Millennial Woman’s Realization About What Being Born in ’95 Means—’Pressure’

A millennial on the cusp of turning 30 has found an inventive way to poke fun at society’s expectations for women of her age.

There’s something of an unspoken expectation that women transition to serious adulthood at an earlier age than men. A study published in the Journal of Family and Marriage based on longitudinal data from a gender-balanced panel of 808 contemporary young adults highlighted this discrepancy.

By the age of 30, 42 percent of men in the study were married and 37 percent were living with children, compared with 52% of women who were married and 65% who were living with children. While the female biological clock is undoubtedly a factor in these results, women clearly feel a certain pressure to hit these particular milestones by this age.

There was a time when Sophie Bee, a musician from Sydney, Australia, felt like she was living up to those expectations, but things have changed since then.

“I was engaged and called off a wedding in 2023, age 28, where I thought I was gonna have everything sorted before I was 30,” Bee told Newsweek. “Now I’m turning 30 this year and I’m back at my parents place and starting from scratch I realised all the dreams I had of being married with kids around this age weren’t gonna happen.”

However, during this period, Bee experienced another, more profound, moment of realization about her situation as a millennial about to turn 30 with few of life’s major milestones ticked off: that’s okay.

“All my friends are turning 30 too and they’re all in different phases of life too where some are married, some are super single, some are engaged and I just realised that timelines are stupid and life doesn’t go to plan,” she said.

Suddenly the lyrics of a familiar song rang out in her head: “So no one told you life was gonna be this way.” It was the opening lines of “I’ll Be There For You” a one hit wonder by The Rembrandts that also served as theme song familiar to millions on Friends.

“I realised all the Friends characters didn’t get their s*** together til they were older than 30,” Bee said. She had been “obsessed” with the show in its heyday and thinking about her situation brought to mind one memorable scene involving Jennifer Aniston’s character Rachel in the Season 7 episode titled: “The One Where They All Turn Thirty.”

In the scene, Aniston’s character, who is attending her own 30th birthday party, attempts to map out her life over the coming years and all of the milestones she will need to hit in order to be considered truly adult.

“I should probably have the first of the three kids by the time I’m 35 which gives me five years,” Rachel says. “So, if I wanna have my kid when I’m 35, I don’t have to get pregnant until I’m 34…Oh wait, but I do want to be married for a year before I get pregnant…”

She continues: “No, so I don’t have to get married until I’m 33! That’s three years, that’s three whole years—Oh, wait a minute though. I’ll need a year and a half to plan the wedding, and I’d like to know the guy for a year, year and a half before we get engaged… Which means I need to meet the guy by the time I’m 30.”

As someone about to turn 30, the moment resonated with Bee. So much so she decided to find the sound of the scene from Friends on TikTok and create a video applicable to anyone turning 30 this year.

The video got a huge response, with 1.3 million views and counting. It also confirmed something to Bee. “Yes there’s definitely still pressure,” she said. “The amount of comments I got from people who are around 30 ‘justifying’ themselves by saying how many kids they have already and when they got married was so interesting because I feel like they were saying it to make themselves feel good.

“Comparatively I had others saying ‘I really didn’t need to see this’ or even ‘my life is OVER! I’m so single!'”

Having been through so much change in her personal life, Bee is opting to take turning 30 as a chance to start afresh.

“I’m actually so excited to turn 30 even though I’m nowhere near where I thought I’d be,” she said. “Everyone’s timeline is different and 30 is actually young despite what the media tells us. It’s just the start and your life will play out exactly as it’s meant to.”