Are people today taking longer to grow up? Why?

Great Debates
1

According to this Time magazine article (subscription req):
http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1018089,00.html

people today are taking longer to “grow up” and become adults than they did say…30 years ago. In general, the article defines “adult” as someone who is financially self-sufficient, often married, owning a house and holding down a steady job.

The article goes on to talk about how people in their 20s tend to stay in college longer, take longer to settle into a career, live at home longer, get married later in life, and often sponge off their parents well into adulthood (20s and even early 30s).

So are we clinging to adolescence longer than previous generations? If so, why do you think that is?

2

Wouldn’t a good part of this be attributed to economic factors? Once upon a time, you could, with a high school diploma (sometimes less) find work that would provide for yourself and a family. That is no longer the case, as we’ve moved away from manufacturing and into service/technology.

Also, as a result of this, we have the people who might have otherwise gone into manufacturing due to lack of education stuck in jobs that do not pay enough to live on…so they stay at home. Don’t ask me why parents allow this, but it’s common enough around here- a good part of it is part of the small-town philosophy of keeping your loved ones close.

3

Just some thoughts:
– 30 years ago, there was an expectation that one would be a company man, and spend most of his career with a single firm… Today, most people are never ‘settled’ in a job, or even a career. The more fluid one is about using one’s skills, the more likely one is to remain employed.
– 30 years ago, a young couple could scrimp and scrounge for a couple of years and make a down payment on a house. Housing prices are insane today, and many college educated young adults are already under staggering debt from student loans and credit cards.
– As more women have entered the workforce, they have become more independent. Thus, the need for ‘landing’ a husband has subsided. A woman can have the same career as a man (albeit, paid less - work still needs to be done), and doesn’t need to rush marriage to have a home and financial stability.

I’ll see if someone has Time so I can read the article. Sounds interesting. Do they make these points, or is it one-sided?

4

I recall reading some years ago the “domestic zoology” books of Desmond Morris (Catwatching, Dogwatching), where he points out repeatedly that the domesticaion process leaves household pets in a permanent state of semi-immaturity.

Since then, I have always wondered if we haven’t domesticated ourselves into a similar situation.

5

Longer life expectancy. You remain a kid when you can put growing up off until tomorrow. Tomorrow keeps getting further away.

Your parents are also living longer. This keeps that parental “safety net” in place longer. You don’t have to start facing up to absolutely having to be able to support yourself until you are older. Living parents also makes it easier for you to ignore your own limited lifespan.

6

Reduced family size could be a factor. This allows parents to dote on one or two children way too long, whereas when families of 4, 5, or 6 kids were more common it just wasn’t economically or logistically feasible to baby and pamper kids as much.

7

Must-read article from Psychology Today.

The point being argued is that by being-overprotective of young children, parents today deny them the opportunity to experiment and learn social skills for themselves. Consequently the young adults who haven’t yet developed their own identity have to spend a ‘second childhood’ in their 20’s, figuring out how they fit in the world.

8

I think a large part of it is economic. My parents generation had to basically work as soon as they were able because their parents couldn’t support them. As the first generation to enjoy a lower standard of living than our parents, to us Gen-X types (and whatever people in their 20s are called now) our parents seem like an endless source of money and support.

This perception (whether we take advantage of it or not) basically allows us to put off adulthood. Basically when I graduated college at 23, pretty much nothing changed except now we had money.

The thing is, many people I know could have started families and bought houses but we chose to go out and spend money on dinner and drink thurs, fri and sat. We rented flop houses at the shore or ski mountain. People bought cars they could barely afford while living five to an appartment instead of saving for a down payment.

I think that much of it is cultural attitude. Our generation doesn’t WANT to grow up to a certain extent even when financially we can. Responsibility - kids, wife, house, job - sucks compared to living some kind 20 something Friends / Budweiser commercial lifestyle of hanging with your buds till 4 am and hooking up with random girls.

9

I’ll agree that consumerism does play a part in it. However, the little snippet of the article in the link still has me thinking that the independence of women (a very good thing) has pushed back the age of marriage and of child rearing.

Now you have young women and men with money that they aren’t spending on home and family beginning at 24. So they are spending it on more me things than many of our parents did at the same age. I don’t think our parents became more financially responsible because they matured faster; I think they did because they had to mature faster. Children and home ownership forces one to behave more maturely. With a woman being financially independent, there’s not the same push for early marriage and childbearing, and thus less impetus to ‘grow up’.

10

I agree. This has contributed to creating a kind of “post-college” “pre-adult” culture. Women are no longer in college just to get an MRS degree. Since getting married right after college is becomming the exception, not the norm, there are plenty of other young singles around to socialize with.

The thing is though is that a lot of these kids are not financially independent. The article talks about making childhood so comfortible that kids don’t want to leave. A lot of these man-boys are staying at home buying expensive crap instead of places to live. I have a friend who as soon as he graduated college bought a Mercedes which he could only do because he lived with his parents.

11

Must read, indeed - For every parent (including prospective ones)

12

D_Odds: However, the little snippet of the article in the link still has me thinking that the independence of women (a very good thing) has pushed back the age of marriage and of child rearing.

Curiously, though, it has pushed it back for men only a short distance further than it was in—get this—1890. Yup, the median age at first marriage for US males in 1890 was 26.1, dropping to a low of 22.8 in 1950 and 1960, and returning to 26.1 only in 1990. (It’s now somewhere around 27.) In 1890 the comparable age for women was 22, dropping to a low of 20.3 (again in 1950 and 1960), and now around 25 or 26.

An article in *Harvard Magazine points out that the “growing up early” trend of widespread early marriage and independence for young couples in the post-WWII period was actually quite anomalous in American history:

So perhaps it’s not that today’s young people are maturing late, it’s just that a couple of previous generations matured unusually early. Separate households for young singles, ISTM, are also a fairly recent trend. Before the middle of the twentieth century, many unmarried young men lived with their parents or with other older relatives (and/or got some financial support from them), and of course almost all unmarried young women did. IMHO the ideal of individual “financial independence” for young people, rather than staying within your family environment until you were ready to be married and start a new family, is a fairly recent development.

By the way, I don’t understand why a longer time to marriage/family/homeownership etc. should necessarily be considered “clinging to adolescence”. Is there any particular reason why young singles ought to be separating themselves from their families as soon as they can? If their parents don’t want them around or don’t want to contribute to their support, that’s another issue, of course.

But is there any particular reason why we as a society should be urging young singles to move into marriage, parenthood, homeowning, established careers more quickly than they are? ISTM that with longer educations, longer life expectancies, and less job security—not to mention smaller families, self-supporting women and the availability of birth control—it’s only sensible to expect a longer time to “settling down”. Maybe, with any luck, we’ll wind up with fewer divorces as a result.

13

Some of us are financially self-sufficient, have a steady-job, and own a home, but have never been married. Why? Because some of us can’t get a date if our life depended on it!

Sorry, I just had yet another first date which didn’t lead to a second date, so I’m in a bad mood. Carry on.

Ed

14

Kimstu, I’m not advocating early marriage; I don’t think soceity should push for it. I’m wondering how today’s median breaks down urban/suburban/rural and by income bands. Based on purely anecdotal evidence, I would submit that the median for professional urbanites would be several years higher.

msmith537, I think home ownnership and child-rearing mature a person personally (as opposed to professionally). Lacking the need to mature personally, some simply don’t (and some never do, even when they need to). Give a 10 year old $50 and no supervision, he’s going to come home with a couple of toys and $20 - $30 worth of candy. Give a 25 year old $50,000 and he comes home with a Mercedes. Then ask the 10 year old how much he put aside for Mommy’s birthday present or the 25 year old how much he put into his IRA (or towards reducing high-interest credit card debt). If the answer is the same (“nothing”), then the parents failed to create an environment for their 10 year old to mature in the intervening 25 years, and he’s not going to do so until it is absolutely necessary.

JMHO.

15

Good point, and I think this can also result in people choosing to delay becoming parents themselves. I’m 26, married, and own a house (actually, the bank owns most of the house right now). I don’t expect to ever be as financially well-off as my parents. If my huband and I scrimped and saved, we could afford to have a baby. But right now, I couldn’t raise a child in the way that I was raised–not extravagantly by any means, but with a stay-at-home parent and plenty of money for lessons, summer camp, family vacations, etc. It’s very hard for me to let go of wanting to raise my kids that way.

16

What makes you think this? Young women have been working away from their girlhood home for decades before the 1950s. IIRC textile mills in the Northeast United States in the 19th century employed single women away from their home. I will look up more stats when I get home, but I have a book from the first half of the twentieth century talking about how we should pay young single women a living wage, because they are living on it whether or not they are meant to by employers.

My adopted grandmother worked away from her family a few years before getting married herself. I don’t know how old she was, but I think she was 17 or so. Her mother had died when she was 13 and so she began at that point raise her younger siblings. Her older brother traveled with her father part of the time. They were threshers in addition to having their own farm IIRC. She had planned to become a teacher and had only a year more of school she needed to do so when she dropped out. I think once one of the younger girls got old enough to take care of the others, she went out to work. She married sometime after that and raised several childern.

Also I believe young men who had finished their apprenticeship were expected not to go back home, but travel and ply their trade as journey men. The apprenticeship itself meant that teens did not live at their childhood home.

Young brides are a tradition in pioneer and more agrarian societies. How old does a pioneer wife need to be? Old enough to easily bear children, old enough to work hard and be responsible, but a girl can learn the skills she needs by 12 and have a few years to hone them before marriage. My great-grandmother, in this tradition, was married at 15, her husband had to be older, old enough to manage his own land and was 25 when he married her.

17

That article doesn’t make sense, todays kids suffer alot. Go to a junior high school and look at all the bullying, cliques and self loathing that exists there, kids are not overprotected at all. In victorian ages there was a theory that holding your baby would cause him/her to be spoiled, this is just a modern offshoot of that theory (which is all it is). The fact that kids live in an environment of superficiality, self hate and lack of direction probably plays as much if not more of a role than overprotection.

As to the original question, it is probably in part economics

According to The Frugal Gazette III in the intro the author says that in 1948 social security and federal taxes took 2% out of people’s paychecks, that number is now about 25%. She also says the tax rate for people w/o dependents is the same though so that may nullify that whole point.

There is also the cost of college. Some people enter the world with 15000-20000 in loans, which is $150-200 a month to pay off.

There is also real estate which is higher for comparable places. Medical care is also higher and less likely to be paid for by employers.

So assume someone in 1948 vs someone in 2005 had a job. Assume the person in 2005 made more in real dollars ($3000 vs $2400 a month, all assumptions). The $3000 a month person will also pay $200 in student loans, $150 for healthcare (and probably some extra wage reductions to pay for their healthcare via the corporation), an extra $250 month for comparable rent.

They also pay more in taxes

http://www.atr.org/talkingpoints/110101taxfacts.html

Government Takes A Bigger Bite. Tax Bite In The Eight-Hour Work Day Grows. The typical worker now toils nearly three hours out of an eight-hour workday just to pay taxes. In 1996, the tax bite in the typical 8-hour workday was 2 hours and 47 minutes. By comparison, in 1945, the tax bite in an 8-hour day was 1 hour and 59 minutes. (Tax Foundation).

So that is a tax increase of 40%, from about 25% to 35%. So the person who makes $3000 will pay another $300 in taxes.

So $300 in taxes, $200 in student loans, $250 extra in rent, $150+ in healthcare (not including deductions from wages to pay for higher premiums which may add nother $50-100) and it adds up to $900-1000 less in real dollars.

There is also (this is a guess) the 401(k) factor, in the 50’s maybe it was assumed the corporation would give you a pension, now you need to invest independently and put away 10% of your income. But even if hte corporation invested a pension they’d take it out of your wages so it would be the same.

On the other hand alot of things are cheaper and more durable now. Appliances, cars, home electronics, etc.

So I don’t know. But its worth pondering that its not just splurging on Tommy Jeans that causes todays 20 somethings to be poor.

18

By that I mean Hara Estroff Marano’s theory is just that, a theory. It may do good, it may do harm, it may not matter at all, no one knows. It was my understanding that people really didn’t know how to raise ‘good’ kids and that genetics and personal experience played a large role in how they ended up.

19

I agree that longer life expectancy, rising costs, greater debt, & lower earnings are factors that have impacted twentysomethings’ choices.

Some of this expected independence is culturally defined, though. A friend from India pointed out that most twentysomethings there, unless they’re married, live with their parents & have always done so. Time magazine compared U.S. twentysomethings to Western Europe & Japan.

I have also seen several friends help their parents find jobs, meet their household expenses, get college degrees, & provide free home & computer maintenance, especially for our moms, who went through mid-life divorce.
One of my friends, after her father died, had her elderly mother move in with her, her husband, & her newborn.

Time magazine’s “Grow Up? Not So Fast” article strikes me as a provocative generalization that placed a little too much emphasis on, what was it, 10-12 percent?, of “Twixsters” who are roaming around.

If Time’s article created a profile for twentysomethings, you’ll have no problem finding plenty of “exceptions”.

20

I’ll just throw out some quotes that I find interesting:

:eek:

:eek: