A video of a 29-year-old woman sharing the “benefits” of being a single adult has gone viral on TikTok.
Podcaster Julia Mazur is single and “doesn’t have kids yet.” She recently shared a viral video on TikTok about what her Saturday morning looks like “when you’re single at 29 and you don’t have a kid running around the house.”
Julia spent the prior evening at a Beyonce concert, getting home at 1:00 AM. She woke up at 10:15 AM the next day “a tad hungover” and, while scrolling on her phone, saw a picture of shakshuka. She decided to spend her day learning how to make it, plus rewatching Real Housewives of New York and Normal People on Hulu.
“Whenever I’m hard on myself about why I’m not married and I don’t have kids and I should be further along at 29 almost 30, I wouldn’t wanna do anything else this Saturday,” she says, adding:
The effortless and ease of my life just kind of focusing on myself and the shakshuka I wanna make or the Beyonce concert I wanna go to really pays off.
You can watch Julia’s full video here:
@pmdpod Giving birth to a shakshuka today. #singleinyour30s #livingalonevlog #childlessbychoice #childlessmillennial
After Julia posted her video, various conservative commentators reposted it and shared their thoughts. Daily Wire host Matt Walsh said that Julia’s life “doesn’t revolve around her family and kids so instead it revolves around TV shows and pop stars,” adding, “[she doesn’t] realize how depressing this is.”
Julia’s video has now been viewed over 34 million times on X, formerly known as Twitter. It has also garnered much attention from mainstream media outlets, furious that conservatives have opinions on Julia’s video.
But one reason conservatives are discussing the video is because her story of being “single at 29” is becoming increasingly common – and not just for women.
In 1960, the median age at first marriage stood at age 20 for women and 22 for men. In 2022, the average age now stands at age 28 for women and 30 for men, the U.S. Census Bureau reports.
Additionally, the median age of U.S. women giving birth has increased from 27 to 30, the highest on record, as of 2022.
All of these statistics have great significance for society at large. When marriage and childbearing are delayed, eventually, both marriage and fertility rates are reduced. When people wait too long to get married, some fail to marry altogether.
And Americans are increasingly delaying – and foregoing – marriage. In the last 50 years, the marriage rate in the U.S. has fallen by nearly 60%.
It’s not a surprise, then, that the drop in the marriage rate has coincided with a substantial drop in the U.S. fertility rate, which has fallen from 3.75 in the 1950s to just 1.66 today.
Now, there are many reasons why adults in their 20s, 30s or 40s may not be married. An inability to find a suitable partner, a lack of quality men, financial reasons and individuals preferring the simplicity of single life are just a few reasons.
And we don’t intend to pass judgement on any particular person or their situations, including Julia Mazur.
But taken as a whole, many young adults are failing to find a good life partner, get married and have children, marks of adulthood that previous generations took for granted.
This is deeply troubling, especially when considering the great benefits marriage provides both men and women. Consider just some of the following statistics:
- Married men are far less likely than their single and divorced counterparts to suffer from alcoholism and alcohol-related illnesses.
- The wedded are on average more active and spend less time in hospitals.
- Married people have far lower death rates.
- Married men and women have far lower rates of mental illness.
- Married persons are significantly happier than their single counterparts.
- Married people earn and save more money than those who are not married.
In their book The Case for Marriage, Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagher summarize the great benefits marriage provides to both sexes:
Both married men and women live longer, healthier lives. … When it comes to money, marriage makes both men and women better off. … When it comes to sex and sexual satisfaction, once again both husbands and wives are better off because they dared to say, “I do.” … Marriage [also] provides some protection for women from domestic violence. …
In most areas of life, marriage makes both men and women better off.
From basically every facet of research – medical, sociological, financial and spiritual – marriage is a positive good for men and women. It may be countercultural to say so, but it’s true nonetheless.
For Christians who believe that God created men and women for each other (Genesis 1:26-27, ESV), and that both reflect the image and likeness of God, this shouldn’t surprise us.
But – as Julia’s video and the statistics about the decline of marriage prove – when it comes to convincing Americans to get married, there’s still a lot of work to do.
To learn more about why marriage matters for adults, click here.
Focus on the Family is presenting the upcoming two-day Resist the Drift Marriage Conference from September 15-16 and November 3-4. Attending couples will receive Bible-based concepts and tools from our trained marriage professionals on how to reconnect and strengthen their marriages. You can learn more about the upcoming conference here.
Also, if your marriage is struggling, Focus on the Family offers Hope Restored Marriage Intensives. Hope Restored is a biblically based, Christian counseling experience for couples facing a crisis moment in their marriage or suffering from years of disconnection and relationship decay. You can find out more about Hope Restored here.
Related articles and resources:
Counseling Consultation & Referrals
Why Marriage Matters for Adults
Focus on the Family: Marriage Assessment
Focus on the Family: Marriage Enrichment Events
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