> then in our 20's more or less have to make a mad dash to establish a place to live, a career, a partner, etc. What is weird, from the historical perspective,

> then in our 20's more or less have to make a mad dash to establish a place to live, a career, a partner, etc. What is weird, from the historical perspective, is that we need to do all those. I come from a rural village and almost all of my older relatives just continued living near where they were born (some even in their childhood homes) and having the same job their parents had (which was some kind of farming for most of them). They basically had their life figured out at the age of 20, after which they started having kids. Also, most of their friends and acquaintances are people they knew already when they were children. If you think about it, it's not really surprising that friends get left behind when you move, change jobs, and basically everything in your life changes. If an old friend of mine used to know me at the age of 20, he doesn't know me anymore at the age of 37 since everything in my life has changed. We might not even like each other anymore.