Analysis of Millennials Say Marriage Ideal but Parenthood the Priority Article by Jason Hanna - Essay Example

The article ends by stating that the changing environment, meaning economic, has also helped to change the current culture concerning how marriage is viewed among Millenials as well as others. While completing education is a high priority still, finding a good job and establishing oneself has also become almost a requirement before considering marriage or childbearing. Essay: Although the above article has very good points and key insights into the generation known as the Millenials, it is however somewhat deceiving as to the true trends that are being represented.

Furthermore, when articles such as the one above are published it is always necessary to consider by whom, when, why, and to what end. In this way, this brief response essay will help to consider but a few of these as well as to provide some key reading insights that this author gained from analyzing the above article. Firstly, a common trend in journalism is to create stories where none would otherwise exist. It is a well-known fact that to sell journalism must convince the readership/viewership that ideas, cultures, and individuals are changing.

Imagine a world in which a newspaper or a television news program reported that absolutely nothing new or interesting was taking place. Of course, the idea seems ludicrous. Similarly, one of the primary mechanisms which the media uses to engage the attention of the viewership/readership is to convince them that a fundamental shift is taking place at every moment of the day. The above article is not dissimilar to such a tactic in that it has all of the tell-tale makers of sensationalist journalism.

Firstly, one group is compared to another. Secondly, a level of statistical analysis is used. Thirdly, it is determined that based on the statistical analysis, it is indeed measurable that the current generation does not value traditional morality to the same extent that the previous one did. Although there may be a grain of truth to some of the information that the study and proceeding article related, the fact of the matter is that it follows all too similar a pattern concerning attempting to sell advertising space by playing off the emotions of a concerning citizenry.

An additional point of interest is the fact that the article opens by citing “a new study” and then goes on for some length before admitting that the PEW Research Center was indeed the group that put out such a study. This is not important to the average reader. However, the fact of the matter is that centers such as the PEW Research Center can make the lion’s share of their profits by churning out untenable study after untenable study. Most of these are sold to political think tanks and picked up by the media.

Accordingly, for each political point of view or journalist, there is a corresponding statistic that can work to tell one particular side of the story. Yet a further flaw of logic and scholarship is referenced in the fact that the journalist refers to the fact that Gen-X placed a higher emphasis on marriage than did the Millenials based on a similar survey (Hanna 1). One would expect that the survey would have been conducted at the very least by the same group.