Hitting the big 3-0 means something different than it did just a few decades ago
“As a chronic worrier, yet another birthday sets off alarm bells: Is that cashier calling me ma’am because she thinks I’m old?”
I’ve been dreading this day for a long time.
Today is my birthday.
As I attempt to muster enough breath to extinguish 29 candles on this year’s cake, the countdown to 30 officially begins.
Deep down, I know I’m not considered “old.” But when I was a kid, the big three-oh seemed so … responsible. All the 30-year-olds I knew were long-married parents with mortgages on three-bedroom houses behind picket fences, with minivans in the driveway.
While I’ve got the mortgage (on a family-unfriendly bachelor condo, in the wrong city) and a career, I feel far from settled. Most of my furniture is from Ikea. I can’t keep a plant alive. I eat pizza and ice cream for dinner way more often than I should.
As a chronic worrier, yet another birthday sets off alarm bells: Is that cashier calling me ma’am because she thinks I’m old? Is the fact that I own so many austere cardigans a sign that I’m turning into my mother? Am I putting enough into RRSPs? Was that a grey hair I saw, or was it just the lighting in the bathroom? Should I start drinking more milk to increase my bone density?
But according to an analyst at Statistics Canada, times have changed.
In a recent report entitled ‘Delayed transitions of young adults’, author Warren Clark said in 2001, young adults ages 18 to 34 took longer to go through transitions — including leaving school, leaving the parental home, getting full-time work, entering a conjugal union and having children — than their peers did 30 years ago in 1971.
“There are pretty dramatic changes through that 30-year time span,” said Clark, a senior analyst for Canadian Social Trends with Statistics Canada who works out of Ottawa.
“People are delaying the transitions that they make. The average 30-year-old, made the same number of transitions as a 25-year-old did in 1971, so there’s a five-year delay.”
While another Stats Can report found that young adults aged 20 to 29 are staying in the parental home longer (mainly due to continuing education and financial difficulties), Clark said people today, especially women, are more likely to delay marriage and children than their 1970s counterparts.
“In 1971, by age 30, 90 per cent of women were married or in a common-law relationship, but in 2001, only 75 per cent had been married or in a common-law relationship,” Clark said.
Clark said that while 80 per cent of 30-year-old women had at least one child back in 1971, that number had dropped to 56 per cent in 2001.
“The pursuit of higher education, career aspirations and the elusiveness of work-life balance may inhibit many women today from having children at the same age that their mothers did,” the report said.
It’s amazing how great a few numbers can make you feel. They were the best birthday present a girl could hope for.
