tough when you're entering parenthood," Twenge said.

The ability to make a choice, and how to fix it

In speaking with parents, lawmakers, and experts, one thing became clear about the state of parenthood in America: It's becoming a decision that's turned from a normal progression of life into a thicket of difficult choices. Many are opting out of having kids altogether, creating a different type of void. Tumbling birth rates might spell future economic disaster for America. It also means those who are having kids are feeling more isolated, standing alone on a costly, shrinking island.

"It was so financially impossible" to think about becoming a parent, Pettersen said. And yet, there she is. She's still trying to figure out how to balance everything, "but we don't make it easy for parents, and we don't have that community support and those community connections previous generations did."

That's not to say there aren't policy solutions: Rep. Becca Balint, a Democrat from Vermont, didn't have her first kid until she was about 39. She said policies like the child tax credit and lowering student-loan burdens — alongside investing in affordable housing and childcare — could help address some parental challenges.

"All of those expenses that we are able to stabilize make it easier for young families, and it takes off that incredible stress and anxiety that you feel, and loneliness when you feel like, I'm working as hard as I can and I can't seem to get on top of things," Balint said.

It used to be the case, Pettersen said, that each generation in America would have it better than the last. That's no longer true. Until the 1970s, it would take the typical American family 23 years to double their incomes — once a generation. As of 2021, it takes over 100 years.

Even with the economic struggles that come alongside it, Taylor has found parenthood to be transformative. He says it makes him think on a daily basis about what other people are going through, and to offer them more grace. Raising a young human is difficult.

"I love that sense of connectedness that I get with other parents, people I see in public, even if I don't know them," he said.

Of course, Taylor respects anyone who's decided that parenthood isn't for them. Broadly, he thinks our economic system is incompatible with giving people the true support they need.

"If you desperately want to have a child or children, to raise a family — such an innate desire in so many people — you should have the chance to," Taylor said, "and life should be such that you shouldn't have to count yourself out."

Juliana Kaplan is a senior labor and inequality reporter on Insider's economy team.