One reason is because people believe the trope you said: ” Get married to someone of the opposite gender, go to church every sunday, have kids. Work a job with a pension for 30 years, retire with a gold watch. (or the blue collar equivalent). Those are tracks.”

Sans the watch, we know that grafting onto community while accomplishing the statistically most meaningful tasks (per all psychological studies) opens all the doors to a content life full of more paths than can be explored before this short life is over.