The Millennial Mindset: Slowly Changing The World
BOSTON (CBS) - Millennials are slowly changing the world.
Read: 'The Millennial Mindset' Series
At the Pew Research Center in Washington, DC, Kim Parker has done extensive research on this generation as the director of social trends research.
"In some ways they are at the cutting edge of some of the key demographic changes that are taking place, and it's not just race and ethnicity. It's also the way that they look at marriage and relationships. They are slower to marry and our research suggests that many of them, even by the time they reach late middle age, won't have married."
What are some of the reasons behind this shift?
"Part of it is that they have different attitudes about what constitutes a family and they are more open to the idea of single parenthood or cohabitating and raising kids, so it's not that they're not forming family units and having children, but they're doing it in different ways," Parker told WBZ NewsRadio 1030.
Another change is political involvement.
"Almost half of them say they are politically independent," she said. That's the highest level of political disaffiliation in Pew's quarter century of research on the generations.
State senator Eric Lesser of Longmeadow is the youngest member of the Massachusetts Senate at age 30.
He is keenly aware of the political disconnect.
"It's really giving rise to record levels of cynicism about the process." he told WBZ.
In Part 7, we'll have details on Lesser's Senate Millennial Engagement Initiative.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Mary Blake reports
