(ANALYSIS) If you’ve been paying attention to news in the past year or so, you have probably seen headlines like this in The New York Times: “In a First Among Christians, Young Men Are More Religious Than Young Women.”

Or how about this, also from the Times: “Young Women Are Fleeing Organized Religion. This Was Predictable.”

These headlines are linked to the topic in this week’s “Crossroads” podcast, so please keep reading. 

Perhaps, if you are Eastern Orthodox or part of another ancient, liturgical tradition, you have noticed headlines like this, from The Telegraph: “Young, single men are leaving traditional churches. They found a more ‘masculine’ alternative.”

Here’s one more, care of MSN.com: “Young Women Are More Liberal Than Young Men, and It's Affecting Dating Culture.”

Now, if you have read several dozen headlines like these, you may conclude that there is a moral and even religious element to the waves of statistics showing that fewer young Americans (and young adults around the world) are getting married and starting families.

Which is exactly what Joel West, a reader who follows these podcasts, thought when he saw this dramatic double-decker headline in The Wall Street Journal: 

What Happens When a Whole Generation Never Grows Up?

As American 30-somethings increasingly bypass the traditional milestones of adulthood, economists are warning that what seemed like a lag may in fact be a permanent state of arrested development.

West sent me an email that noted: 

I don't know if you still do "ghosts," but this WSJ article about failure to launch-boomerang 30-somethings screams ghosts. The reporter … focuses on the lower % of compatriots marrying, having kids, buying a home. But she doesn't look (or ask) about the contingency (moderating) variables: who still is doing so? From the young adults at my church, and my daughter (26) and her devoutly Anglican and Catholic friends, I would say the seriously religious are still making a priority of the traditional goals — even if the headwinds mean they are delayed a year or two. 

Now, if that “ghost” reference doesn’t ring any bells for you, West is talking about one of the key journalism concepts that defined the GetReligion.org website (archive here) for 20 years. 

Thus, the Feb. 1, 2004, overture for that website opened with this:

Day after day, millions of Americans who frequent pews see ghosts when they pick up their newspapers or turn on television news. They read stories that are important to their lives, yet they seem to catch fleeting glimpses of other characters or other plots between the lines. There seem to be other ideas or influences hiding there.

One minute they are there. The next they are gone. There are ghosts in there, hiding in the ink and the pixels. Something is missing in the basic facts or perhaps most of the key facts are there, yet some are twisted. Perhaps there are sins of omission, rather than commission.

A lot of these ghosts are, well, holy ghosts. They are facts and stories and faces linked to the power of religious faith. Now you see them. Now you don’t. In fact, a whole lot of the time you don’t get to see them. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

In other words, journalists frequently cover important news stories, but miss key facts and themes that — for half of America, or thereabouts — are linked to morality or religion. Thus, these stories are haunted by “religion ghosts.”

The WSJ, as you would expect, does a great job of covering the many valid economic trends that are making it hard for many young people to take the key steps that, for many generations, defined what it means to “launch” into adult life. 

There are those giant college and graduate-school loans, for example. There are the relatively modest entry-level salaries that make it hard for women and men to live the lives they believe they are meant to live in deep-blue, high-end, zip comes along the East and West Coasts.

But read this passage about the struggles of 38-year-old Cody Harding of Brooklyn:

Instead of being able to support a family or at least live on his own as a full-time lawyer, he’s paying $1,700 in monthly rent to live with roommates in Brooklyn. When it became clear his dreams of homeownership were not achievable in New York, he recently got help from his parents to close on a fixer-upper in his hometown of Easton, Pa. Like many of his peers, he earns extra income from a side hustle: in his case running a vintage furniture store.

Harding still hopes to get married and have children, but has grown disenchanted with a dating culture that he feels prizes short-term flings over long-term commitment. He’d also rather stay single than compromise on the wrong fit. Most of his friends are in the same state of suspended adolescence, he says, which sometimes makes it feel like time is standing still.

“It’s fine trying to reinvent what a modern life looks like, but I’m a little disappointed by everything that it lacks,” Harding says. “I’m sick of partying. I did that already. I want to grow up.”

Or how about this anecdote, from the point of view of a young woman:

By the time Renata Leo’s parents were 31, the age she is now, they had gotten married, purchased a home and had her. Yet she is still sleeping in her childhood bedroom, gazing at the same unicorn wallpaper put up before she was born.

“Redecorating would mean accepting that I’m not leaving,” says Leo, who has been back home in Glassboro, N.J., since graduating college in 2015 with $20,000 in student-loan debt.

She was close to moving out in 2020, but the pandemic’s surging home prices derailed plans to buy a starter house with her then-fiance. (He moved into her childhood bedroom with her before they broke up this past summer.) Since losing her full-time job at a startup in 2021 she’s been working part-time and has felt stuck, unsure of what she wants to do next.

“I feel like a failure,” she says. …

The WSJ team never paused to interview the many researchers who are looking at this topic though a “marriage” and “family” lens. Instead, the editors elected to stick with a strictly economic and cultural lens (a totally valid element of this crisis). Yet, over and over, the young people featured in this solid business-beat story talk about their struggles with non-economic elements in this drama.

Did anyone in the newsroom say something like this: “Hey, what about all of those stories we have been seeing about many young adults heading back to religious congregations, or even fleeing them, while struggling with this failure to launch scenario?”

It would appear not.

Trust me, there are religious leaders who are very concerned about these trends and, yes, they are also seeing problems in their own pews. They see the faith elements in this crisis, but they see the many ways that economic and career trends are in play, as well.

Thus, let me point to two of my “On Religion” columns from 2022, “Old enough? Faith, family and America's falling marriage statistics” and “Mature enough? Can congregations and clergy help young adults prep for marriage?” Here is the overture from that second column: 

It's a message young people in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints hear early and often: You should get married, because marriage is wonderful and family life is at the heart of the faith.

The problem is that church leaders haven't grasped the power of cultural trends in technology, education and economics that are fueling sharp declines in statistics linked to dating, marriage and fertility, said Brian Willoughby of the Brigham Young University School of Family Life.

"The key word is 'tension,' " he said. Among the Latter-day Saints, these numbers are "not falling as fast" as in other groups, "but our young people are feeling tensions between the patterns they see all around them and what they hear from their parents and religious leaders.

“We are seeing the same changes — only moving slower. The average age of people getting married is rising. Fertility rates are declining. … We can no longer assume that religious young people are some kind of different species." …

The result is what some researchers call the "marriage paradox." Young people continue to express a strong desire to "get married at some point," but they place an even higher priority on other "life goals," said Willoughby.

This is a complex topic. But for millions of Americans, these trends raise religious and moral questions. Right?

Enjoy the podcast and, please, pass it along to others.