design your own goalpost 🏈

July 30, 2026 • Issue No. 41

This is not your grandmother’s world. It’s not your mother’s world. If you have an older sister, it’s not her world, either. It wouldn’t have mattered that your grandmother lived at home until she was married. Your parents didn’t meet on a dating app. You don’t carry a pager, or give out your fax number, or rush home by 7pm to catch your favorite show when it airs on cable.

All of this is obvious. Times have changed. But our milestones haven’t.

I read two articles this week that make me want to hold you by the shoulders, stare you squarely in the eye, and say: You get to decide what a good life looks like. You get to design your own goalpost.  

1.

The first article, by Angela Chapin, was the latest viral essay in New York Magazine’s The Cut. It would’ve earned clicks based on the title alone, but it’s also a fascinating (and pretty quick) read. It’s unclear how far-reaching the trend is, but Chapin interviewed at least three young women, pseudonymized as McKayla, Jessica, and Naomi for “Call Her Mommy: Gen Z women are paying for, and parenting, their boyfriends”. In short, ambitious young women with jobs are in relationships with young men who, for various reasons, choose to remain under- or un-employed. Jessica’s boyfriend was helpful in other ways like driving her to work, scheduling her yoga classes, and packing her lunch. But other boyfriends, like McKayla’s, just don’t seem to have a handle on real life. Here’s a quote:

Eek. Let’s come back to that in a moment.

2.

The second article, in Fortune, summarizes a recent report by Susan Wachter, a real estate and finance professor at Wharton (UPenn). On the occasion of the nation’s 250th birthday, Wachter assessed the feasibility of the American Dream delineated as “finish school, find a job, get married, buy a home, raise a family”. If you already feel that dream floating beyond your reach like a rogue balloon on a windy day, I promise it’s not just you. Here are some of the stats Eleanor Pringle uses in her article about Wachter’s report:

• Moving Out: “A record 25.2 million adults under 35 were still living with their parents in 2025—nearly one in three. Perhaps more surprising is that the vast majority—70%—were employed.” (Realtor.com, June 2026)

• Getting Married: “The estimated median age at first marriage increased to 30.8 for men and 28.4 for women, up from ages 23.5 and 21.1, respectively, in 1975.” (U.S. Census Bureau, December 2025)

• Having Kids: “The mean age of mothers at first birth increased 0.9 years, from 26.6 in 2016 to 27.5 in 2023.” (National Library of Medicine, 2025)

On average, people are moving out later, getting married later, and having kids later (I presume those milestones are even more delayed if you live in an urban area like NYC). Wachter is calling this ‘The Great Postponement’. Americans are still hitting these milestones but we’re doing so much later than we have in previous generations.

the last word

So here I am, gripping you by the shoulders and staring deeply into your eyes.

The markers, milestones, and goalposts that women before us might have used to affirm their progress — having a significant other, moving out, getting married, having kids — are fine things to pursue if that’s what you want.

But if you’re trying to pattern your life on an outdated script and feeling like happiness is on the other side of this checklist of things, you may be setting yourself up for big-time frustration.

I’m so curious about the Gen Z women Chapin interviewed for her article. What’s the upside to having a boyfriend with a net zero (or net negative) impact when you could just have no boyfriend at all?

Millennial women, I’m not letting you off the hook either. Do you really want to own a home or apartment or is it something you can announce, something to validate the time you’ve spent in your career, something to appease your parents?

We are — and I don’t use this phrase lightly — living in unprecedented times. Here’s how Chapin describes it:

No matter how old you are in 2026 and what generation you fit into, you have far more options and opportunity than your foremothers. You can follow the script they were corralled into or you can write your own. Success could look like having a boyfriend and owning your apartment, but it could also look like an annual solo trip, putting your name on a bench in your favorite park, running a marathon, organizing a charity drive, leading a Girl Scout troop, investing, writing a book, starting a garden, patenting an invention, commissioning a portrait, running for political office, changing careers, taking on a leadership role in your church, learning a language, recording a mixtape. There are so many things that we have access to in the present that were near-impossible for women to attain in the past. It’s the 21st century, dollface. Act like it!

I’ll let go of your shoulders now, but hear me:

💎 You get to decide what a good life looks like. 💎

💎You get to design your own goalpost. 💎 

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