Why Adulting is So Hard (using social science)

​People are doing fewer and fewer of the “adult” things they used to, from getting married and having kids to getting out of the house instead of doom scrolling. But why is this true, and how are these changes in behavior connected? In this short online talk with interactive options and Q&A, Dr. Sarah Stein Lubrano will argue that all these changes are driven in significant part by a social reproduction crisis, a crisis in the kind of care that keeps people going and makes more people (we can think about it as the “up-keeping” everyone needs to exist and go out in the world). 

​Turning her eye towards two poorly analyzed “crises”, the “male” “loneliness crisis” and the “population crisis” she’ll demonstrate how many measurable changes in population-wide behaviour are poorly understood because commentators don’t think in terms of social reproduction. We can better understand why people don’t leave their houses or have children once we see the way this “upkeeping” is in many respect both more difficult and less rewarding than ever before. Adulting is hard because we’re out of training, companionship, and resources to do “upkeep” and for ourselves and each other.

​

​Together we’ll uncover:

​

• ​what created this crisis, from the decline of the welfare state to changes in how men and women are paid

• ​how people lost the skills involved in the physical, emotional, and generational work of both “up keeping” themselves and others, and “keeping up” with each other

• ​why this kind of work of up keeping is harder than ever once we’re isolated

• ​two possible futures for “up keeping” in the 21st century.

​

​Come for the data and theory, stay to dream up better ways of keeping each other going, together.