The Twixters
From the Boomers to X’ers to Millenials, journalists, sociologists and others love to find ways to label groups of people. The latest group to get a label is the “Twixters” — young adults from 18-29 who are slow to grow up an assume real-world responsibilities. Rather than a “generation” in the tradtional sense (defined by a range of birth years), this is more of a mindset or a lifestyle, often marked by living with one’s parents past the college years.
Time magazine apparently invented the word “Twixter” last month to describe a sociologial phenomenon a number of researchers have seen developing over the past decade. Men and women today, on average, marry and have children several years later than their counterparts a few decades ago. They’re taking longer to get through school, switching jobs more often and moving from place to place on a regular basis. Many explanations are offered including poor job prospects, increasing college costs and less societal pressure to marry and settle down at a young age. Other observers want to blame the Twixters’ parents or just call the Twixters irresponsible and immature.
Whatever you think about this trend, it’s something to keep an eye on. I don’t know if we have a large population of twixters here in Ames, but other cities we may aim for in future church plants certainly do. The Time magazine article, in fact, focuses on 6 twixters who all live in the Chicago area.
We seem to have figured out a thing or two at the Rock about reaching college students. We know how to locate them and appeal to them, espcially in the dorms. But what appeals to twenty-somethings who are out of college and living the good life before (maybe) settling down in their later twenties or not until their thirties? Conventional wisdom used to be that if you didn’t catch people and draw them into church during their college years, you could reach them a short time later when they marry, have kids and want the kids to learn good morals at church. These days, you can’t count on that happening nearly as soon. It will be interesting to see how this works out.