Sexually Free, Emotionally Numb: Young Adult Women in 2026 

Many social observers have noticed the malaise affecting young American men. Women, however, do not seem to be faring much better. It is true that women report higher educational successes and lower rates of addiction or acute despair than men. Nonetheless, in the relationships department, they broadly fail to obtain the happy endings that romantic comedy films and television shows have promised them. And they seem to have given up searching for it.  

Almost thirty years ago, American bioethicist Leon Kass wrote a sentence that rings truer today than it did then: “[M]ost young women strike me as sad, lonely, and confused: hoping for something more, they are not enjoying their hard-won sexual liberation as much as liberation theory says they should.”  

My own work and experience, sadly, confirms Kass’s observation. 

A Generation Still Aching for Marriage and Meaning 

Between July 2025 and January 2026, our research team at the Austin Institute interviewed fifty-two unmarried men and women between the ages of twenty-four and thirty-five. We asked them questions about their families of origin, past and present romantic and sexual relationships, views on marriage and childbearing, and desires to settle down. Notwithstanding their diverse backgrounds and beliefs, our interviews of twenty-nine women revealed that this cohort keeps dreaming of the married life. More than two thirds of them stated it clearly: they want to be married at some point. “I think that’s important for me to grow up in a house [where parents] love each other and I would not want to have kids before getting married,” one woman said. In the words of a more traditional single woman, “marriage is also the stepping-stone to … building a family. And I do believe a lot in the institution of family, for sure, because of the safety and the belongingness that a family will provide.” Only one of them was clearly opposed to the idea of marriage, with the remaining six being ambivalent or unsure, but unwilling to rule out marriage entirely. The Austin Institute’s “Relationships in America 2025” nationally representative survey data offer a similar picture, with only 10 percent of young adult women strongly agreeing that “marriage is outdated.” 

Though these women largely downplayed the importance of the marriage covenant, they seemed to be aware of the emotional, legal, and financial benefits attached to the legal contract. And they seem to welcome the prospect of this permanent bond and the personal and financial security it provides. (With the “the logistics of living in this world, it would also be very nice and helpful to get through it with someone,” one interviewee mentioned.) One participant voiced her desire for a prenuptial agreement as a preventive measure: “I would be happy with [a prenup], and I would honestly be the one to suggest it.” Having witnessed the distress that her parents’ divorce caused her family, she seemed to desire some security in the likely event her marriage would end; this was her implied belief (“I would 100 percent have a prenup just to make it easier,” she remarked). Another participant—polyamorous, nonbinary, and proudly unconventional—conceded, too, that she could still envision marrying her boyfriend, who she described as a potentially great father and “kind of more traditional than I am,” perhaps in a pagan wedding ceremony. Lastly, a lesbian woman said she would consider marriage too, though only in the next ten or fifteen years, and only if her partner wanted children.  

Overall, the data show that most women still desire a stable, long-term relationship—what we may still think about as marriage. Though not even the Catholic women cared about the marriage ceremony or sacramental validity, they still expressed a desire for lifelong partnership, and more than half wanted children, too.  

They still, however, expressed a strong desire to focus on their own goals and interests. “I would like to graduate from law school before getting married or engaged. I would like to, like, have a real job, like my career, something that is salaried,” reported one participant. Or, as a thirty-year-old woman said, “I feel like another good decade by myself is good, maybe five to ten years.” In other words, whether currently dating or not, these young adult women do not prioritize their partners or their relationships more generally. During their most fertile years, they overwhelmingly consider their sexed and generative natures as something to be managed or prevented while pursuing other goals and priorities. Indeed, while all of them knew how to avoid babies, real attention to, or concern about, their sexed bodies, especially their fertility, wasn’t reported.  

More Sex; Meaningless Sex 

At the time of the interview, more than 80 percent of the women had had sex. Thirteen of them lost their virginity before turning eighteen, and eleven after, with a common answer being by the “end of high school.” More than 60 percent of them had had intercourse with five or more people thus far in their lives; 45 percent with ten or more. With only one exception, losing their virginity before college was correlated with the absence of a stable and protective father figure (for a variety of reasons, but mostly due to divorce). Notably, the correlation between not wanting children and coming from a broken home was particularly strong.  

Though these women were sexually active and reported eventually wanting a stable family and home, their early twenties were not focused on either finding or nurturing a loving relationship. Only two women reported that their sexual encounters were always in the context of a romantic relationship. During college, we learned, sex is not so much part of a relationship as it is part of a script. Like a gym membership, or a Netflix subscription, sex is what people do (and expect you to do, too), while laying the foundation for a free and autonomous life. A commonly reported reason for starting to have sex was mimicking what everyone else was doing. No one spoke of succumbing to irresistible passions. Without exception, and notwithstanding all these sexual partners, our interviewees had kept their focus on career plans, personal growth, and traveling. None mentioned moving or choosing a particular career to increase their chances of either meeting a spouse or pursuing work that is better suited to a future family life. Romance and stable relationships, although desired, were mere eventualities. Family did not need to be prioritized nor planned for. In their view, the opportunity to settle down will and should simply “happen,” just like sex.  

If this is what sex (and relationships) have become, however, most older women would not want to live the much celebrated “sexual liberation” of these twenty- and thirty-year-olds. Rather than feeling “liberated,” the so-called “gentler sex” seems to be following new social expectations—those of meaningless sex. As one participant said (and others implied): “I went on dating apps and ended up having sex because that is what everyone else was doing.” Another woman said that it was the peer pressure from other women that led her to have sexual encounters in high school, and to do so with men even though she had always known she liked girls and still considers herself a lesbian.  

Most of these women’s first sexual encounters weren’t memorable, let alone romantic. Their accounts were further evidence that “consent” alone is not enough to constitute a meaningful romantic relationship. 

Boomers who bought the lies of movies like “Dirty Dancing,” where premarital sex ends up being the start of a wonderful and powerful love story, thought that sexual liberation and love would be allies. These women’s accounts of sex, however, tell us a different story. Unlike those of their Hollywood counterparts, these women’s first sexual encounters were often mechanical and soulless, deprived of that magic tension, that sense of mystery that belongs in a committed romantic relationship. Based on their accounts, sex is now a mere pursuit of physical pleasure, one more way to avoid boredom, and at times, a mere social expectation.  

The Fertility Trap 

Among our sexually active heterosexual interviewees, all but one were on birth control at some point in their lives, and more than half of them reported that they currently use some form of contraception. More than 60 percent of the women were also in favor of abortifacient options like Plan B and medical or surgical abortions as means of preventing childbirth. Notably, women who opposed abortion were motivated by their religious views. In other words, neither current Texas laws nor biological facts about embryos were as relevant as their personal beliefs in this realm. Equally interesting is how the most highly educated participants were also less inclined to be on the Pill and proved to be more familiar with what years of hormonal intake can do to a woman’s body. Once again, it is the less educated and poorer women—those some feminists wished to help by giving them access to “safe, legal, and rare” abortions and, of course, to contraceptives—who will continue to pay the price of this “cheapened” version of sex. 

What national data still indicate, and our interviews confirm, is that many empowered American women tend to forget about their embodied and generative natures during the most fertile period of their lives. In their twenties, they care about their GPAs and landing an optimal job. And it is only when the biological clock can’t be snoozed any longer that they worry about finding the right partner with whom to have children. As a result, an ever-growing number of career women are and will be investing large sums of money in fertility services in the hope that their bodies can enlarge their reproductive windows. Currently, 14 percent of American women of reproductive age will need some fertility treatment, defined as any medical help to get pregnant or to prevent pregnancy loss. Here, too, there is a socioeconomic gap. For context, one IVF cycle in the U.S. is around $23,000. Only one in four Americans have insurance plans that will cover it. Again: this sexual liberation didn’t help everyone equally (if anyone at all).  

Sadly, many of these women will eventually need to make peace with the fact that we only reap what we sow. Having invested more in college and personal growth than in healthy and committed relationships, they may get and keep good jobs—but without a husband or children toward whom that comfortable income might be directed. According to a study of Census data from 2018, a record high 35 percent of Americans had never been married by age fifty. Since then, we’ve slipped more. A parallel estimate based on our 2025 study puts it at 41 percent. In 2024, 15 percent of American women were childless by age fifty. At the same time, the percentage of childless women of reproductive age continues to grow.  

Few of the women we spoke with seemed content with their lives. Half reported having experienced either anxiety or depression at some point in life. Most of the in-person interviewees reporting these problems (ten out of fourteen) had taken antidepressants. It is worth noting, moreover, that eleven out of these fourteen women came from broken or unstable homes. For the most part, they also seemed uninterested in the sources of their own mental discomfort, giving the impression that mental health problems are just a normal part of being young, female, and single in 2026. In other words, it was not just that taking medications for mental distress is an accepted reality. Mental distress itself seems to be taken for granted. This is a sobering reality for the wealthy West.  

The Happiness Gap 

In truth, most women in the sample did not strike us as happy, most especially when single, with those in committed relationships and headed toward marriage faring better than all. This is revealing. During one’s most youthful and productive years, and especially in the case of women who have full autonomy over how to structure their working and personal lives, some measure of excitement and a certain spark might reasonably be expected. Yet, where life was not shared, no such spark or excitement was apparent. A few of them even became emotional at some point in the interview.  

Based on our survey data, around 30 percent of women say they are “very happy,” and 40 percent “somewhat happy.” Based on the in-person impressions, however, young adult women overwhelmingly looked and sounded as if they were lacking something. In this respect, we may wonder if “happiness” itself has come to mean something different for younger people. Perhaps the kind of “joy” that “surprised” C. S. Lewis is slowly disappearing from the spectrum of experienced or even longed-for emotions.  

Rarely did these women speak of having close friends. Assuming we are social and relational beings, we may thus wonder whether therapy and medications are replacing the support that friendship and community once supplied. Just like the word “friend” was rarely uttered, so, too, were “love” and “family.” These last two words may nonetheless be the easiest, cheapest, and firmest solution to the sadness, loneliness, and confusion that young single women experience. Even in our small cohort, the happiest women were those who were engaged to get married.  

A love that requires unwavering commitment is more fulfilling and pleasurable than sex, and family life is far more rewarding than any extended vacation. What young women may need, then, is a world that reclaims what our grandparents had—clearer familial roles, a stronger sense of purpose, and the mutual and diverse contribution of both men and women to the family’s flourishing and wellbeing. They need the world that Leon Kass so well described in his 1997 essay “The End of Courtship”:  

The earlier forms of courtship, leading men and women to the altar, understood these deeper truths about human sexuality, marriage, and the higher possibilities for human life. Courtship provided rituals of growing up … disciplined sexual desire and romantic attraction, provided opportunities for mutual learning about one another’s character, fostered salutary illusions that inspired admiration and devotion, and … taught the inter-generational meaning of erotic activity. It pointed the way to the answers to life’s biggest questions: Where are you going? Who is going with you? How—in what manner—are you both going to go?  

Back then, Kass had no hope for rapid change. He was right: things only got worse. Thirty years later, however, we can nurture some hope.  

Our hope rests neither on numbers nor on projections. It stems from those dull accounts, from a deep dissatisfaction showing us that the human heart desires more than degrees and careers, much more than lustful and fleeting pleasures. Circumstances change, mores too; but human nature does not. Just like Adam felt lonely without Eve, and just like Rachel cried out to God in her barrenness, men and women will continue to look for each other and eventually meet. Joyfully, then, they will bear fruit. 

Image licensed via Adobe Stock.