What Kristen Bell’s Nobody Wants This reveals about our changing expectations of adulthood.
Kristen Bell is 46. In Nobody Wants This, the actress lends her considerable charm to questions that earlier generations expected to have settled much sooner: whether a relationship is serious, how much influence parents should have, and when two people might finally make a home together. The tension between her age and the stage of life being dramatized gives the debate about the infantilization of adults an unusually watchable setting. (Bell biography.)
In 1975, the median American woman married for the first time at 21.1. A woman following that timetable would have accumulated nearly twenty-five years of married life by Bell’s age. That arithmetic tells us little about the quality of the marriage, but a great deal about how the expected sequence of adulthood has changed. Where one generation might have been approaching a silver wedding anniversary, a contemporary romantic comedy can still find its organizing drama in the decision to move in. (US Census Bureau.)
The comparison concerns Bell’s age as an actress; her character Joanne has a separate fictional biography. But casting helps establish a culture’s sense of what belongs to a particular age. With Nobody Wants This returning for its third season on October 22, 2026, Netflix’s preview puts Joanne and Noah’s move into a shared home at the center of their next chapter. The show invites a question larger than its romance: how much of the new timetable reflects greater freedom, and how much reflects an adulthood kept indefinitely provisional? (Netflix’s Season 3 preview.)
For a more abrupt encounter with the old timetable, consider Dorothea Lange’s 1939 photograph of an Oregon lumber worker. He sits with a pipe between his teeth, his shoulders held by suspenders, while his wife rests behind him in their tent. Later research published by the photography archive Shorpy identifies him as Thomas Cave, aged 27. Nineteen years younger than Bell, already married, and possessed of the sort of physique for which “functional strength” seems a redundant expression, he makes a persuasive advertisement for the proposition that people once grew up faster. (Library of Congress; Shorpy.)
“Your grandfather had twice your testosterone” supplies this impression with an apparently scientific explanation. There is evidence behind the suspicion, although considerably less behind the arithmetic. In 2007, researchers analyzing the Massachusetts Male Aging Study reported that testosterone had declined across observations made between 1987 and 2004. Comparing men of equivalent ages, they estimated an annual decline of about one percent after accounting for measured health and lifestyle factors. This was more than the familiar observation that a man’s testosterone may fall as he ages: men measured later had lower levels than similarly aged men measured earlier. (Travison et al., 2007.)
A subsequent analysis of 4,045 American adolescents and young men found that mean total testosterone fell from approximately 605 to 451 nanograms per decilitre between the 1999–2000 and 2015–2016 survey periods, a reduction of about a quarter. The decline remained evident among participants with a normal body mass index. These are substantial findings, deserving more than dismissal as nostalgia for the days when everyone owned a proper hat. (Lokeshwar et al., 2021.)
They do not, however, establish that grandad had twice your testosterone. Neither study compared young men in 1939 with their grandsons today. Extending an annual decline across unmeasured decades can produce a dramatic number, but it cannot supply the missing blood samples. Results also differ: an earlier analysis of nationally representative US surveys found no significant overall decline in testosterone between 1988–1991 and 1999–2004 after adjustment. Different populations, sampling periods and laboratory methods complicate the comparison; the young-men study itself acknowledged changing assays among its limitations. (Nyante et al., 2012; Lokeshwar et al., 2021.)
What, then, might be changing? Body fat, illness, medications and sleep can influence testosterone, while the time of a blood draw and the proteins carrying the hormone affect how a result should be interpreted. Some apparent deficiencies have potentially reversible causes; others reflect disease of the testes or the brain’s hormonal signalling system. A population trend is a reason to investigate these conditions, not a diagnosis handed down to every man born after a particular year. Clinicians look for relevant symptoms alongside repeatedly low, properly measured levels. (Endocrine Society guideline; clinical review.)
Environmental exposure adds a more unsettling possibility. A 2024 study reported microplastics in all 23 human testicular tissue samples it examined. The finding is difficult to read casually. But the study did not show that the particles had lowered those men’s testosterone, and its analyses of sperm counts were conducted in dogs. Detecting a material in an organ and establishing what it does there are separate scientific tasks. (Hu et al., 2024.)
Plastic-associated chemicals require another distinction. Phthalates, used in some plastics and other products, are chemicals rather than microscopic plastic fragments. Human studies have found associations between certain phthalate exposures and lower testosterone, with patterns differing across age groups. This strengthens the case for investigating endocrine disruption; it does not establish that microplastics explain the generational decline, still less that they explain anyone’s reluctance to leave home. (Meeker & Ferguson, 2014; NHANES analysis, 2020.)
The next temptation is to treat testosterone as a missing ingredient: replace it, and the earlier model of man returns. Yet its effects depend on the wider hormonal system. Some testosterone is converted into estradiol, an estrogen with important functions in men. In an experiment that manipulated both hormones, androgen deficiency accounted for losses of muscle and strength, whereas estrogen deficiency primarily accounted for increased body fat; both contributed to diminished sexual function. Even within the same study, the hormone levels needed to sustain different functions varied. The body offers no single setting marked “more masculine.” (Finkelstein et al., 2013.)
It would be equally misleading to insist that taking testosterone cannot build muscle. A controlled trial demonstrated that levels above the normal physiological range increased muscle size and strength, with the largest gains among men also undertaking resistance training. The effect is real. It does not follow that a prescription can reproduce another man’s physique, whose appearance also reflects inherited proportions, body fat, nutrition and physical history. We cannot reconstruct Cave’s endocrine profile from the width of his shoulders. (Bhasin et al., 1996.)
Nor does testosterone supplied from outside the body simply add to an untouched natural supply. It feeds back to the hypothalamus and pituitary, reducing the signals that stimulate the testes. Testosterone production within the testes falls, and sperm production can be severely reduced or stop. Recovery after stopping treatment may take months, sometimes longer, and is not assured in every case. A treatment pursued as evidence of virility can therefore compromise fertility. That is a physiological consequence, not a moral judgment about using medicine. (AUA/ASRM male-infertility guideline, amended 2024; AUA testosterone guideline.)
Other concerns include excessive red-blood-cell production and increased blood pressure. These warrant clinical monitoring, but the risks should be described accurately. The large TRAVERSE trial found no excess in its main combined outcome of cardiovascular death, heart attack or stroke among appropriately selected men receiving testosterone replacement; some other adverse events, including atrial fibrillation and pulmonary embolism, were more frequent. In 2025, the FDA removed the boxed-warning language about increased adverse cardiovascular outcomes while requiring warnings about blood-pressure increases. Those findings concern replacement treatment in men with documented deficiency, not unrestricted use to pursue a different body. (Endocrine Society; Lincoff et al., 2023; FDA, 2025.)
The enthusiasm for peptides belongs alongside this desire to make the body negotiable. “Peptide” describes a class of molecules, not a certificate of safety or a single kind of treatment. Some are established medicines; others are promoted for recovery, muscle or rejuvenation with much thinner evidence. CJC-1295, for example, stimulated growth hormone and IGF-I in short human trials. That finding did not establish lasting gains in strength, healthier aging or long-term safety. The FDA has separately identified limited safety information and concerns about immune reactions and impurities for several compounded peptides, including BPC-157 and CJC-1295. The latter has also been associated with increased heart rate and systemic vasodilation. (Teichman et al., 2006; FDA safety assessment.)
What gives these promises their psychological force is the suggestion that an uncertain life might have a measurable, correctable cause. A number can be raised. Becoming dependable is less easily administered. This does not make hormone deficiency imaginary, or its treatment frivolous. It means that a medical finding cannot carry every anxiety we attach to masculinity and adulthood.
Lange’s caption supplies a final complication. Cave was unemployed, traveling with his wife to the bean harvest. His body has survived in our imagination as evidence of an assured adulthood; his circumstances record something less secure. We can take declining testosterone seriously without asking it to explain an entire social transformation. The photograph shows us a striking young man. The competent, decisive grandfather is partly someone we have supplied.
The adulthood problem in Nobody Wants This
Return to Nobody Wants This, and the question becomes what we expect adulthood to look like once the shoulders and the blood tests are put aside. Bell’s co-star Adam Brody is also 46. Together, they make the uncertainty of beginning a shared life attractive enough to sustain a series. The psychological interest lies in what their characters do with that uncertainty. (Brody biography.)
Spoilers for seasons one and two follow.
Joanne is an agnostic podcaster; Noah is a rabbi. Their relationship has to accommodate family expectations, religious identity and his career. In season two’s ninth episode, Joanne’s eviction brings cohabitation into focus, but Noah hesitates while her possible conversion remains unresolved. Netflix’s own account also describes a revealing misunderstanding: Joanne thought the conversion question had been set aside indefinitely; Noah understood it as postponed. (Netflix’s season-two explainer.)
The viewer’s impatient response is easy to understand: surely, by this point, somebody could have clarified the terms. The ambiguity has the familiar texture of younger dating, even when the people performing it are well into their forties.
Season 3’s announced move into a shared home changes the question from whether they will commit to how they will live with the commitment. The producers describe a season built around the couple settling in. It offers a useful test of the article’s premise: whether the romance can make the practice of adulthood as compelling as its postponement. (Netflix’s Season 3 preview.)
Yet having an unresolved question about faith is not childish. Nor is falling in love at 46. The developmental issue is how people handle an incompatibility: whether they name it, negotiate it and accept its possible consequences, or preserve the romance by allowing each person to believe something different.
Our discussion of the paradox of choice in modern dating considers a related temptation: keeping possibilities open can feel safer than choosing a life that necessarily closes some of them.
The easy joke would have Bell and Brody choosing assisted living instead of choosing whose apartment to share. The history does not support it. Forty-somethings were not routinely on the threshold of institutional care two generations ago; even in 1940, Americans who reached 65 had roughly another 12 to 13 years of life expectancy. (Social Security historical tables.) The meaningful comparison concerns the responsibilities expected at a given age.
The house got further away
“By your age, I had a house and two children” is a statement about a life. It becomes a psychological diagnosis only when we forget the conditions under which that life was assembled.
Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reports that the national median single-family home price reached five times median household income in 2024, compared with 4.1 times in 2019 and a 1990s average of 3.2. These are household incomes, potentially including more than one earner, rather than an individual’s salary. (JCHS, 2025.)
That does not prove every baby boomer had an easy start or every millennial has an impossible one. Nor should a Depression-era migrant worker be casually recruited into a story about comfortable postwar homeownership. Those are different histories. Generation X, millennials and Gen Z also contain people who inherited deposits, people who support their parents and people who have never had family money to fall back on.
But the arithmetic changes the meaning of delay. Saving for independence can require remaining dependent for longer. A childhood bedroom becomes a financial strategy. An adult can be earning, budgeting and behaving responsibly while still needing to explain to a parent why they came home at midnight.
The US Census Bureau puts the median age at first marriage in 2025 at 30.8 for men and 28.4 for women, compared with 23.5 and 21.1 in 1975. In 2025, 58 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds and 16 percent of 25-to-34-year-olds lived in their parental home. Those figures describe living arrangements, not a national failure of character. (US Census Bureau, 2025.)
Marriage, homeownership and parenthood remain significant commitments. They are also imperfect certificates of maturity. A person can be single, renting and thoroughly dependable. Another can own a house and expect everyone in it to regulate his moods.
Becoming adult takes practice
Psychologist Jeffrey Arnett’s theory of emerging adulthood describes an extended period of identity exploration between adolescence and settled adult roles, originally focusing on ages 18 to 25 (Arnett, 2000). It is shaped by cultural and economic possibilities. It is not a diagnosis, and it does not give us a scientific basis for calling every indecisive 45-year-old an adolescent.
Development also continues after that period. A meta-analysis of 92 longitudinal samples found average increases in conscientiousness and emotional stability, especially between 20 and 40 (Roberts, Walton, & Viechtbauer, 2006). Age does not leave personality untouched; neither does it make everyone develop at the same pace.
Social investment theory helps explain why responsibilities may matter. Work, relationships and community commitments repeatedly ask people to show up, coordinate with others and follow through. In a longitudinal study, increasing psychological investment in work was associated with increasing conscientiousness over approximately three years (Hudson, Roberts, & Lodi-Smith, 2012). Selection and influence can operate together: responsible people may invest more in roles, and those roles may encourage further development.
The intriguing possibility is that delayed access to stable adult roles can also delay some opportunities to practice adulthood. That is a hypothesis connecting the research to our economic circumstances. It is not a demonstrated causal chain from expensive houses to emotional immaturity.
There is an equally important counterpoint. Mehta and colleagues describe ages 30 to 45 as established adulthood, a period when careers, partnerships and caring responsibilities can become intensely demanding (Mehta et al., 2020). Many adults are carrying several generations’ needs at once. They would be surprised to discover they were enjoying an extended childhood.
The question is who gets meaningful responsibility, who has it piled upon them, and who is repeatedly relieved of it.
When help becomes infantilization
An adult living at home may pay bills, cook dinner and care for an ill parent. Another may expect the household to operate as a hotel with a complaints department. The postal address is the same; the relationship to responsibility is different.
Here, infantilization has a useful, specific meaning: treating someone capable of adult agency as though ordinary decisions and consequences should be managed for them. It can involve parents, institutions and the adult child’s own expectations. It is a pattern to examine, rather than a label to attach to a generation.
The university version is familiar enough to have generated its own advice literature. In an Illinois State University article about parents contacting staff over issues including grades, professor Ani Yazedjian said: “I’ve had my share of parents who call, and not all have been very nice.” Her advice emphasized understanding the parent’s perspective rather than immediately becoming defensive. (Illinois State University, 2014.)
One professor’s experience cannot establish how common this is, or whether today’s students are worse than yesterday’s. It does illustrate the question: who gets to practice dealing with disappointment and an authority figure?
Self-determination theory identifies autonomy, competence and relatedness as basic psychological needs. Schiffrin and colleagues used this framework in a study of 297 college students. Reported parental overcontrol was associated with more depressive symptoms and lower life satisfaction; frustrated autonomy and competence helped account for those associations (Schiffrin et al., 2014).
A later meta-analysis of 53 studies found helicopter parenting associated with poorer self-efficacy, regulatory skills and academic adjustment, as well as more internalizing symptoms such as anxiety and depression (McCoy, Dimler, & Rodrigues, 2025). These associations do not establish one-way causation. An anxious young person can elicit more parental intervention, and families differ in why they provide help.
Still, a plausible loop emerges: an adult anticipates difficulty; a parent takes over; the difficulty disappears; the adult loses an opportunity to discover that they could have managed it. Both receive immediate relief. Neither necessarily gets better at tolerating the next problem.
Laundry makes an easy joke because the task is ordinary and learnable. But we should apply the test consistently. A grandfather whose wife handled every meal, appointment and clean shirt was not necessarily more self-sufficient than the grandson being mocked for domestic incompetence. Sometimes dependence has simply worn a more respectable uniform.
Christmas cake, leftover women and the social clock
The social clock is the timetable a culture attaches to a life: finish school, leave home, marry, have children, acquire standing. Missing the schedule can produce shame even when the decision is thoughtful and practical.
Japan’s historical “Christmas cake” insult made that timetable unusually explicit. Women unmarried after 25 were likened to cake left unsold after December 25. Research discussing adult identity in Japan places the expression within a gendered life course that expected women to marry, leave employment and care for a family (Mandujano-Salazar, 2019).
The insult tells us how the timetable was enforced. It does not tell us that the people who met it were emotionally ready. An early wedding can express a mature commitment; it can also reflect economic dependence, conformity or an absence of acceptable alternatives.
The timetable has shifted. Japan’s 2025 National Fertility Survey reports that the proportion of unmarried 18-to-34-year-olds intending eventually to marry fell to 75.1 percent among men and 77.8 percent among women, compared with 81.4 and 84.3 percent in the previous survey. These are intentions among unmarried respondents, not the percentages of all young Japanese people who will marry. (National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.)
China’s label sheng nü, commonly translated as “leftover women,” similarly turns a woman’s unmarried status into a public verdict. Research on urban marriage patterns links the difficulties faced by older, highly educated women to persistent gender expectations alongside expanding educational opportunities (Qian & Qian, 2014). Interview research on parental pressure describes women negotiating different ideas about marriage, gender roles and personal autonomy across generations (Gui, 2023).
These cases complicate a simple story of adults refusing to grow up. A woman who declines a marriage that requires her to surrender a career may be exercising precisely the agency adulthood is supposed to confer. Conversely, an adult whose parents conduct all the negotiations can meet the traditional milestone while remaining dependent in the decision itself.
Japan and China are distinct societies, and neither has a single explanation for changing marriage patterns. Their relevance here is the tension between personal development and a socially approved schedule. Being on time and being ready are different achievements.
What the television couple gets right
This brings us back to Joanne and Noah. The defensible criticism of Nobody Wants This concerns the way adult uncertainty can be stretched into a romantic atmosphere. The audience is invited to enjoy the suspense of commitment while becoming impatient with the work it requires.
But the show also allows its characters to recognize mistakes and make choices. Bell’s description of the couple’s approach is instructive: “It’s not Noah against Joanne … it’s Joanne and Noah against the problem.” (Netflix.) That is a more useful standard for adulthood than the birthday printed beneath an actor’s photograph.
Can you listen without treating disagreement as rejection? Can you state what you need without arranging for somebody else to guess? Can you admit that a person you love may want a life you cannot give them? Those are developmental tasks at 24, 44 and 74. Our account of conflict styles in relationships explores how avoidance and collaboration can shape those conversations.
The promise of eternal youth is that nothing has to become final. The cost is that other people may be required to live indefinitely inside your indecision.
The gerontocracy will not leave the room
There is something disorienting about a culture that questions whether people in their thirties are ready to assume adult responsibility while concentrating political authority in people more than twice their age. Gerontocracy, government dominated by the old, gives the contradiction a name.
President Donald Trump is 80, his predecessor Joe Biden is 83, and Senator Mitch McConnell is 84. (Trump biography; Biden biography; McConnell biography.)
McConnell’s September 14 statement announced his return to Senate voting after a June fall and described recovery complicated by the effects of childhood polio. (Statement from McConnell’s office.) The scene invites the familiar Weekend at Bernie’s joke. But a photograph cannot establish mental capacity, and a wheelchair is not evidence that someone is unable to make decisions.
The institutional question survives without that insinuation. How well do political systems plan for succession? How much authority is retained through incumbency, networks and the difficulty of dislodging an established figure? What happens when younger adults are told to become responsible but are given little opportunity to exercise meaningful power?
Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson used generativity to describe an adult concern with contributing to the lives of subsequent generations. Applied here as an interpretive lens, it asks something of older adults too: whether their accumulated experience enables others to grow, and whether they can make room for those who follow.
Thomas Cave’s photograph cannot settle whether adults used to be tougher. A television romance cannot diagnose a generation. Together, however, they expose the strange mismatch between the appearance of adulthood, its economic conditions and its psychological demands.
Growing up involves accepting that other people have needs, that choices have costs and that a life cannot remain an unlimited set of possibilities. It also requires opportunities to act, fail, recover and become useful. Families can provide those opportunities. Institutions can provide them. Both can withhold them while complaining that the next generation lacks initiative.
Perhaps nobody wants to grow up. Or perhaps we have become confused about what growing up should mean—and who is willing to let it happen.
For the personal rather than cultural question, read emotional immaturity in adults. It looks at accountability, disappointment and repair, without equating maturity with conventional milestones or giving up play.
References and sources
Development, personality and parenting
Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55(5), 469–480.
Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and Society. W. W. Norton. Foundational account of psychosocial development, including generativity versus stagnation; used here as theory rather than evidence about particular politicians.
Hudson, N. W., Roberts, B. W., & Lodi-Smith, J. (2012). Personality trait development and social investment in work. Journal of Research in Personality, 46(3), 334–344.
McCoy, S. S., Dimler, L. M., & Rodrigues, L. (2025). Parenting in overdrive: A meta-analysis of helicopter parenting across multiple indices of emerging adult functioning. Journal of Adult Development, 32, 222–245. Published online in 2024; journal volume dated 2025.
Mehta, C. M., Arnett, J. J., Palmer, C. G., & Nelson, L. J. (2020). Established adulthood: A new conception of ages 30 to 45. American Psychologist, 75(4), 431–444.
Roberts, B. W., Walton, K. E., & Viechtbauer, W. (2006). Patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin, 132(1), 1–25.
Schiffrin, H. H., Liss, M., Miles-McLean, H., Geary, K. A., Erchull, M. J., & Tashner, T. (2014). Helping or hovering? The effects of helicopter parenting on college students’ well-being. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 23, 548–557.
Hormones, environmental exposure and treatment
Bhasin, S., et al. (1996). The effects of supraphysiologic doses of testosterone on muscle size and strength in normal men. New England Journal of Medicine, 335, 1–7.
Bhasin, S., et al. (2018). Testosterone therapy in men with hypogonadism: An Endocrine Society clinical practice guideline. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 103(5), 1715–1744.
Cohen, J., Nassau, D. E., Patel, P., & Ramasamy, R. (2020). Low testosterone in adolescents & young adults. Frontiers in Endocrinology, 10, 916.
Finkelstein, J. S., et al. (2013). Gonadal steroids and body composition, strength, and sexual function in men. New England Journal of Medicine, 369, 1011–1022.
Hu, C. J., et al. (2024). Microplastic presence in dog and human testis and its potential association with sperm count and weights of testis and epididymis. Toxicological Sciences, 200(2), 235–240.
Lincoff, A. M., et al. (2023). Cardiovascular safety of testosterone-replacement therapy. New England Journal of Medicine, 389, 107–117.
Lokeshwar, S. D., et al. (2021). Decline in serum testosterone levels among adolescent and young adult men in the USA. European Urology Focus, 7(4), 886–889. Published online in 2020.
Meeker, J. D., & Ferguson, K. K. (2014). Urinary phthalate metabolites are associated with decreased serum testosterone in men, women, and children from NHANES 2011–2012. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 99(11), 4346–4352.
Nyante, S. J., et al. (2012). Trends in sex hormone concentrations in U.S. males: 1988–1991 to 1999–2004. International Journal of Andrology. Contrary evidence on the overall population trend over this period.
Phthalates and sex steroid hormones among men from NHANES, 2013–2016. (2020). The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. Associations differed by age; the combined sample did not show statistically significant associations between phthalate metabolites and sex hormone concentrations.
Teichman, S. L., et al. (2006). Prolonged stimulation of growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor I secretion by CJC-1295, a long-acting analog of GH-releasing hormone, in healthy adults. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 91(3), 799–805.
Travison, T. G., Araujo, A. B., O’Donnell, A. B., Kupelian, V., & McKinlay, J. B. (2007). A population-level decline in serum testosterone levels in American men. The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 92(1), 196–202.
American Urological Association & American Society for Reproductive Medicine. (2024). Diagnosis and treatment of infertility in men. Guideline amended in 2024; statement 42 addresses exogenous testosterone and fertility. See also the AUA’s Evaluation and management of testosterone deficiency for the discussion of sperm recovery.
US Food and Drug Administration. (2025, February 28). FDA issues class-wide labeling changes for testosterone products.
US Food and Drug Administration. Certain bulk drug substances for use in compounding that may present significant safety risks. Source for the peptide safety discussion.
Culture and history
Gui, T. (2023). Coping with parental pressure to get married: Perspectives from Chinese “leftover women”. Journal of Family Issues. Qualitative research on intergenerational expectations and autonomy.
Mandujano-Salazar, Y. Y. (2019). Exploring the construction of adulthood and gender identity among single childfree people in Mexico and Japan. SAGE Open, 9(2).
Qian, Y., & Qian, Z. (2014). The gender divide in urban China: Singlehood and assortative mating by age and education. Demographic Research, 31, 1337–1364.
National Institute of Population and Social Security Research. The Seventeenth Japanese National Fertility Survey. Survey conducted in June 2025; marriage-intention figures concern unmarried respondents aged 18–34.
Chart data and reporting
Whitney, P. (2025, October 6). Home prices surge to five times median income, nearing historic highs. Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. Source for the three housing benchmarks; JCHS tabulations use National Association of Realtors and Moody’s Analytics data.
US Census Bureau. (2025, December 2). Census Bureau releases new estimates on America’s families and living arrangements. Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement. Source for marriage ages and parental-home shares; the charts are original Psychdom presentations of these published figures.
Illinois State University. (2014). Dealing with helicopter parents. Source of Ani Yazedjian’s quotation.
Bitran, T. (2025, October 27). Nobody Wants This season 2 ending explained. Netflix Tudum. Source for the season-two plot details and Kristen Bell’s quotation.
Lange, D. (1939). Unemployed lumber worker goes with his wife to the bean harvest. Library of Congress. The later Thomas Cave identification comes from Shorpy.
US Social Security Administration. Historical period life expectancy, Table V.A3. Historical figures cited for people who had reached age 65.
Romero, A. (2026, September 10). The ‘Champagne’ season of Nobody Wants This will arrive this October. Netflix Tudum. Confirms the October 22 premiere and the producers’ account of Joanne and Noah moving in together.
US Senator Mitch McConnell. (2026, September 14). Update from Senator Mitch McConnell.