{"id":660758,"date":"2026-06-27T08:02:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T08:02:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/660758\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T08:02:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T08:02:31","slug":"did-we-prepare-men-for-modern-millennial-marriages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/660758\/","title":{"rendered":"Did We Prepare Men for Modern Millennial Marriages?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe it\u2019s the social media<\/a> algorithm pushing content my way, or the fact that what I see in my therapy<\/a> room as a couples and relationship therapist is a biased sample, since I only work with clients struggling in their relationships. But I have been noticing a theme emerge, both in my clinical work with millennial women and couples, and in what I\u2019m hearing from millennial women online, that is making me wonder if we millennial women can really \u201chave it all\u201d like we were told we could, or did we, as a society, miss a fundamental part of this cultural shift\u2014 preparing millennial men for what it would require of them!<\/p>\n

Millennials Are Doing Marriages Differently<\/p>\n

Research clearly shows that millennials are marrying differently from the generations before. Millennials are marrying later, are more selective about marriage<\/a>, and are contributing to a decline in overall divorce<\/a> rates in the U.S. (Parker & Stepler, 2020; Cohen, 2019). They also ask more of marriage than any other generation before them. They expect emotional intimacy<\/a>, friendship<\/a>, equality, shared parenting<\/a>, and mutual support for both partners\u2019 ambitions. In many ways, the bar for what constitutes a successful marriage has never been higher. <\/p>\n

However, as millennial couples enter midlife<\/a>, become parents, and take on bigger roles in their careers, I am seeing increasing tension around gender<\/a> roles in their marriages. Many millennial women are sharing that they increasingly feel a sense of hopelessness about their husbands meeting their needs, and some are coming to the realization that their husbands simply do not have the skills they need from their partners. <\/p>\n

So why are millennial couples experiencing tension around gender roles in midlife, when both partners were previously fundamentally on the same page in their beliefs around gender equality?<\/p>\n

Equality in Theory Is Different From Equality in Practice<\/p>\n

Research actually shows that among millennials, 72 percent believe the most satisfying marriage is one in which both partners work and both share household and childcare responsibilities (Parker & Wang, 2011). As a therapist having an intimate inside view of what\u2019s happening in millennial marriages, I don\u2019t think millennial marriages are struggling because men don\u2019t believe in equality. I think many are struggling because society changed women\u2019s opportunities through the tireless work of the feminist movement, but we didn\u2019t prepare men for what gender equality would practically require of them. <\/p>\n

The Marriage Gap No One Prepared Millennials For<\/p>\n

The reality is that many millennial couples are navigating a mismatch: the millennial marriage gap. They aspire to be in an egalitarian partnership, but many men were not raised with models of what practical and emotional equality looks like in a marriage. <\/p>\n

While the second-wave feminist movement did a great job at teaching millennial boys that women could do everything they could, we missed out on the very important part of this puzzle\u2014that to create a society where women will take on big careers and ambitions, men will also need to be taught to do everything women traditionally did! <\/p>\n

Millennial boys, who are now husbands, needed to be taught the practical skills that are required to support a partner and a family as an equal partner, such nurturing children through babysitting, playing house, learning to bake, cook, clean, and organize their spaces or at least be exposed to all this as being relevant to them, not just a \u201cmoms and girls thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But I also don\u2019t want to oversimplify what preparing boys for these family roles would have looked like. It\u2019s not simply knowing how to cook or clean. It\u2019s learning to anticipate that daycare paperwork needs to be completed before the deadline. It\u2019s noticing when the refrigerator is empty, or the diaper bag needs restocking. It\u2019s about rearranging your work schedule because your partner has an important meeting, rather than assuming your wife will figure it out. It\u2019s carrying some of the invisible emotional labor<\/a> of running a family\u2014remembering birthdays, scheduling doctor\u2019s appointments, planning holidays. Growing up, most millennial men saw their mothers take on the role of manager and anchor of the household, despite their having careers and increased opportunities for women in the workplace.<\/p>\n

Research suggests that children learn more about gender roles from parents\u2019 everyday behaviors\u2014such as how childcare, household labor, and paid work are divided\u2014than from what parents say they believe about gender equality (Halpern & Perry-Jenkins, 2016). In many families, girls absorbed this role over years of watching mothers and grandmothers anticipate needs, manage households, shoulder the emotional labor, and often place the needs of others before their own. Millennial girls growing up were still also more likely to be expected to help\u2014to babysit younger siblings, assist with cooking, tidy shared spaces, and notice what needed to be done. Many boys, by contrast, were growing up with far fewer opportunities to observe or practice these same responsibilities.<\/p>\n

Where Do We Go From Here?<\/p>\n

There is an age-old saying that behind every successful man is a strong woman. However, as a society, we conveniently forgot that behind every successful woman, there also needs to be an emotionally and practically supportive man. As a couple, if we can recognize this societal lapse, instead of pointing fingers at each other or playing the blame game, it can help women be more compassionate in asking for more of their partners, and it can help men feel more motivated to make the effort of learning what they should have been taught to begin with.<\/p>\n

Many men already had a role model for proactive household management<\/a> and emotional caregiving<\/a>; however, in most families, it was just their mothers, not their dads. Most millennial men saw their mothers take on this role. Instead of feeling lost in what is expected of them, they can now ask themselves, \u201cWhat would my mother have already noticed or done by now in this situation? How did she carry the household?\u201d and maybe try to do that!<\/p>\n

Hopefully, we will also do better at raising the next generation of boys: raising them with the skills to be the partners our daughters will need in their marriages, and more importantly, modeling the modern gender roles that will set them up for success in their marriages as men.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maybe it\u2019s the social media algorithm pushing content my way, or the fact that what I see in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-660758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}