12 ms·

Why are so many people in their 20s taking so long to grow up?

149 points by robg 16y ago

jameskilton 16y ago
I couldn't read the entire article, all I could think of was some old codger yelling "GET OFF MY LAWN!" Seriously, times change, people change, things change. Society didn't collapse before and it's not going to now.
- Chirono 16y ago
  Well, that's not strictly true. There have been plenty of societies that have collapsed in the past, if not ones of which we have been a part. Noting that our society hasn't collapsed so far and using that to infer that opinions like this have no merit is one mother of a sampling bias.
- ergo98 16y ago
  Times change far less than most people think they do. Everything old is new again. Columnists invent trends and crazy new behaviors that are neither trends or new.
- anamax 16y ago
  > I couldn't read the entire article, all I could think of was some old codger yelling "GET OFF MY LAWN!" Are you suggesting that you're entitled to be on his lawn or complaining about the way he is asking you to leave?
  - chc 16y ago
    I think he's suggesting that social norms generally permit neighbors access to each other's lawns, and that violating these norms is associated with cranky old men.
    - anamax 16y ago
      > I think he's suggesting that social norms generally permit neighbors access to each other's lawns, and that violating these norms is associated with cranky old men. Actually, they don't. The social norms allow access when you're interacting with the relevant residents. It's like toys - you get to play with Pat's toys while playing with Pat. Otherwise you ask, and even that can be creepy.
charlesju 16y ago
I'm pretty sure most 20 somethings reading this forum are doing big things with their lives.
- dieterrams 16y ago
  Like reading this forum....
  - kenver 16y ago
    That was a low blow, I'm off to do something useful now...
    - eliben 16y ago
      Sorry to break it to you, but reading Reddit isn't more useful
      - sprout 16y ago
        Please. I'm off to play Dwarf Fortress.
balding_n_tired 16y ago
If you think you dislike it now, wait till you're in your 50s and reading a version for the fourth time. It does not improve on acquaintance.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
Near as I can tell, the real question is "why has marriage/childbearing been delayed?" The answer is the sexual revolution and women's empowerment. Except during the 50's and 60's, I don't think it was ever that common to pick one job and stick with it until retirement on a defined-benefit pension. The 50's and 60's were exceptional. I think the real issue here is that the baby boomers and later generations enjoy infantilizing their children. First they needed to protect their 10 year olds from nonexistent child predators, wifi and inorganic food. Then they needed to protect their 16 year olds from depraved newfangled sex ("rainbow parties", etc), completely unlike the sex they had during the 60's/70's. Now that their kids are grown up, they need a new reason to remain involved and treat them as infants.
- mechanical_fish 16y ago
  Paragraph one is worth an upvote, but I don't think you need go so far as the pop psych of paragraph two. Paragraph one -- indeed, sentence one, which points out that marriage and childbearing are delayed in modern technological societies -- explains most everything else. Especially when combined with the key fact that in the USA all incomes except those of the rich have been declining in real terms for over a generation. And independence costs money. Kids stay involved with their parents longer because the marginal cost of the fourth bedroom in a four-bedroom house is a lot smaller than the cost of a one-bedroom apartment. The other thing I'd point out is that the "traditional American way" to run a nuclear family -- the one where kids hit age 18 and then move out on their own, sometimes to other states -- is (was?) actually a very specific pattern of life from a very specific time in a very specific culture. In many cultures, historically and around the world, households traditionally contained grandparents, parents, and children all living together. It would be considered alien for a child to desert the home of their parents unless they were explicitly married out to another family, in which case the child would be expected to live in the home of the spouse's parents. To strike out on your own would be crazy! What would your family say? (And one wonders if the nomads of the Tibetan plateau are sitting around reading Tibetan op-eds bemoaning the decline of the traditional Tibetan family: Some women are taking only one husband! What are his brothers supposed to do for a wife? [1]) Traditions can be pretty ephemeral. One of my favorite things to do is to find "ancient traditions" whose inventors are still living. --- [1] Note: I took Anthropology 101 from a world expert on polyandry -- one of the world's most unusual family patterns -- but I should note that I made up this particular example. I actually have no idea to what extent polyandry is in decline, or whether a family of Tibetan nomadic brothers and their wife are likely to read op-eds.
EvanK 16y ago
Because they can. We live longer now than we ever have...We don't have to be married and having kids by the time we're twenty, before the plague or dysentery gets us. A female friend of mine just turned 30 and she's just getting into an actual career (and she's perfectly fine with taking her time).
- ergo98 16y ago
  "We don't have to be married and having kids by the time we're twenty, before the plague or dysentery gets us." There are many choices for life, and choosing never to get married and never to have kids is exactly the right choice for many people. People don't need to build an army of labor to tend the farm or whatever anymore. Having said that, the human body is geared to having children young. A lot of women are putting off having children and then finding it either impossible, or learning that the risks of an endless array of defects goes up quite dramatically.
  - EvanK 16y ago
    Even then, we still have options that people haven't always had, like adoption or surrogacy.
    - DougWebb 16y ago
      I think orphans have existed about as long as children have, and adoption has always been there too. Surrogacy in the sense of "my sperm and your eggs in her body" is new, but men having multiple wives with the younger ones for child bearing is not. So I'd say the concept is old, and only the technology is new.
gte910h 16y ago
It's pretty obvious why: the jobs situation sucks (they don't pay well or are non-existent), college/other debt is higher, more education than ever is needed to get the few jobs there are. If the jobs were there that were there in the 90's or 80's, which required less investment, had more reasonable starting salaries compared to housing/medical/car costs, many people being drifters and living with mom and dad wouldn't. I do think the tech industry is still doing better than most though, and requires relatively smaller amounts of training, so I'm not sure HNers empathize with what it's like for non-tech people.
- ultrasaurus 16y ago
  I think the first time you get laid off (or fired maybe) you change your plans dramatically too.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  I'm not sure that housing/medical/car are more expensive. I don't know about comparing 2010 to 1990, but I do know that if you compare roughly 2000 to 1970, all of those expenses went down. See Elizabeth Warren's book "The Two Income Trap", which shows that basically everything besides taxes and expectations went down in cost (you need to read carefully, she plays down the tax numbers by presenting them in a confusing manner). [edit: to clarify, housing/medical/car are more expensive. But incomes went up as well. As a percentage of income, those expenses went down.]
  - masterj 16y ago
    >I'm not sure that housing/medical/car are more expensive. I don't know about comparing 2010 to 1990, but I do know that if you compare roughly 2000 to 1970, all of those expenses went down. ... I'm fairly certain she showed that medical expenses + housing + need for a second vehicle accounted for the majority of the change in expenditures for the average nuclear family. I haven't read the book yet, but I've watched her talk. This is where she talks about changes in expenses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A#t=15m0s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A#t=15m0s Edit: Skip to here if you can't spare four minutes extra for some exposition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A#t=19m30s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A#t=19m30s
quanticle 16y ago
One thing that I noticed in the article is that several of the sociological milestones cited are all distinct to American culture. For example, the "leaving home" milestone doesn't exist in a lot of cultures. Kids live in the same house as their parents and grandparents - forming extended families. The concept of a "nuclear" family consisting only of parents and children is a distinctly American one, and even then it only became the norm at the beginning of the twentieth century. As far as marriage goes, I think the advance in marriage age is a good thing. I mean, do you really want children getting married and having children at an age when they're too young to handle the responsibilities? Its not that the kids are changing, but rather that society has enough resources to better accommodate the needs of its youth. I don't think that's something to be afraid of. And where children are concerned, I fail to see why that's a milestone at all. By that standard, Bristol Palin is more of an "adult" than most responsible and hard-working twenty-somethings.
- dublinclontarf 16y ago
  Yes in some cultures (China) children often don't leave home at all. And the result? Life long infantilization, seriously Chinese are treated like children even after they marry.
- CWuestefeld 16y ago
  I object to the "moving back home" and "leaving home" terminology. Even at 40-something years old, I still hear people say they're spending their vacation "going back home". What is it about the place your parents live that makes it "home"? (Especially when that place isn't even the house you grew up in!) As I see it, "home" is wherever I live. So "moving back home" is a tautology, and "leaving home" on a permanent basis is an oxymoron.
  - username3 16y ago
    1st base, 2nd base, and 3rd base should be called home base when a runner is on it.
- mebassett 16y ago
  " I mean, do you really want children getting married and having children at an age when they're too young to handle the responsibilities? " I mostly agree with your sentiment, that perhaps society now is better equipped to handle the youth. but if 17-25 is too young to be having kids, don't you think it a bit odd that those are the most fertile years? I think most folks associate "adult" with "responsibility". and having a kid induces a lot of responsibility.
psadauskas 16y ago
The way I look at it, I'm an adult now (29), so I get to decide what "being an adult" means.
- sp332 16y ago
  Sorry, but obligatory http://xkcd.com/150/ http://xkcd.com/150/ Edit: and the follow-up on the artist's blog, er, "blag": http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/11/19/growing-up/ http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/11/19/growing-up/ and http://blog.xkcd.com/2008/02/27/ballpit-phase-ii/ http://blog.xkcd.com/2008/02/27/ballpit-phase-ii/
  - eliben 16y ago
    Nice, right on spot.
marcusbooster 16y ago
Why are so many people in their 60's not retired? Why are so many people in their 70's not dead?
- Marticus 16y ago
  Which is basically why I quit reading the NYT.
- Dn_Ab 16y ago
  exactly. The way I see it, as the average life span of a human increases the pace of life will slow to a more leisurely elven type speed. Things are a lot more complex and there is a great deal more to know than say a century or even half a century ago, it takes a bit longer now to come up to speed.
  - snth 16y ago
    Unfortunately the basic constraints on childbearing years still (basically) stand.
    - Retric 16y ago
      When you can have children at 10 or 60 and your life expectancy is only 80 it's not really a major issue.
      - philwelch 16y ago
        Men might be able to have children at 60, but it's not so easy for women.
      - snth 16y ago
        There was a story on Hacker News about this a while back, but here's something I found through a quick search. Best age for childbearing remains 20-35 - Delaying risks heartbreak, say experts http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/30737.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/30737.php
aceofspades19 16y ago
It seems to me that its largely due to the fact that our society doesn't let you do anything until you are 18, sometimes 19. For example, when my parents were teenagers, you could get your full drivers license at 16, now in British Columbia, you get your learners license at 16, your 'N' at 17 and you don't get your full drivers license until you are 19. Also in British Columbia, you can't rent an apartment without someone signing for it until you are 19. So its hard for someone to grow up until they are in their late 20s because they are used to society protecting them until such a late age and then when it is time for them to move out etc. they don't know what to do with themselves because they haven't been able to learn what to do when they are on their own. So if our society wasn't so over-protective, people would be growing up faster, but instead we are treating them like children until they are almost 20.
- elai 16y ago
  I wouldn't say protective vs more holding you back. People don't want to sign contracts with minors because minors do not have to hold their side of the contract and it's been like that legally for a long time.
  - aceofspades19 16y ago
    So thats why you make legal age something sane so people who are currently "minors" but are actually 18(or whatever age is best) can move out and grow up. I mean really, people in British Columbia, who are 18, can be charged as an adult and can enter the military but they can't get a credit card? I don't know what the situation is like in other areas, but in BC, at least, its insane!
- simonsarris 16y ago
  How common is 18/19? I know Massachusetts has some permit system. In New Hampshire everyone that can get their drivers license does so on the day of their 16th birthday. It's like a rite of passage. There are no learning licenses or permits or anything, but you are allowed to drive with a parent at 15 and a half.
- ww520 16y ago
jcromartie 16y ago
Perhaps part of it is because they are told that the "real world" is deferred until they are out of college. Now that they're done with college, they are at the same point in life as the average (young) teenager a few generations ago. The invention of the modern consumer society called "childhood" is being extended further and further, and until someone does something about it, we'll see more of this.
jleyank 16y ago
Why? Because they can... The trick is avoiding a Lord of the Flies culture due to extended (pre-)adolescence.
scornforsega 16y ago
Financial stability is harder and harder to come by. No 20-something wants to move back home, but often, there isn't much of a choice. Between inflation knocking the hell out of the dollar and putting a strain on social security and that fact keeping older people in the workplace for longer, nevermind the withering away of the American manufacturing, opportunities for stable, decent paying jobs that might actually cover your student loan payments are few and far between.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
Okay, I am now officially sick of this kind of story. I'm 45, and if this trend of increasingly defining older and older people more and more infantile continues, I could end up a baby again before I retire. Seriously though, I don't see the newness here. My father told me that his grandfather told him that you don't truly become and adult until around age 35 or so. That bit of family wisdom dates back to early the last century. A hundred years ago. If we're into social commentary, I'd point out that as we become more and more pampered, we become more and more infantile. I expect to push the button on the iPhone and have the pizza show up 15 minutes later. I expect to be in contact with all of my friends instantly via text message. I expect to have college paid for and a warm house with the folks if things don't work out. These are probably great things to expect, but when you're not making work-or-starve decisions every day, you can easily start expecting a helluva lot of stuff that just realistically isn't going to happen. We call people who have unrealistic views about their status in the world, an inability to make decisions, and the need to be taken care of, well, chidlike. I love optimism, but that's not what I see from this article. This is different than optimism. Optimism says we'll make the most of it and things will be fine. This is I-want-to-be-a-rock-star. I have everything else I want. I want this too. It's all luck, anyway. Show me the button I push for the limo. Put another way, these super-cool new things need to be compared to something. If you compare them to nothing, you know what you have and what you don't have. If you have no frame of reference, it's all just "normal". That lack of context makes a difference in being able to do stuff. I don't mean that as commentary on "those dang kids". I think every generation has an awesome potential, mainly because of all these cool new things. I see no reason why we need a new developmental stage. 20-somethings can fly nuclear bombers, I think they'll do alright with career choices. If we let them. Pointing out they are mentally impaired is no more useful than pointing out the average 85-year-old is mentally impaired. Yet many of them drive, work, and do just fine in the world. What I think is missing at this age, frankly, is some sense of comparison. You need to know you are unique and special, just like everybody else. I think some form of mandatory national service could help. Either that or I need to start looking for rattles that I find appealing.
- varjag 16y ago
  Indeed so many are arguing that it really does take longer to grow up in modern societies, but it makes me wonder. If the society move up de-facto age of adolescence, should the de-jure part follow? Maybe increase the age of majority to 24 or so.. voting age, age of consent as well?
steveklabnik 16y ago
The rise of helicopter parenting. I'm 24, and my mom was roughly half a helicopter, and it was unbearable. I can only imagine how bad it could have been...
- antidaily 16y ago
  You were raised by Transformers? AWESOME.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    "Helicopter parent" is a slang term for a parent who always hovers over their children to "help out" and potentially make their lives easier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent
mcantor 16y ago
I feel like a lot of people are responding to this article as if the title is meant to be incendiary; the way a jilted friend spits "Grow up!" at the object of their indignation. I don't think that was the intention, though. I wonder, in fact, how many of these commenters thoroughly read the article, because--as a guy/boy/man/child of 25--I found it to be a fascinating exploration of why the trappings of my life, and my peers' lives, differ so much from that of our parents at this age. I don't see it as an attempt at bastardizing our ability to take responsibility for ourselves.
- jimbokun 16y ago
  What I find grating is the NY Times invocation of the Royal We: "If society decides to protect these young people or treat them differently from fully grown adults, how can we do this without becoming all the things that grown children resist — controlling, moralizing, paternalistic?" I don't see how "we", as society, need to do anything. If a parent wants to allow a child to live with them until he's 30, if people want to get married or have kids later, or if a parent wants to kick their kid out of the nest at 18 or two 19 year olds want to marry while still undergrads, I don't see how "we" as the broader society need to do anything. Leave it to the individual. I find the idea that society is obligated to change to accommodate the indefinite extension of adolescence to be controlling, moralizing, and paternalistic. (And this is coming from someone who got married at 29, just under the 30 deadline. I just don't see the need to reinforce the decision I personally made as a social norm.)
pvg 16y ago
I couldn't quite figure out the source of the more eyepoking stats. "The 20s are a black box, and there is a lot of churning in there. One-third of people in their 20s move to a new residence every year. Forty percent move back home with their parents at least once."
zeteo 16y ago
Flash news: post-Baby Boomer generations fail to follow social expectations (early marriage, early job, lifelong career) set by pre-Baby Boomer generations. Social scientists hard at work describing the problem and wondering how to fix it.
OasisP 16y ago
This article makes a lot of broad statements without citing statistics. We 20-somethings ARE growing up, the process just looks different due to a combination of technology and a slow economy. I bet that as we grow older, we will adopt many of the practices that people older than us (the type of people who write articles like this) should have been practicing; i.e. fiscal responsibility. 20-somethings experienced 9/11 during our teens, a time when most people feel invulnerable. At the same time, we've seen the transformative power of technology. I'm old enough to remember booting up DOS from a c-prompt, but young enough to see a world of limitless opportunities. Cautious, but optimistic. In other aspects of life, we will be measured and thoughtful about our choices. Rushing into commitments simply because we've reached a certain age isn't smart. What isn't mature about taking time to understand why you want to get married, have kids, or commit to a career path? There will always be people who can't handle pressure or who are just lazy.
substack 16y ago
Isn't it common in countries outside of the US for the younger generation to stay in the same home as the older generation? Perhaps this 20-something phenomenon is just a sign that Americans are becoming more established in their communities and closer to the world norm.
- scotty79 16y ago
  In countries outside of the US there is also trend of children leaving the nest later that before. This is especially notable in Italy and Japan for what I know. Personally I correlate this mostly with pricing of housing that is essential and limited resource. Housing is hoarded by capital owners in purpose to lend it to people who have not amassed enough capital (yet). Because of that price of housing raises uncontrollably to the point where almost no young people can afford not only buying a house but even renting one. In Japan when you start renting a flat you are obliged to give owner customary 'gift' that is worth two years of rent. Because keeping house empty is small cost for owner it's better to keep it empty than sell it at lower price. This prevents prices from dropping even when there's no demand at high price. Prices of rent follow prices of houses. Of course all of that is just my uneducated guess.
yardie 16y ago
Thanks, but I'll keep the state decided minimum of what an adult (18) is rather than some have some professor define what my goals should be. Since the adult "adults" are useless with any helpful advice. This is the vibe I get from the adult adults (US-specific): * A house and senate that behave like toddlers (complete with screaming matches, name calling, and taking their ball home) * An aging population more concerned with their pensions than the debt they are assigning to their children. * Complete and utter disregard for the environmental devastation they are leaving behind. I've learned more from the previous previous generation than I ever did from this last one (this doesn't include mom, my mom is the best). Mottos like, "Do your job, do it well, get a better one". Look out for your parents (ie. don't stick them in a home and wait for them to die).
- scotty79 16y ago
  > A house and senate that behave like toddlers (complete with screaming matches, name calling, and taking their ball home) This is not US specific. When I was in high-school I dismissed politics as politicians behaved like little children from my point of view. In some countries there are even childish physical fights between politicians in house (probably not senate).
  - yardie 16y ago
    It wasn't always like this. The previous generation of senators had some old ideas but they were courteous and civil to one another. The current electives are basically firebrand, chickenhawks.
Helianthus16 16y ago
Speaking as a 23-year-old who graduated a year ago... -Because we came out into a terrible economy our professional lives are naturally chaotic. -Because we have little regard for the 'status quo,' the 'way things are done.' We've been told all our lives that nothing is 'normal'--we grew up thinking that attitude was normal to the extent of never questioning it. See: http://xkcd.com/150/ http://xkcd.com/150/ -Disregard similarly for vaguely Western assumptions. From the article: "Sociologists traditionally define the transition to adulthood as marked by five milestones." As someone else noted, leaving home isn't a global thing. To put a bit of Angry Young Man spin on it, why should we be concerned with "growing up?" Why should we follow your (this is directed more at the NYT than at anyone here) roadmap? It's not like you did such a great job as far as we can see. (And I know that sentence has been said in some form throughout all of history.)
- chc 16y ago
  Since the article includes people throughout their 20s, such as 28-year-olds who "came out into" the boom economy of the mid-2000s, the first reason doesn't really ring true to me.
deleted 16y ago
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motters 16y ago
I think there are a couple of factors at work here. The first and most obvious is that young adults are more often engaged in higher education, which effectively delays the point at which they enter the "real world". The second is that it's harder your young adults to earn a wage which can support a family. In my parents and grandparents generation it was possible to leave school aged 15 or 16 and after a few years of apprenticeship be earning a full wage sufficient to start a family without a massive amount of financial struggle. The post WW2 baby boomer generation seem to have had things especially easy in this regard. I think it's only when people begin taking on significant responsibilities - like having children - that they really mature.
- neutronicus 16y ago
  Hint: It still is. Plumbers and electricians do fine. People are just too reluctant to eschew college.
  - motters 16y ago
    Perhaps that's true, and that it's people's perception of what it takes to begin adult life which has changed. Probably there is greater marketing of higher education than ever before.
    - abalashov 16y ago
      I think that's very true. Many college-age people I know these days are aware that college is just a marketing ploy for most people, but nobody is going to individually risk calling its bluff.
mumrah 16y ago
The New Yorker cover mentioned in TFA: http://content.archives.newyorker.com/djvu/Conde%20Nast/New%20Yorker/2010_05_24/webimages/page0000001_6.jpg http://content.archives.newyorker.com/djvu/Conde%20Nast/New%...
illumin8 16y ago
Welcome to the coming lost decade of the US. We are repeating the cycle of Japan. Growing unemployment. Aging baby boomer population. Recent college graduates can't get jobs, so they live with their parents. We are coming very close to recreating the Japanese culture, with all of their societal problems (40 year old unemployed men living with their parents and reading manga porn all day instead of working).
- watmough 16y ago
  If you don't look at the UK, we are becoming more like Europe. Some links: http://www.transad.pop.upenn.edu/resources/growup.html http://www.transad.pop.upenn.edu/resources/growup.html Quote:"In Italy, more than half of all young men live with their parents until age 30. Katherine Newman and Sofya Aptekar, in their chapter in The Price of Independence, trace the transition to adulthood in Europe, finding that youth there are responding to high housing costs, less stable jobs, and higher unemployment by living at home longer." High housing costs. Less stable jobs. Higher unemployment. Bam! How do you become an independent adult and start a family against that backdrop?
deleted 16y ago
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eliben 16y ago
Sounds like analyzing why so many people these days take 10 types of medications daily just to survive. Oh, wait, they're 70 year old... ah, OK. A hundred or so years ago the life expectancy in the west was 40 or something. These days we watch our 80 year-old grandparents work part-time, drive, go on vacation 3 times a year and generally have a good time. Is it really strange then that the urge to "hit the milestones" has lessened.
rphlx 16y ago
Perhaps if the baby boomers didn't rig the financial system in their favor, inflate housing prices, crash the dollar, grant themselves unfunded medicare and social security benefits for their vastly extended lifespan, increase college and healthcare costs 20-40%/yr, start two hugely expensive and mostly pointless wars, burn half the world's oil, scalp the science/tech sectors that their parents built for WWII and the space race, replacing them with finance/real estate ponzi schemes to extend an empty consumer lifestyle, and then outsource virtually everything except for senior executive and imigrant service jobs, their kids could start their own lives? Just sayin.
- jdc 16y ago
  Can we be friends?
  - rphlx 16y ago
    Sure! I'm not much fun at parties though.
  - abalashov 16y ago
    Ditto.
- lotharbot 16y ago
  The previous two generations have created a system wherein the young subsidize the old. They've placed expectations on the young (go to college, buy a house, etc.) that have led to inflated demand and therefore inflated costs, and they've positioned themselves to profit from it all. And then they get upset at the "kids" who either (1) choose not to dive headfirst into that system but instead to use their parents' built-in advantages to get ahead, or (2) get confused by the system and struggle to get started in it.
- Daishiman 16y ago
  Couldn't agree more. I'm 23. When my father entered the workforce there was a clear expectation of lifetime employment and a very nice set of increasingly better benefits and career opportunities with time. I worked in the same company a few years ago and the outlook is completely different. Because of this outlook I decided that I'd be better off working as a consultant and travelling. Really, I see little benefit to working in a corporation when we have today's lack of job security. And with the exorbitant cost of real estate, which is several times what my parents had to deal with during their time, I see no reason to stay in one place when it'd be actually easier to move around. The cost-benefit relation to having a commitment to a company and place is not the same as it was before. At least that's the way I see it.
thisorthat 16y ago
I am 23 years old and still in school. I do not remember what the stats are but I do remember a lot of students graduate in 5 years are more. When you spend the majority of your life in school the last thing you want to do is settle down right away. I am sure that people who did not go the college route are a lot more settled then I am because they had plenty of time to do what they want.
Tycho 16y ago
These articles never seem to mention the word 'laziness.' I mean shouldn't they at least consider that children of recent times have so many leisure pursuits growing up, so many easy way outs, that they get lazy and dependent?
RK 16y ago
The main thing I got from this article is that (according to the pictorial) there is an unending supply of hipsters in New York.
T_S_ 16y ago
Easy. Because their parents don't suck to hang around with. In contrast, the "greatest generation" hit their kids, hated their hair and music, and didn't know how to party. They were easier to love from a distance. The current crop of parents were also plagued with prosperity and overbought housing, thanks to our distorted tax system. Therefore they have cheap space available.
ww520 16y ago
It takes a long time to truly grow up. Here's Confucius' journey: At 15 I set my heart on learning; at 30 I firmly took my stand; at 40 I had no delusions; at 50 I knew the Mandate of Heaven; at 60 my ear was attuned; at 70 I followed my heart's desire without overstepping the boundaries of right.
narrator 16y ago
I am really curious to see what happens in 10 years when the baby boomers start to die. The younger gen Y has been so throughly infantilized by their parents that we're going to be this "Home Alone" nation without any adult supervision. Gen X will have to step up to a very unfamiliar leadership position.
Estragon 16y ago
I'm 38, and feel like I'm only just turning the corner on adulthood. My career has been grad school followed by a string of postdocs: relatively sheltered from the consequences of failure. I haven't married or had kids, and I don't have a mortgage. (I do have substantial savings.) In a bad mood, I think I'm retarded. In a good mood, I think it's neoteny. Certainly I'm better off than my parents, who unconsciously followed societal expectations, had kids in their early twenties and in so doing doomed themselves to decades of misery because they're profoundly incompatible. It's not clear to me that I've lost anything of value by the path that I've taken.
edj 16y ago
"The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were young, was 21 for women and 23 for men; by 2009 it had climbed to 26 for women and 28 for men, five years in a little more than a generation." They've cherry-picked the trough of median age at first marriage in the modern era. Looking back a little farther shows that for men first marriage only dipped into the early 20s during a few decades in the middle of the 20th century. For women first marriage has been steadily rising, however. M F 1890 26.1 22.0 1970 23.2 20.8 2007 27.7 26.0 Source: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005061.html#axzz0wz2a14ih http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005061.html#axzz0wz2a14ih shows 1890s to 2000s by decade, ultimately citing U.S. Census data.
j053003 16y ago
There was a time in U.S. history when it wasn't uncommon for several generations to be living together under the same roof. All of this "oh, he's twenty-three, why's he still living with his parents?" non-sense would sound very, very strange to someone from yesteryear.
sliverstorm 16y ago
More and more people graduate school later and later. Is that really not enough reason in and of itself? Very few people in school are really adults, unless they have returned from the work force.
waterside81 16y ago
This seems to be a largely western hemisphere phenomena. My girlfriend is South African and moved to Canada once we got serious and was amazed at how many of my friends lived at home with their folks even though they have full time jobs (most are teachers and unlike in the US, being a teacher in Ontario is a pretty sweet job). In South Africa, once you're 18 you're out the door and you learn to deal with it. The thought of being in your mid-20's and at home with your parents is tantamount to being water boarded for a South African. But one of the commenters here hit the nail on the head: real wages are going down, cost of living going up, plus throw in a little stigma about "renting being for poor people" and you'll find young adults waiting to save up to buy a house and as a result getting out on their own later.
- heresy 16y ago
  Another observation for your sample (also South African). Left home at 17, crashed at a mates place until I could find a job, any job. Most everyone in my circle of friends left home by 19 or 20. I think there is a fair bit of pressure to be "independent" and "stand on your own feet", at least in the culture I grew up in; especially if you're male. You're expected to have "guts", and not going out and making it on your own, is seen as not having any. Because of that obstinance, only in the past 3 or 4 years has rent been a low enough percentage of my income that I could start seriously saving (though I didn't, until a year ago), since I felt compelled to live up to the lifestyle people thought I had (the classic trap of coming from a "poor" family). If I could do it over, I'd have probably stayed with my parents for a couple of years and built up a cushion. But then, would I be the person I am today, or would I have been as adventurous? I don't feel grown up though, despite being 30. Maybe just more aware, and somewhat more responsible. And acknowledging of the fact that a large part of my ability to be "independent" is that I was quite lucky to enter the workforce in 1998 as things were starting to boom.
kmfrk 16y ago
This article is stupid and surly. I have a feeling the hardship of the economic recession(s) will make a lot of people grow up at an earlier age than their parents. This is a time of humility following a time of arrogance and complacency. A lot of good will come from all the bad that past generations have handed down to their children and grandchildren.
deleted 16y ago
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msluyter 16y ago
Somewhat tangential, but related: does anyone else question age stratification, generally? In the days of the single room school, older kids would mix with and tutor the younger ones. Or perhaps, a teenager would apprentice in a trade with older adults. Households would span generations. Now, we're segregated by age classification. You grow up only amongst kids your age. Adults work only with adults, and the grandparents are away in a home. Events where generations or age groups mix seem rare. I'm not enough of a sociologist to know whether there's anything inherently wrong with this, but it gives me pause.
- sn 16y ago
  Adults in the work force range from late teens/early twenties to mid/late sixties. A lot of times I go to lunch with people from work and they are talking about things from their high school years that occurred before I was born. So I think there's a decent mix there.
GoldenStake 16y ago
Looks like I fit the definition of an emerging adult like a glove. Still in college, so I live on my parents dime. Haven't done anything on my way to adulthood. Undecided about my future, and career choice. And, guess what, I just turned 20 last week. Since, emerging adulthood doesn't happen to everybody, perhaps it is the default "life stage" when we have no monetary requirements, and no expectations (which would really only happen in our situation, other than, perhaps, after retirement, but I have no experience with that one). I'm not sure what will happen when I finish school, and I prefer not to think about the details of its existence (time after school). But I am considering career paths (ones that vary greatly) which is the main point of the "life stage". (If you have a path decided; you do it, sometimes. If you don't have one decided, but you need income; you do a convenient path. But if you don't have one decided, and don't need one, you linger on it untill the prior is true). Now, as I said before, I'm undecided, and what is really scary is knowing that we basically jump into a job, with little to no real world experience (not theoretical or technical knowledge, we get that through school) about the career. Internships, would be the closest to what I'm thinking about looking for, but we have to compete for the one's that we want, our dream jobs may not even be looking for interns, and we're basically restricted to one per summer. Perhaps what would help is a program, that allows for an array of different jobs, that you jump from each month. Assuming if your interested in the career, you would have some technical knowledge about it, and that there are enough companies signed with the program to allow the plethora of jobs. Okay I'm probably talking out of my a- ...bum, because it'll have the same problems, and I'm sure there are those out there to tell me it won't work. But I am here, decisions pending.
- sn 16y ago
  You might try going to professional societies or related meetups and asking questions.
mattwdelong 16y ago
As a 23 year old who has worked almost every day of my life AND held a job since I was 13, this is bullshit. There is work if you want it, nothing is beneath you. Don't settle, but always be working towards something more. The key is always be working. Seriously though, what is this article going on about? People complain, I know. Shit sucks. But get over it, and get to work. There is always work to be done, money to be made, goals to be reached and people to marry. It`s not so bad.
fredsmith219 16y ago
Society has been going to hell in a handbasket because the younger generation is (lazy, stupid, disrespectful, ignorant, wanton, lustful, unmotivated, etc...) since Plato's time. I think it's B.S. The people in the 20'S are the ones that we've asked to fight two expensive, difficult ground wars for us in a decade, and they've stepped up. I trust that generation (I'm a mid-40's Xer) more than I trust the Boomers or my own, as we're the ones that have racked up a 13 Trillion dollar debt. We're now leaving it to the twentysomethings to pay off. Dear Twenty-somethings: On behalf of my "older and wiser" generation, I apologize. Sorry we wrecked the economy and spent so much of our nation's wealth on crap that we can't even afford to hire teachers any more.
- philwelch 16y ago
  The people in the 20'S are the ones that we've asked to fight two expensive, difficult ground wars for us in a decade, and they've stepped up. Oh, please. Proportionally, that's nowhere near the number of young people sent to Vietnam, much less WWII. The expense of those wars is again, nowhere near the expense of Vietnam, much less WWII. The casualty rates are at least an order of magnitude lower than Vietnam, which themselves were lower than WWII.
gills 16y ago
Maybe because their parents' generation sold all the blue-collar jobs down the river to China, and there's nothing to do but raise your beak to momma government and hope for some worms?
geebee 16y ago
This article makes a lot of the "brain development" of people in their 20s. But that can't have changed too much over one or two generations, so I wouldn't look to it to try to explain why people in their 20s are taking longer to "grow up" than they did 50 years ago... I think so much of this is just economic. My brother lived with a room mate until he was 34. He was an assistant professor at SF State, and his roomate was a high school teacher. I know two men in their sixties (they are parents of my friends) who raised their children in San Francisco. They were... drumroll... a professor at SF state and a high school teacher. They both purchased houses in their late 20s/early 30s and got on with it. Maybe the professions I've chosen are unrepresentative samples, maybe the city I live in is unusual for a high cost of housing... but in the early 70s, professors at state and school teachers could buy houses in SF. Now, they can afford to rent a 2br house with a roomate. There's yer trouble.
zoomzoom 16y ago
People have always been "nest huggers" - look at traditional societies like those in India. Adult children live with their parents and it is nothing new. It is new to the baby boomers in America, who grew up independent in the war and moved out to suburbia to fuel a population explosion. But not new in a biological sense. It seems that infantilization is actually a defining trait in the developed primates like humans.
jsz0 16y ago
If it takes longer to achieve security and stability in your life everything else has to wait.
kevruger 16y ago
blame facebook
mitjak 16y ago
It's in threads like this that I really miss being able to collapse an entire comment thread.

149 points by robg 16y ago

I couldn't read the entire article, all I could think of was some old codger yelling "GET OFF MY LAWN!" Seriously, times change, people change, things change. Society didn't collapse before and it's not going to now.

Chirono 16y ago
Well, that's not strictly true. There have been plenty of societies that have collapsed in the past, if not ones of which we have been a part. Noting that our society hasn't collapsed so far and using that to infer that opinions like this have no merit is one mother of a sampling bias.
ergo98 16y ago
Times change far less than most people think they do. Everything old is new again. Columnists invent trends and crazy new behaviors that are neither trends or new.
anamax 16y ago
> I couldn't read the entire article, all I could think of was some old codger yelling "GET OFF MY LAWN!" Are you suggesting that you're entitled to be on his lawn or complaining about the way he is asking you to leave?
- chc 16y ago
  I think he's suggesting that social norms generally permit neighbors access to each other's lawns, and that violating these norms is associated with cranky old men.
  - anamax 16y ago
    > I think he's suggesting that social norms generally permit neighbors access to each other's lawns, and that violating these norms is associated with cranky old men. Actually, they don't. The social norms allow access when you're interacting with the relevant residents. It's like toys - you get to play with Pat's toys while playing with Pat. Otherwise you ask, and even that can be creepy.

charlesju 16y ago

I'm pretty sure most 20 somethings reading this forum are doing big things with their lives.

dieterrams 16y ago
Like reading this forum....
- kenver 16y ago
  That was a low blow, I'm off to do something useful now...
  - eliben 16y ago
    Sorry to break it to you, but reading Reddit isn't more useful
    - sprout 16y ago
      Please. I'm off to play Dwarf Fortress.

balding_n_tired 16y ago

If you think you dislike it now, wait till you're in your 50s and reading a version for the fourth time. It does not improve on acquaintance.

yummyfajitas 16y ago

Near as I can tell, the real question is "why has marriage/childbearing been delayed?" The answer is the sexual revolution and women's empowerment. Except during the 50's and 60's, I don't think it was ever that common to pick one job and stick with it until retirement on a defined-benefit pension. The 50's and 60's were exceptional. I think the real issue here is that the baby boomers and later generations enjoy infantilizing their children. First they needed to protect their 10 year olds from nonexistent child predators, wifi and inorganic food. Then they needed to protect their 16 year olds from depraved newfangled sex ("rainbow parties", etc), completely unlike the sex they had during the 60's/70's. Now that their kids are grown up, they need a new reason to remain involved and treat them as infants.

mechanical_fish 16y ago
Paragraph one is worth an upvote, but I don't think you need go so far as the pop psych of paragraph two. Paragraph one -- indeed, sentence one, which points out that marriage and childbearing are delayed in modern technological societies -- explains most everything else. Especially when combined with the key fact that in the USA all incomes except those of the rich have been declining in real terms for over a generation. And independence costs money. Kids stay involved with their parents longer because the marginal cost of the fourth bedroom in a four-bedroom house is a lot smaller than the cost of a one-bedroom apartment. The other thing I'd point out is that the "traditional American way" to run a nuclear family -- the one where kids hit age 18 and then move out on their own, sometimes to other states -- is (was?) actually a very specific pattern of life from a very specific time in a very specific culture. In many cultures, historically and around the world, households traditionally contained grandparents, parents, and children all living together. It would be considered alien for a child to desert the home of their parents unless they were explicitly married out to another family, in which case the child would be expected to live in the home of the spouse's parents. To strike out on your own would be crazy! What would your family say? (And one wonders if the nomads of the Tibetan plateau are sitting around reading Tibetan op-eds bemoaning the decline of the traditional Tibetan family: Some women are taking only one husband! What are his brothers supposed to do for a wife? [1]) Traditions can be pretty ephemeral. One of my favorite things to do is to find "ancient traditions" whose inventors are still living. --- [1] Note: I took Anthropology 101 from a world expert on polyandry -- one of the world's most unusual family patterns -- but I should note that I made up this particular example. I actually have no idea to what extent polyandry is in decline, or whether a family of Tibetan nomadic brothers and their wife are likely to read op-eds.

EvanK 16y ago

Because they can. We live longer now than we ever have...We don't have to be married and having kids by the time we're twenty, before the plague or dysentery gets us. A female friend of mine just turned 30 and she's just getting into an actual career (and she's perfectly fine with taking her time).

ergo98 16y ago
"We don't have to be married and having kids by the time we're twenty, before the plague or dysentery gets us." There are many choices for life, and choosing never to get married and never to have kids is exactly the right choice for many people. People don't need to build an army of labor to tend the farm or whatever anymore. Having said that, the human body is geared to having children young. A lot of women are putting off having children and then finding it either impossible, or learning that the risks of an endless array of defects goes up quite dramatically.
- EvanK 16y ago
  Even then, we still have options that people haven't always had, like adoption or surrogacy.
  - DougWebb 16y ago
    I think orphans have existed about as long as children have, and adoption has always been there too. Surrogacy in the sense of "my sperm and your eggs in her body" is new, but men having multiple wives with the younger ones for child bearing is not. So I'd say the concept is old, and only the technology is new.

gte910h 16y ago

It's pretty obvious why: the jobs situation sucks (they don't pay well or are non-existent), college/other debt is higher, more education than ever is needed to get the few jobs there are. If the jobs were there that were there in the 90's or 80's, which required less investment, had more reasonable starting salaries compared to housing/medical/car costs, many people being drifters and living with mom and dad wouldn't. I do think the tech industry is still doing better than most though, and requires relatively smaller amounts of training, so I'm not sure HNers empathize with what it's like for non-tech people.

ultrasaurus 16y ago
I think the first time you get laid off (or fired maybe) you change your plans dramatically too.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
yummyfajitas 16y ago
I'm not sure that housing/medical/car are more expensive. I don't know about comparing 2010 to 1990, but I do know that if you compare roughly 2000 to 1970, all of those expenses went down. See Elizabeth Warren's book "The Two Income Trap", which shows that basically everything besides taxes and expectations went down in cost (you need to read carefully, she plays down the tax numbers by presenting them in a confusing manner). [edit: to clarify, housing/medical/car are more expensive. But incomes went up as well. As a percentage of income, those expenses went down.]
- masterj 16y ago
  >I'm not sure that housing/medical/car are more expensive. I don't know about comparing 2010 to 1990, but I do know that if you compare roughly 2000 to 1970, all of those expenses went down. ... I'm fairly certain she showed that medical expenses + housing + need for a second vehicle accounted for the majority of the change in expenditures for the average nuclear family. I haven't read the book yet, but I've watched her talk. This is where she talks about changes in expenses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A#t=15m0s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A#t=15m0s Edit: Skip to here if you can't spare four minutes extra for some exposition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A#t=19m30s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akVL7QY0S8A#t=19m30s

quanticle 16y ago

One thing that I noticed in the article is that several of the sociological milestones cited are all distinct to American culture. For example, the "leaving home" milestone doesn't exist in a lot of cultures. Kids live in the same house as their parents and grandparents - forming extended families. The concept of a "nuclear" family consisting only of parents and children is a distinctly American one, and even then it only became the norm at the beginning of the twentieth century. As far as marriage goes, I think the advance in marriage age is a good thing. I mean, do you really want children getting married and having children at an age when they're too young to handle the responsibilities? Its not that the kids are changing, but rather that society has enough resources to better accommodate the needs of its youth. I don't think that's something to be afraid of. And where children are concerned, I fail to see why that's a milestone at all. By that standard, Bristol Palin is more of an "adult" than most responsible and hard-working twenty-somethings.

dublinclontarf 16y ago
Yes in some cultures (China) children often don't leave home at all. And the result? Life long infantilization, seriously Chinese are treated like children even after they marry.
CWuestefeld 16y ago
I object to the "moving back home" and "leaving home" terminology. Even at 40-something years old, I still hear people say they're spending their vacation "going back home". What is it about the place your parents live that makes it "home"? (Especially when that place isn't even the house you grew up in!) As I see it, "home" is wherever I live. So "moving back home" is a tautology, and "leaving home" on a permanent basis is an oxymoron.
- username3 16y ago
  1st base, 2nd base, and 3rd base should be called home base when a runner is on it.
mebassett 16y ago
" I mean, do you really want children getting married and having children at an age when they're too young to handle the responsibilities? " I mostly agree with your sentiment, that perhaps society now is better equipped to handle the youth. but if 17-25 is too young to be having kids, don't you think it a bit odd that those are the most fertile years? I think most folks associate "adult" with "responsibility". and having a kid induces a lot of responsibility.

psadauskas 16y ago

The way I look at it, I'm an adult now (29), so I get to decide what "being an adult" means.

sp332 16y ago
Sorry, but obligatory http://xkcd.com/150/ http://xkcd.com/150/ Edit: and the follow-up on the artist's blog, er, "blag": http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/11/19/growing-up/ http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/11/19/growing-up/ and http://blog.xkcd.com/2008/02/27/ballpit-phase-ii/ http://blog.xkcd.com/2008/02/27/ballpit-phase-ii/
- eliben 16y ago
  Nice, right on spot.

marcusbooster 16y ago

Why are so many people in their 60's not retired? Why are so many people in their 70's not dead?

Marticus 16y ago
Which is basically why I quit reading the NYT.
Dn_Ab 16y ago
exactly. The way I see it, as the average life span of a human increases the pace of life will slow to a more leisurely elven type speed. Things are a lot more complex and there is a great deal more to know than say a century or even half a century ago, it takes a bit longer now to come up to speed.
- snth 16y ago
  Unfortunately the basic constraints on childbearing years still (basically) stand.
  - Retric 16y ago
    When you can have children at 10 or 60 and your life expectancy is only 80 it's not really a major issue.
    - philwelch 16y ago
      Men might be able to have children at 60, but it's not so easy for women.
    - snth 16y ago
      There was a story on Hacker News about this a while back, but here's something I found through a quick search. Best age for childbearing remains 20-35 - Delaying risks heartbreak, say experts http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/30737.php http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/30737.php

aceofspades19 16y ago

It seems to me that its largely due to the fact that our society doesn't let you do anything until you are 18, sometimes 19. For example, when my parents were teenagers, you could get your full drivers license at 16, now in British Columbia, you get your learners license at 16, your 'N' at 17 and you don't get your full drivers license until you are 19. Also in British Columbia, you can't rent an apartment without someone signing for it until you are 19. So its hard for someone to grow up until they are in their late 20s because they are used to society protecting them until such a late age and then when it is time for them to move out etc. they don't know what to do with themselves because they haven't been able to learn what to do when they are on their own. So if our society wasn't so over-protective, people would be growing up faster, but instead we are treating them like children until they are almost 20.

elai 16y ago
I wouldn't say protective vs more holding you back. People don't want to sign contracts with minors because minors do not have to hold their side of the contract and it's been like that legally for a long time.
- aceofspades19 16y ago
  So thats why you make legal age something sane so people who are currently "minors" but are actually 18(or whatever age is best) can move out and grow up. I mean really, people in British Columbia, who are 18, can be charged as an adult and can enter the military but they can't get a credit card? I don't know what the situation is like in other areas, but in BC, at least, its insane!
simonsarris 16y ago
How common is 18/19? I know Massachusetts has some permit system. In New Hampshire everyone that can get their drivers license does so on the day of their 16th birthday. It's like a rite of passage. There are no learning licenses or permits or anything, but you are allowed to drive with a parent at 15 and a half.
ww520 16y ago

jcromartie 16y ago

Perhaps part of it is because they are told that the "real world" is deferred until they are out of college. Now that they're done with college, they are at the same point in life as the average (young) teenager a few generations ago. The invention of the modern consumer society called "childhood" is being extended further and further, and until someone does something about it, we'll see more of this.

jleyank 16y ago

Why? Because they can... The trick is avoiding a Lord of the Flies culture due to extended (pre-)adolescence.

scornforsega 16y ago

Financial stability is harder and harder to come by. No 20-something wants to move back home, but often, there isn't much of a choice. Between inflation knocking the hell out of the dollar and putting a strain on social security and that fact keeping older people in the workplace for longer, nevermind the withering away of the American manufacturing, opportunities for stable, decent paying jobs that might actually cover your student loan payments are few and far between.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

Okay, I am now officially sick of this kind of story. I'm 45, and if this trend of increasingly defining older and older people more and more infantile continues, I could end up a baby again before I retire. Seriously though, I don't see the newness here. My father told me that his grandfather told him that you don't truly become and adult until around age 35 or so. That bit of family wisdom dates back to early the last century. A hundred years ago. If we're into social commentary, I'd point out that as we become more and more pampered, we become more and more infantile. I expect to push the button on the iPhone and have the pizza show up 15 minutes later. I expect to be in contact with all of my friends instantly via text message. I expect to have college paid for and a warm house with the folks if things don't work out. These are probably great things to expect, but when you're not making work-or-starve decisions every day, you can easily start expecting a helluva lot of stuff that just realistically isn't going to happen. We call people who have unrealistic views about their status in the world, an inability to make decisions, and the need to be taken care of, well, chidlike. I love optimism, but that's not what I see from this article. This is different than optimism. Optimism says we'll make the most of it and things will be fine. This is I-want-to-be-a-rock-star. I have everything else I want. I want this too. It's all luck, anyway. Show me the button I push for the limo. Put another way, these super-cool new things need to be compared to something. If you compare them to nothing, you know what you have and what you don't have. If you have no frame of reference, it's all just "normal". That lack of context makes a difference in being able to do stuff. I don't mean that as commentary on "those dang kids". I think every generation has an awesome potential, mainly because of all these cool new things. I see no reason why we need a new developmental stage. 20-somethings can fly nuclear bombers, I think they'll do alright with career choices. If we let them. Pointing out they are mentally impaired is no more useful than pointing out the average 85-year-old is mentally impaired. Yet many of them drive, work, and do just fine in the world. What I think is missing at this age, frankly, is some sense of comparison. You need to know you are unique and special, just like everybody else. I think some form of mandatory national service could help. Either that or I need to start looking for rattles that I find appealing.

varjag 16y ago
Indeed so many are arguing that it really does take longer to grow up in modern societies, but it makes me wonder. If the society move up de-facto age of adolescence, should the de-jure part follow? Maybe increase the age of majority to 24 or so.. voting age, age of consent as well?

steveklabnik 16y ago

The rise of helicopter parenting. I'm 24, and my mom was roughly half a helicopter, and it was unbearable. I can only imagine how bad it could have been...

antidaily 16y ago
You were raised by Transformers? AWESOME.
- philwelch 16y ago
  "Helicopter parent" is a slang term for a parent who always hovers over their children to "help out" and potentially make their lives easier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent

mcantor 16y ago

I feel like a lot of people are responding to this article as if the title is meant to be incendiary; the way a jilted friend spits "Grow up!" at the object of their indignation. I don't think that was the intention, though. I wonder, in fact, how many of these commenters thoroughly read the article, because--as a guy/boy/man/child of 25--I found it to be a fascinating exploration of why the trappings of my life, and my peers' lives, differ so much from that of our parents at this age. I don't see it as an attempt at bastardizing our ability to take responsibility for ourselves.

jimbokun 16y ago
What I find grating is the NY Times invocation of the Royal We: "If society decides to protect these young people or treat them differently from fully grown adults, how can we do this without becoming all the things that grown children resist — controlling, moralizing, paternalistic?" I don't see how "we", as society, need to do anything. If a parent wants to allow a child to live with them until he's 30, if people want to get married or have kids later, or if a parent wants to kick their kid out of the nest at 18 or two 19 year olds want to marry while still undergrads, I don't see how "we" as the broader society need to do anything. Leave it to the individual. I find the idea that society is obligated to change to accommodate the indefinite extension of adolescence to be controlling, moralizing, and paternalistic. (And this is coming from someone who got married at 29, just under the 30 deadline. I just don't see the need to reinforce the decision I personally made as a social norm.)

pvg 16y ago

I couldn't quite figure out the source of the more eyepoking stats. "The 20s are a black box, and there is a lot of churning in there. One-third of people in their 20s move to a new residence every year. Forty percent move back home with their parents at least once."

zeteo 16y ago

Flash news: post-Baby Boomer generations fail to follow social expectations (early marriage, early job, lifelong career) set by pre-Baby Boomer generations. Social scientists hard at work describing the problem and wondering how to fix it.

OasisP 16y ago

This article makes a lot of broad statements without citing statistics. We 20-somethings ARE growing up, the process just looks different due to a combination of technology and a slow economy. I bet that as we grow older, we will adopt many of the practices that people older than us (the type of people who write articles like this) should have been practicing; i.e. fiscal responsibility. 20-somethings experienced 9/11 during our teens, a time when most people feel invulnerable. At the same time, we've seen the transformative power of technology. I'm old enough to remember booting up DOS from a c-prompt, but young enough to see a world of limitless opportunities. Cautious, but optimistic. In other aspects of life, we will be measured and thoughtful about our choices. Rushing into commitments simply because we've reached a certain age isn't smart. What isn't mature about taking time to understand why you want to get married, have kids, or commit to a career path? There will always be people who can't handle pressure or who are just lazy.

substack 16y ago

Isn't it common in countries outside of the US for the younger generation to stay in the same home as the older generation? Perhaps this 20-something phenomenon is just a sign that Americans are becoming more established in their communities and closer to the world norm.

scotty79 16y ago
In countries outside of the US there is also trend of children leaving the nest later that before. This is especially notable in Italy and Japan for what I know. Personally I correlate this mostly with pricing of housing that is essential and limited resource. Housing is hoarded by capital owners in purpose to lend it to people who have not amassed enough capital (yet). Because of that price of housing raises uncontrollably to the point where almost no young people can afford not only buying a house but even renting one. In Japan when you start renting a flat you are obliged to give owner customary 'gift' that is worth two years of rent. Because keeping house empty is small cost for owner it's better to keep it empty than sell it at lower price. This prevents prices from dropping even when there's no demand at high price. Prices of rent follow prices of houses. Of course all of that is just my uneducated guess.

yardie 16y ago

Thanks, but I'll keep the state decided minimum of what an adult (18) is rather than some have some professor define what my goals should be. Since the adult "adults" are useless with any helpful advice. This is the vibe I get from the adult adults (US-specific): * A house and senate that behave like toddlers (complete with screaming matches, name calling, and taking their ball home) * An aging population more concerned with their pensions than the debt they are assigning to their children. * Complete and utter disregard for the environmental devastation they are leaving behind. I've learned more from the previous previous generation than I ever did from this last one (this doesn't include mom, my mom is the best). Mottos like, "Do your job, do it well, get a better one". Look out for your parents (ie. don't stick them in a home and wait for them to die).

scotty79 16y ago
> A house and senate that behave like toddlers (complete with screaming matches, name calling, and taking their ball home) This is not US specific. When I was in high-school I dismissed politics as politicians behaved like little children from my point of view. In some countries there are even childish physical fights between politicians in house (probably not senate).
- yardie 16y ago
  It wasn't always like this. The previous generation of senators had some old ideas but they were courteous and civil to one another. The current electives are basically firebrand, chickenhawks.

Helianthus16 16y ago

Speaking as a 23-year-old who graduated a year ago... -Because we came out into a terrible economy our professional lives are naturally chaotic. -Because we have little regard for the 'status quo,' the 'way things are done.' We've been told all our lives that nothing is 'normal'--we grew up thinking that attitude was normal to the extent of never questioning it. See: http://xkcd.com/150/ http://xkcd.com/150/ -Disregard similarly for vaguely Western assumptions. From the article: "Sociologists traditionally define the transition to adulthood as marked by five milestones." As someone else noted, leaving home isn't a global thing. To put a bit of Angry Young Man spin on it, why should we be concerned with "growing up?" Why should we follow your (this is directed more at the NYT than at anyone here) roadmap? It's not like you did such a great job as far as we can see. (And I know that sentence has been said in some form throughout all of history.)

chc 16y ago
Since the article includes people throughout their 20s, such as 28-year-olds who "came out into" the boom economy of the mid-2000s, the first reason doesn't really ring true to me.

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motters 16y ago

I think there are a couple of factors at work here. The first and most obvious is that young adults are more often engaged in higher education, which effectively delays the point at which they enter the "real world". The second is that it's harder your young adults to earn a wage which can support a family. In my parents and grandparents generation it was possible to leave school aged 15 or 16 and after a few years of apprenticeship be earning a full wage sufficient to start a family without a massive amount of financial struggle. The post WW2 baby boomer generation seem to have had things especially easy in this regard. I think it's only when people begin taking on significant responsibilities - like having children - that they really mature.

neutronicus 16y ago
Hint: It still is. Plumbers and electricians do fine. People are just too reluctant to eschew college.
- motters 16y ago
  Perhaps that's true, and that it's people's perception of what it takes to begin adult life which has changed. Probably there is greater marketing of higher education than ever before.
  - abalashov 16y ago
    I think that's very true. Many college-age people I know these days are aware that college is just a marketing ploy for most people, but nobody is going to individually risk calling its bluff.

mumrah 16y ago

The New Yorker cover mentioned in TFA: http://content.archives.newyorker.com/djvu/Conde%20Nast/New%20Yorker/2010_05_24/webimages/page0000001_6.jpg http://content.archives.newyorker.com/djvu/Conde%20Nast/New%...

illumin8 16y ago

Welcome to the coming lost decade of the US. We are repeating the cycle of Japan. Growing unemployment. Aging baby boomer population. Recent college graduates can't get jobs, so they live with their parents. We are coming very close to recreating the Japanese culture, with all of their societal problems (40 year old unemployed men living with their parents and reading manga porn all day instead of working).

watmough 16y ago
If you don't look at the UK, we are becoming more like Europe. Some links: http://www.transad.pop.upenn.edu/resources/growup.html http://www.transad.pop.upenn.edu/resources/growup.html Quote:"In Italy, more than half of all young men live with their parents until age 30. Katherine Newman and Sofya Aptekar, in their chapter in The Price of Independence, trace the transition to adulthood in Europe, finding that youth there are responding to high housing costs, less stable jobs, and higher unemployment by living at home longer." High housing costs. Less stable jobs. Higher unemployment. Bam! How do you become an independent adult and start a family against that backdrop?

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eliben 16y ago

Sounds like analyzing why so many people these days take 10 types of medications daily just to survive. Oh, wait, they're 70 year old... ah, OK. A hundred or so years ago the life expectancy in the west was 40 or something. These days we watch our 80 year-old grandparents work part-time, drive, go on vacation 3 times a year and generally have a good time. Is it really strange then that the urge to "hit the milestones" has lessened.

rphlx 16y ago

Perhaps if the baby boomers didn't rig the financial system in their favor, inflate housing prices, crash the dollar, grant themselves unfunded medicare and social security benefits for their vastly extended lifespan, increase college and healthcare costs 20-40%/yr, start two hugely expensive and mostly pointless wars, burn half the world's oil, scalp the science/tech sectors that their parents built for WWII and the space race, replacing them with finance/real estate ponzi schemes to extend an empty consumer lifestyle, and then outsource virtually everything except for senior executive and imigrant service jobs, their kids could start their own lives? Just sayin.

jdc 16y ago
Can we be friends?
- rphlx 16y ago
  Sure! I'm not much fun at parties though.
- abalashov 16y ago
  Ditto.
lotharbot 16y ago
The previous two generations have created a system wherein the young subsidize the old. They've placed expectations on the young (go to college, buy a house, etc.) that have led to inflated demand and therefore inflated costs, and they've positioned themselves to profit from it all. And then they get upset at the "kids" who either (1) choose not to dive headfirst into that system but instead to use their parents' built-in advantages to get ahead, or (2) get confused by the system and struggle to get started in it.
Daishiman 16y ago
Couldn't agree more. I'm 23. When my father entered the workforce there was a clear expectation of lifetime employment and a very nice set of increasingly better benefits and career opportunities with time. I worked in the same company a few years ago and the outlook is completely different. Because of this outlook I decided that I'd be better off working as a consultant and travelling. Really, I see little benefit to working in a corporation when we have today's lack of job security. And with the exorbitant cost of real estate, which is several times what my parents had to deal with during their time, I see no reason to stay in one place when it'd be actually easier to move around. The cost-benefit relation to having a commitment to a company and place is not the same as it was before. At least that's the way I see it.

thisorthat 16y ago

I am 23 years old and still in school. I do not remember what the stats are but I do remember a lot of students graduate in 5 years are more. When you spend the majority of your life in school the last thing you want to do is settle down right away. I am sure that people who did not go the college route are a lot more settled then I am because they had plenty of time to do what they want.

Tycho 16y ago

These articles never seem to mention the word 'laziness.' I mean shouldn't they at least consider that children of recent times have so many leisure pursuits growing up, so many easy way outs, that they get lazy and dependent?

RK 16y ago

The main thing I got from this article is that (according to the pictorial) there is an unending supply of hipsters in New York.

T_S_ 16y ago

Easy. Because their parents don't suck to hang around with. In contrast, the "greatest generation" hit their kids, hated their hair and music, and didn't know how to party. They were easier to love from a distance. The current crop of parents were also plagued with prosperity and overbought housing, thanks to our distorted tax system. Therefore they have cheap space available.

ww520 16y ago

It takes a long time to truly grow up. Here's Confucius' journey: At 15 I set my heart on learning; at 30 I firmly took my stand; at 40 I had no delusions; at 50 I knew the Mandate of Heaven; at 60 my ear was attuned; at 70 I followed my heart's desire without overstepping the boundaries of right.

narrator 16y ago

I am really curious to see what happens in 10 years when the baby boomers start to die. The younger gen Y has been so throughly infantilized by their parents that we're going to be this "Home Alone" nation without any adult supervision. Gen X will have to step up to a very unfamiliar leadership position.

Estragon 16y ago

I'm 38, and feel like I'm only just turning the corner on adulthood. My career has been grad school followed by a string of postdocs: relatively sheltered from the consequences of failure. I haven't married or had kids, and I don't have a mortgage. (I do have substantial savings.) In a bad mood, I think I'm retarded. In a good mood, I think it's neoteny. Certainly I'm better off than my parents, who unconsciously followed societal expectations, had kids in their early twenties and in so doing doomed themselves to decades of misery because they're profoundly incompatible. It's not clear to me that I've lost anything of value by the path that I've taken.

edj 16y ago

"The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were young, was 21 for women and 23 for men; by 2009 it had climbed to 26 for women and 28 for men, five years in a little more than a generation." They've cherry-picked the trough of median age at first marriage in the modern era. Looking back a little farther shows that for men first marriage only dipped into the early 20s during a few decades in the middle of the 20th century. For women first marriage has been steadily rising, however. M F 1890 26.1 22.0 1970 23.2 20.8 2007 27.7 26.0 Source: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005061.html#axzz0wz2a14ih http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005061.html#axzz0wz2a14ih shows 1890s to 2000s by decade, ultimately citing U.S. Census data.

j053003 16y ago

There was a time in U.S. history when it wasn't uncommon for several generations to be living together under the same roof. All of this "oh, he's twenty-three, why's he still living with his parents?" non-sense would sound very, very strange to someone from yesteryear.

sliverstorm 16y ago

More and more people graduate school later and later. Is that really not enough reason in and of itself? Very few people in school are really adults, unless they have returned from the work force.

waterside81 16y ago

This seems to be a largely western hemisphere phenomena. My girlfriend is South African and moved to Canada once we got serious and was amazed at how many of my friends lived at home with their folks even though they have full time jobs (most are teachers and unlike in the US, being a teacher in Ontario is a pretty sweet job). In South Africa, once you're 18 you're out the door and you learn to deal with it. The thought of being in your mid-20's and at home with your parents is tantamount to being water boarded for a South African. But one of the commenters here hit the nail on the head: real wages are going down, cost of living going up, plus throw in a little stigma about "renting being for poor people" and you'll find young adults waiting to save up to buy a house and as a result getting out on their own later.

heresy 16y ago
Another observation for your sample (also South African). Left home at 17, crashed at a mates place until I could find a job, any job. Most everyone in my circle of friends left home by 19 or 20. I think there is a fair bit of pressure to be "independent" and "stand on your own feet", at least in the culture I grew up in; especially if you're male. You're expected to have "guts", and not going out and making it on your own, is seen as not having any. Because of that obstinance, only in the past 3 or 4 years has rent been a low enough percentage of my income that I could start seriously saving (though I didn't, until a year ago), since I felt compelled to live up to the lifestyle people thought I had (the classic trap of coming from a "poor" family). If I could do it over, I'd have probably stayed with my parents for a couple of years and built up a cushion. But then, would I be the person I am today, or would I have been as adventurous? I don't feel grown up though, despite being 30. Maybe just more aware, and somewhat more responsible. And acknowledging of the fact that a large part of my ability to be "independent" is that I was quite lucky to enter the workforce in 1998 as things were starting to boom.

kmfrk 16y ago

This article is stupid and surly. I have a feeling the hardship of the economic recession(s) will make a lot of people grow up at an earlier age than their parents. This is a time of humility following a time of arrogance and complacency. A lot of good will come from all the bad that past generations have handed down to their children and grandchildren.

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msluyter 16y ago

Somewhat tangential, but related: does anyone else question age stratification, generally? In the days of the single room school, older kids would mix with and tutor the younger ones. Or perhaps, a teenager would apprentice in a trade with older adults. Households would span generations. Now, we're segregated by age classification. You grow up only amongst kids your age. Adults work only with adults, and the grandparents are away in a home. Events where generations or age groups mix seem rare. I'm not enough of a sociologist to know whether there's anything inherently wrong with this, but it gives me pause.

sn 16y ago
Adults in the work force range from late teens/early twenties to mid/late sixties. A lot of times I go to lunch with people from work and they are talking about things from their high school years that occurred before I was born. So I think there's a decent mix there.

GoldenStake 16y ago

Looks like I fit the definition of an emerging adult like a glove. Still in college, so I live on my parents dime. Haven't done anything on my way to adulthood. Undecided about my future, and career choice. And, guess what, I just turned 20 last week. Since, emerging adulthood doesn't happen to everybody, perhaps it is the default "life stage" when we have no monetary requirements, and no expectations (which would really only happen in our situation, other than, perhaps, after retirement, but I have no experience with that one). I'm not sure what will happen when I finish school, and I prefer not to think about the details of its existence (time after school). But I am considering career paths (ones that vary greatly) which is the main point of the "life stage". (If you have a path decided; you do it, sometimes. If you don't have one decided, but you need income; you do a convenient path. But if you don't have one decided, and don't need one, you linger on it untill the prior is true). Now, as I said before, I'm undecided, and what is really scary is knowing that we basically jump into a job, with little to no real world experience (not theoretical or technical knowledge, we get that through school) about the career. Internships, would be the closest to what I'm thinking about looking for, but we have to compete for the one's that we want, our dream jobs may not even be looking for interns, and we're basically restricted to one per summer. Perhaps what would help is a program, that allows for an array of different jobs, that you jump from each month. Assuming if your interested in the career, you would have some technical knowledge about it, and that there are enough companies signed with the program to allow the plethora of jobs. Okay I'm probably talking out of my a- ...bum, because it'll have the same problems, and I'm sure there are those out there to tell me it won't work. But I am here, decisions pending.

sn 16y ago
You might try going to professional societies or related meetups and asking questions.

mattwdelong 16y ago

As a 23 year old who has worked almost every day of my life AND held a job since I was 13, this is bullshit. There is work if you want it, nothing is beneath you. Don't settle, but always be working towards something more. The key is always be working. Seriously though, what is this article going on about? People complain, I know. Shit sucks. But get over it, and get to work. There is always work to be done, money to be made, goals to be reached and people to marry. It`s not so bad.

fredsmith219 16y ago

Society has been going to hell in a handbasket because the younger generation is (lazy, stupid, disrespectful, ignorant, wanton, lustful, unmotivated, etc...) since Plato's time. I think it's B.S. The people in the 20'S are the ones that we've asked to fight two expensive, difficult ground wars for us in a decade, and they've stepped up. I trust that generation (I'm a mid-40's Xer) more than I trust the Boomers or my own, as we're the ones that have racked up a 13 Trillion dollar debt. We're now leaving it to the twentysomethings to pay off. Dear Twenty-somethings: On behalf of my "older and wiser" generation, I apologize. Sorry we wrecked the economy and spent so much of our nation's wealth on crap that we can't even afford to hire teachers any more.

philwelch 16y ago
The people in the 20'S are the ones that we've asked to fight two expensive, difficult ground wars for us in a decade, and they've stepped up. Oh, please. Proportionally, that's nowhere near the number of young people sent to Vietnam, much less WWII. The expense of those wars is again, nowhere near the expense of Vietnam, much less WWII. The casualty rates are at least an order of magnitude lower than Vietnam, which themselves were lower than WWII.

gills 16y ago

Maybe because their parents' generation sold all the blue-collar jobs down the river to China, and there's nothing to do but raise your beak to momma government and hope for some worms?

geebee 16y ago

This article makes a lot of the "brain development" of people in their 20s. But that can't have changed too much over one or two generations, so I wouldn't look to it to try to explain why people in their 20s are taking longer to "grow up" than they did 50 years ago... I think so much of this is just economic. My brother lived with a room mate until he was 34. He was an assistant professor at SF State, and his roomate was a high school teacher. I know two men in their sixties (they are parents of my friends) who raised their children in San Francisco. They were... drumroll... a professor at SF state and a high school teacher. They both purchased houses in their late 20s/early 30s and got on with it. Maybe the professions I've chosen are unrepresentative samples, maybe the city I live in is unusual for a high cost of housing... but in the early 70s, professors at state and school teachers could buy houses in SF. Now, they can afford to rent a 2br house with a roomate. There's yer trouble.

zoomzoom 16y ago

People have always been "nest huggers" - look at traditional societies like those in India. Adult children live with their parents and it is nothing new. It is new to the baby boomers in America, who grew up independent in the war and moved out to suburbia to fuel a population explosion. But not new in a biological sense. It seems that infantilization is actually a defining trait in the developed primates like humans.

jsz0 16y ago

If it takes longer to achieve security and stability in your life everything else has to wait.

kevruger 16y ago

blame facebook

mitjak 16y ago

It's in threads like this that I really miss being able to collapse an entire comment thread.