Interwoven themes: Nine typology groups
Now we’re ready to take a run at seeing how the big themes combine into wildly divergent life-patterns. For this view, I used a clustering algorithm that automatically groups the sample into discrete batches of individuals who have similar statistically linked features overall. I fed in the age-specific data for the full range of ages – from 15 to 39 – and produced nine typology groups that, to my mind, seem varied enough to capture the major underlying themes without overly complicating things.
Keep in mind I didn’t tell the computer how to divide up the sample. I just gave it a very large number of input variables and said “sort the individuals into nine groups based on how similar they are across all these variables” – and here’s what I got.
High-SES Freewheelers:
In terms of the three broad themes we identified early, in this typology group we see a mixture of (1) the Higher SES patterns (more education and income, later/fewer kids), (2) a Freewheeler pattern (more partying, less church, more shorter-term sexual relationships, fewer kids), and the middle of the road on the Sidelines vs. Stable Relationships theme – that is, it’s a group that wasn’t often having no sex and also didn’t have many marriages.
These High-SES Freewheelers consist of women who typically at least attended college, probably got a 4-year degree, and maybe got a grad degree, who had multiple shorter-term relationships throughout their 20s and 30s, who had no children or maybe one child by age 39, and who had higher incomes, particularly in their late 20s and 30s. These are essentially the central characters from Sex and the City, though more economically, geographically, racially, and physically diverse.
In combining a Freewheeler pattern with a high-SES pattern, these are women who ended up partying and hooking up a lot, but didn’t tend to start with that until their late teens and early 20s. Around age 15, very few were sexually active, they really weren’t partying or hooking up, and they were doing well in school – virtually indistinguishable in those regards from their high-SES peers in other typology groups who would go on to more traditional adult patterns.
Another product of combining high-SES and Freewheeler patterns is that these women had very few children in the end. High-SES patterns involve delayed childbearing and not having children to an extent that would overly reduce one’s standard of living. Freewheeler patterns involve favoring shorter-term relationships over the longer-term ones that tend to produce higher numbers of children. So, when these patterns combine, the result is most often no children at all.
The graphic shows some details of the High-SES Freewheeler pattern, presented in timeline format. For most items, I report straightforward numbers. The key place where numbers wouldn’t be too helpful involves “partying/hooking up” – here, I’m describing a combination of items involving level/frequency of alcohol consumption, pot usage, having high numbers of sex partners, and having sex with people you just met. You know, partying and hooking up. Anyway, I combined these into an overall score such that the final numbers aren’t meaningful (except that higher means more overall and lower means less overall). For my descriptions of partying/hooking up, I created six levels, from lowest to highest: Very little, little, some, significant, a lot of, and big-league.
Higher Ring-Bearers:
Like High-SES Freewheelers, these Higher Ring-Bearers typically were behaving themselves and doing well in school in their mid-teens, and then at least attended college, probably got a 4-year degree, and maybe got a grad degree. In sharp contrast, though, Higher Ring-Bearers tended to share a pattern marked by very little partying/hooking up, delayed sexual activity while in high school and college, followed quickly by stable marriages and relatively high numbers of children — with 2 or 3 by age 39. This typology group contains many of the sample’s regular churchgoers.
The Higher Ring-Bearers, however, have had somewhat lower standards of living than High-SES Freewheelers so far in their adult years – in their 30s, the former had family incomes around 350% of the poverty line while the latter had family incomes around 490% of the poverty line. It’s important to keep in mind that the poverty line changes based on household composition, which is crucial in translating raw incomes into more of a measure of how comfortably a family is able to meet its needs. On 2024 federal standards, for example, the poverty line for a family of 1 is $15,060 a year while the poverty line for a family of 5 is $36,580. A family of 1 at 490% of the poverty line would have $73,794 a year in income. A family of 5 at 350% would have $128,030 a year. So, when I say “high incomes” as a brief description, I really mean “high standard of living from income relative to household composition” – or something like that.
High-SES Mixers:
These are women who, on the whole, did not have children in their teens and early 20s, did really very well in school, became sexually active and started partying in late high school, headed straight to college, didn’t go to church much, settled down in their mid-to-late 20s into stable marriages that often began with unmarried cohabitation, had children in their late 20s and 30s (usually ending up with 1 or 2 by age 39), and throughout that time maintained really high family incomes compared with other women at their ages.
Above, we looked at High-SES Freewheelers and Higher Ringbearers. The Freewheelers generally had multiple shorter-term relationships without transitioning to stable marriages and had no children or one child by age 39. The Ring-Bearers, on the other hand, typically never had many or any shorter-term relationships, transitioned to stable marriages soon after college (that is, they tended to make the transition straight from Sideline to Stable Relationships, maybe dipping a couple of toes in the water in between), and they ended up with 2 or 3 children by age 39.
These High-SES Mixers, well, they mixed together the two other patterns. They generally started out looking very much like High-SES Freewheelers in their teens and early 20s, then they transitioned to marriage and children, typically starting to have children around age 30. Most ended up with 1 or 2 kids by age 39, right in between the Freewheelers and the Ring-Bearers.
Given their extended educations, given the fact that they waited so long to start having kids, and given that, when they started having kids, they likely did so in married households with similarly educated, older husbands who likely themselves had very high personal incomes on average, these High-SES Mixers maintained really high income-based standards of living, having incomes averaging above 600% of the poverty line throughout their 30s.
Mid-SES Mixers:
As we move from the High-SES Mixers to Mid-SES Mixers, the essential story is that lots of the same things happen, but at younger ages. While High-SES Mixers typically became sexually active in their late teens, it’s mid-teens for Mid-SES Mixers. While High-SES Mixers stop going to school typically in their early 20s, Mid-SES Mixers typically stop in their late teens. While most High-SES Mixers are not living with a partner before age 24, over half of Mid-SES Mixers are living with a partner at age 21. While High-SES Mixers have a first child on average around age 30, for Mid-SES Mixers, it’s around age 25.
These divergent timelines begin with substantially different performance in middle and high school. High-SES Mixers generally were excellent students, getting very high grades and doing very well on standardized tests. Mid-SES Mixers were about average on the whole. The High-SES Mixers had increased abilities and incentives to keep their educations going longer than Mid-SES Mixers even if it delayed future family plans, leading on average to a trade-off between higher incomes and having more children.
Mid-SES Freewheelers:
Mid-SES Freewheelers had largely the same education levels on average as Mid-SES Mixers (sually having some college attendance but not 4-year degrees). But unlike Mid-SES Mixers, and similar to High-SES Freewheelers, these Mid-SES Freewheelers never stopped partying and hooking up in favor of longer-term relationships.
Indeed, the essential core of the Mid-SES Freewheeler typology group is that the women were partying and hooking up at the highest levels in the sample on average the entire way from ages 15 through 33 (I can’t tell you about after age 33, because the NLSY97 stopped asking the women about these topics in later years of the study). They typically had at least a couple of non-marital cohabitations over those years, but not many stable marriages.
And, as you might expect, Mid-SES Freewheelers ended up with numbers of children by age 39 in between Mid-SES Mixers and High-SES Freewheelers. They typically had either no children, one child, or two children, and an average of 1.4 at age 39.
Given that they were more likely to be single moms than Mid-SES Mixers were, Mid-SES Freewheelers ended up with lower incomes despite equivalent educations. While Mid-SES Mixers averaged incomes around 360% of the poverty line in their 30s, Mid-SES Freewheelers averaged only around 250%.
Low-SES Single Moms:
This is the prototypical “underclass” pattern, involving a combination of truncated educations, few longer-term relationships, higher numbers of children beginning in teen years, and persistently very low household incomes, typically just at or below the poverty line.
Low-SES Single Moms weren’t big-league partiers like the Mid-SES Freewheelers and High-SES Freewheelers, so I’m hesitant to call this a “Freewheeler” pattern, though it’s in that ballpark. A good portion of the Low-SES Single Moms likely arrived at that pattern based on decision constraints. This group had poor standardized test performance and low grades, which constrained their educational options.
Around 6 out of 10 Low-SES Single Moms in the sample were Black. We’ve already discussed one key reason – the shortage of available Black men relative to available Black women due to the men’s disproportionate incarceration and death rates.
Low-SES Mixers:
Here we see a Mixer pattern (i.e., involving a mix of both shorter-term and longer-term relationships) together with a low-SES pattern (i.e., poor test scores and grades, shortened educations, and low incomes). What you see, then, is a mix of relationship types beginning astoundingly early, leading eventually to very high average fertility. This group generally began cohabitation and marriage and childbearing beginning in their teen years, never engaging in a significant partying/hook-up phase and generally ending their educations with a high school diploma, a GED, or less. Most had kids as teenagers while living with their partner. They averaged 2 children by age 24 and ended up with around 3 or 4 by age 39. Most had persistent economic struggles, with household incomes less than 200% of the poverty level.
You can see how the high number of children relates to a combination of themes. This group exhibited both heavy Lower SES patterns along with a substantial tilt towards Stable Relationships, spending on average many years in their teens through 30s in marriages and non-marital cohabitations. Putting those together, they ended up with the most children on average.
Lower Ring-Bearers:
On socioeconomic status, this is a group that is in between the “Low-SES” and the “Mid-SES” groups. While their education levels were about the same as the “Mid-SES” groups, their household incomes were around 230% of the poverty level, which is below the “Mid-SES” groups.
I’ve tagged them as Ring-Bearers, though they’re a less-prototypical version than the Higher Ring-Bearers. These Lower Ring-Bearers largely abstained from partying and hooking up as teens, started living with a partner and having kids in their early 20s, and they ended up with around 2 children. In a related set of circumstances, as compared with Higher Ring-Bearers, these Lower Ring-Bearers have more non-marital cohabitations than Higher Ring-Bearers, fewer children, and were generally not attending religious services.
Some of the differences between Higher and Lower Ring-Bearers probably relate to socioeconomic starting points. And a particularly striking difference concerns body mass index (BMI). Lower Ring-Bearers are the most overweight group, with average BMIs above the “obese” category starting in their early-mid 20s. Higher Ring-Bearers, in contrast, are essentially tied with Mid-SES Mixers as the second-thinnest group, with the thinnest group being High-SES Mixers.
Sideliners:
These women started off a bit like Higher Ring-Bearers — avoiding sex and partying, pursuing educations, and more likely to be churchgoers — but then never really ended up transitioning into the (heterosexual) mating arena. At any given year through the survey period, they were unlikely to have had any (male) sex partners at all. Most ended up without any biological children by age 39. (Unfortunately, the NLSY97 doesn’t ask about same-sex sexual activity, so I can’t readily tell to what extent this group contains lesbians.)
This group is likely a big part of the reason that the factor analysis indicated that we needed a third factor beyond Higher SES vs. Lower SES and Secular Freewheeler vs. Religious Ring-Bearer. If you had data only on their childhoods, you’d see the mid/low SES patterns and a largely Ring-Bearer pattern, and you might have guessed that they were likely to have lots of kids. But they just didn’t. They stayed on the Sideline and had very few children. It’s an outlier pattern.
Here are a bunch of graphs showing how various key outcomes developed over time for each of the 9 groups
(Hint: You can hit the “Replay” button in the upper-left corner of each panel to see the animated runout.)