Forget ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend.’ Why millennials are using the word ‘partner.’
After Gavin Newsom was sworn in as the governor of California earlier this month, his wife, Jennifer, announced her decision to forgo the traditional title of “first lady.” She will be known, instead, as California’s “first partner.”
Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who wrote and directed, “Miss Representation,” a documentary about the underrepresentation of women in leadership, fashioned this term to signal her commitment to gender equality. “Being First Partner is about inclusion, breaking down stereotypes, and valuing the partnerships that allow any of us to succeed,” she tweeted last weekend.
But with this new title, reflected on the governor’s official website, Siebel Newsom is also publicly validating her constituency’s changing lexicon. All over the country, particularly in bright blue states like California, people are swapping the words “boyfriend” and “girlfriend” — and even “husband” and “wife” — for the word “partner.” According to data compiled by Google Trends, the search term “my partner” has been steadily gaining traction: It’s more than eight times more popular today, at the time this article was published, than it was 15 years ago…
The growing preference for “partner” over “husband” and “wife” could suggest a shift that goes beyond labels and language. When Time magazine asked readers in 2010 whether marriage was becoming obsolete, 39 percent said yes — up from 28 percent when Time posed the same question in 1978. Millennials, who are marrying later in life than any previous generation, increasingly view the institution as “dated,” said Andrew Cherlin, a professor of sociology and the family at Johns Hopkins University.“If you get married in your 20s, and you’re part of a college-educated crowd, it might feel old-fashioned or even embarrassing to admit that you’re married.” Because today’s young newlyweds are far less eager to trumpet their marital status, he told me, they’re gravitating to “partner.”