Most of us grew up in the 80's: the great era when materialism began to flourish. There is an assumption in our culture that what you have is a reflection of your status or class. Hard to imagine with Madonna's Material Girl blasting the airwaves through the mid 80's.

As such, we saw from our parents, a huge amount of stuff. Cars, homes, boats, stuff stuff stuff. That hasn't' changed. Today its more tech oriented. iPod, iPhone, laptops, computers, Hummer, GPS, Wii, X-Box, what do YOU have? Rather than it being a world of - what are you doing and where are you going after work - it's whose having a dinner party and showing off their swanky place-settings from their 200+ wedding presents last year.

Credit card debt, student loan debt - all to create an image and develop our own social status which serves as the reflections on what makes us cool or valid or worthy.

This wasn't the case of the 90's when the opposite ruled. Twentysomethings of the 90's rebelled against this 80's tradition with a grunge culture and "damn the man" ideology. The piece throws up Reality Bites, Visions of the Real World, My So-Called Life, Nirvana, Garbage, Saved by the Bell, hell even Cheers and the start of Friends. Too - look at the emergence of body piercing and tattoos....

Instead we were raised in an era of goal setting when the extracurricular overload first began but still on the tail end of the "have a family" culture. Thus our parents spawned a new world of DO IT ALL and HAVE IT ALL which has created a world of over-worked young professionals whose biological clock appears in the faces of their mothers-in-law. See Doogie Howser M.D. and Beverly Hills, 90210.

"From the time they were tykes, New Victorians have been bred to ace exams, master extracurricular activities, land a coveted spot at a prestigious college, and then go forth into the world, ready to achieve. "This generation has been more strategically educated than any other generation," said Mike Sciola, the Director of the Career Resource Center at Wesleyan University."

And today, as adults, Oprah and Martha Stewart show us that we can be multi-millionaires and have a beautiful cheese spread for an after-work cocktail party.

"The current obsession with food preparation--I absolutely must have that Le Creuset casserole!--is totally New Victorian. So, too, the current rage for blousy, maternity-style tops, mutual funds and bathroom renovation. "One of the biggest things I talk about with my friends is home improvements, how best to invest your money, and family planning," said Jerilyn Dressler, a 28-year-old native New Yorker and account manager for Ernst and Young who recently moved to Philadelphia--how much more New Vic can you get?"

I ain't sayin she a golddigger .....

The piece goes on to talk about the number of New Vic role models in the pop culture world who are falling into this social construct. Everyone from Liv Tyler to model Natalia Vodianova. These once anti-establishment icons now lead lives of homemaking and parenting - leaving little time for self-examination, politics, or clubbing. So fashion goes from the scantily clad or sloppy to more 50's or 80's retro, people forget about Iraq, and no one seems to question that odd attraction to their husband's somewhat butch secretary or the sweet lipstick artist that lives across the hall.

The other group of my friends I call the sentimentalists. I fit into this category on occasion. I'm all about my career - my passion to achieve world domination by do-gooders, and an urge to become an active philanthropist ... it all leaves little time to find that perfect person who looks good at fundraisers and galas but who you also like to go bicycling with on the weekends.

A dear friend and co-worker lives on a cliff (literally) on the west coast and each night watches as a beautiful sun sets over the Pacific. We spoke recently about how beautiful it is certain times of year - how we like to explore and go hiking or venture out to watch as seasons change or just a brisk walk after dinner (dinner for one of course) and how we have no one to share it with. So much of what we see and do could be sweetened by experiencing it with someone we adored but is instead cataloged away on our Flickr page.

So - we have the ones who marry because they feel it completes the image, the social requirements, and the "path" they are on - or we have the ones who marry because they need a habitual date, political partner, hotshot lover, or frankly because they are lonely.

The Observer is quick to address this blame that I was happy to place on our parents. They talk about the marriage issue. With so many of us coming from homes where we saw our parents divorce or we were raised by a single parent or our grandparents - there is certainly this strive to not only marry but marry right and be in it for the long haul.

"My sense of things is that the marriage phenomenon is part and parcel of a larger phenomenon, which is that young people are trying to grow up faster .... We're trying to figure out what success means and achieve it." [Says Olivia an Upper West Sider.]

"There are some economic conditions that are driving this. These young people are confronting extraordinary college bills," ...said said William Strauss, a generation historian who has written three books on the "millennials," people who were born in 1982 or afterwards... "So they come out of college and, they may want to do these other things, but they feel this pressure to earn and to avoid taking chances."

The comments that follow the article are nothing short of an upper class highly educated catfight that are totally worth the read. I find it more enjoyable when you begin each section with the salutation "madam" and read it with a British accent.

The age old fight between single girls who are angry that they are being pressured into a Stepford lifestyle go to the mattresses with the Upper Eastside women who use their Ivy educations and "everything is perfect" attitude to attack the piece dripping with sarcasm about placing negative labels on their perfect lifestyle simply because well... it's seemingly perfect.

And as I point out many times on FM its could be a bit of a location difference. With huge economic disparities between classes in places like NYC and in places in California you get this unfair classification of what is perfect or what the measure of success equals. At home (Kansas) you can attain the large house and the "perfect" lifestyle with the lower pay scale - but you don't get to watch the sunset on the Pacific every night.

But what many view as success or the perfect life could be (or grow into) a curtain that shields mountains of debt, a dishonest marriage, forced affections, fake friends, or chemical dependency. I'm seeing visions of Bennigan's and Butters mom painting the house over and over and over again. My advice for youngsters who feel the need to settle down is to consider that you might not fit in that lifestyle. Those who genuinely do and can happily live the Martha-life shouldn't feel like they've betrayed their single friends or alternative lifestyle and opted for the country club.

Too - just because you're hitched doesn't mean you automatically have to sign up for the Laura Ashley floral print. If you're an alternative kinda couple it could mean that you're piercing each other's nipples or dress Jr. in camo and rocker crawlers. And whether you're 25 or 50 regardless of what our society tells us you can always change your path and do something different and find a different perfect life.

And I'll apologize for the long piece... I think so many of us talk about this so often that I had a lot to say. Happy friday!!