(2 of 3)
Ann Clurman, a partner at Yankelovich's MONITOR generational study, compares the new trend to the rumble on the tracks before the train is seen. "It'll take years for the numbers to catch up, but attitudinally, this generation is marrying younger," she says. All this cuts against the image pinned on Gen Xers at the start of the decade. The idea was that they were aimless and depressed, but the reality seems to be that they are overprogrammed and extraordinarily stressed. They are the first generation to be scheduled from their earliest play dates; to view school, even grade school, as a ruthless competition; to enter the work force unsure of where they're going but clear enough that the destination is the top. And now they're rebelling in their own way--not in the streets but back to hearth and home.
The early nesters seem to be reacting in part to what they perceive as miscues by their older siblings, not to mention their parents, who attacked life with a single-minded career focus and a no-ties-to-hold-you-back attitude--and ended up with no ties at all. Growing up, Angela Lee had her father's rule of thumb: if a doctor, cure cancer; if a businesswoman, be CEO of a FORTUNE 500 company. After her Harvard graduation, Lee went to Oxford and then was scooped up by McKinsey & Co., the topflight consulting firm. She loved the wardrobe, the dinners at Nobu. But when she looked up and down the halls, she saw "armies of very lonely people." "The problem is they haven't made any room for intimacy," she says. Meanwhile her sister, an infertility specialist, gasped at the number of anguished 40-year-old women coming in, trying to have children. "That was the life I had embarked upon. But then I began to wonder: You hit your target zone with your personal trainer, have great suits and eat a lot of sushi. What does it mean?"
Two months ago, Lee quit, and in the space of 24 hours went from corporate hotshot to math teacher on Manhattan's Lower East Side. She and her fiance Jason, 25, nest through weekends; a hot outing is likely to be a visit to a coffee bar with friends. This whole nesting thing, she says, "is about a simple question--What do I do that would make me happy?" She pauses as the sounds of ringing bells and laughing children rise. "I'm choosing a destination, and maybe it means I'll have fewer choices," she says. "But I think--I know--I'll be happier when I get there."
Sharing in that happiness is the home industry. Until the past two years, Williams-Sonoma, an upscale culinary store, thought its average customer was 42. But then it noticed more and more young people buying big-ticket items like turkey roasting pans instead of the expected disposable aluminum pans. The company introduced cookbooks on CD-ROM, anticipating moderate sales to middle-aged gourmands, but the discs blew out of the stores, toted by twentysomethings. Says the company's Maggipinto: "Now 26 is our emerging market, and as of this year we have begun seriously focusing on being on trend," she says. "On trend" has meant offering its best-selling stainless-steel toaster in Gen X-friendly pastels like green, yellow and orange, along with easy step-by-step products like gourmet cake mixes.