Grow up already!

Clear back the end of August I read an article in the New York Times Journal. I thought it was interesting because Brett and I had just been talking about the issue. Then in the first of September I had to read it for one of my classes. And I still found it interesting, especially after some of the comments made in class. The article: What is it about 20-somethings? And that is a very good question. Because really, what is going on with the vast majority of them? I just don’t get it.

The author tries to make the argument that we need to define a new developmental stage in life. He says that “young adult” is a completely different thing from being actual adults. In fact he terms it “emerging adulthood.” They don’t have the responsibilities yet of adults and aren’t making big life decisions yet, so obviously they need to be treated differently and given the chance to explore.

My opinion – it’s a load of crap. It’s not a developmental stage, it’s not a psychological phenomenon. It’s a societal one. Society today has made it possible for people to push back becoming full functioning adults until well past the time to do so. It’s even been legally mandated now that people don’t have to grow up till the late 20’s; the new health care bill allows them to wait till they are 26 before they have to think about that. I was naming beneficiaries for my life insurance policy at the age of 23.

A life of privilege has made young adults feel that there are not entry level jobs worthy of the lifestyle they think they should have, lifestyles that match the one they had with their parents. That privilege  is allowing someone else (generally parents) to continue to make the big life decisions for their children long past the age when they should have stopped. Helicopter parents still exist in college, but at least at that point I can tell them that legally I can’t tell them anything, no matter how angry they get. If they were to let their children sink a little, they’d learn to swim, their brains would adapt to make their own life decisions fast enough.

The author talks about “the age 30 deadline” when the stakes start to rise as people approach the age when options tend to close off and lifelong commitments are made. Was this deadline not the early 20s a generation ago? Just because society has pushed that deadline back ten years does not mean that we need a new ten year long developmental stage.

One reason I see for this delay in growing up is the loss of ritual and ceremony in our society, in our culture. Many cultures have rituals to formally welcome individuals into the community as full adults. Our society has lost these distinctions. We have no marker to say “today you are a man.” High school graduation used to work for that, but it doesn’t seem to be doing it any more.

We need to not just let these “lost souls” be adults, but we need to make them. We need to stop enabling their behavior. Mark them as adults and then treat them as such. They’ll figure it out sooner that way. Generations before them sure did.