I’m sorry. We are utterly failing to communicate and mini responses are unhelpful to clearing the logjam.
Good day, Sir.
Well, in the interest of clearing up confusion, I’ll state for the record that having a car/driver’s license, having your own place, or living “independently” are neither indicate maturity or immaturity, much less a “moocher” personality. One can have a car and still be an immature moocher, and one can not have a car, and be neither of those things.
I’m unclear the extent to which that is a controversial statement in the context of this thread, as the concept appears to have generated some push-back.
Yeah, I think there’s a subtle difference here between, for example, “non-driver who arranges mutually agreeable commute carpool routine with neighboring co-worker”, and “non-driver who just blithely expects that neighboring co-worker will drive them to work every day”.
I don’t think there’s necessarily anything immature or “entitled” about being dependent on somebody else for routine transportation. But of course if that transportation takes the form of constant unreciprocated favors, that’s problematic.
There are no less than 5 cars, usually more in my drive everyday. Everybody of age drives regularly. Have jobs and responsibilities. And they are all moochers in some respect. Of course they are around me because I want it that way and I let them mooch, as it were.
But this is a giant hijack of this thread. And we should stop.
I mean, I’ve never heard of a parent censoring the bible. Me and my siblings were singing songs about slavery of our ancestors long before watching Bambi. As soon as the infant can speak he or she is taught to sing Ma Nishtana. There are picture books depicting whips and blood and disease.
I’m sure there are similar things in Christian families…
~Max
OK, I will take a stab at my view of childhood vs. adulthood. Being an adult means taking on more responsibility than that of a child, becoming more independent, and contributing to the household they live in to a significant degree. Does the adult child choose to remain in their parent’s household? Fine, if they follow house rules and contribute in some significant way; either financially, or by doing household chores, or ideally both.
When I say I feel that kids today are more insular and have an extended childhood, this is what I mean; not necessarily that they still live with their parents, but they are largely still dependent on their parents. I think this is pretty universal to all eras and cultures- every generation wants their children to become independent and lead lives of their own, whatever the definition of that may be for their circumstance. Not be burdens for an indefinite period well into chronological adulthood.
I’m 30, so probably right around the age you’re talking about or slightly older, I assume? Either you’re talking about me, or the main cohort the people I manage at work belong to - recent college grads in their mid 20s.
Kids graduate high school at 18.
Here’s a comparison of median income by education level. As you can see, there are very clear reasons to go to college (and to send your kids to college):
So an 18 year old who wants to support a family someday - save up money, buy a house, be able to afford one of the partners taking time to raise the kids - should definitely go to college for 4 years to get a bachelor’s degree, generally speaking. That means being saddled with a ton of student debt - typically on the order of tens of thousands of dollars.
So now you’re 22, you just graduated college. You’re 40k in debt. If you’re lucky enough to have found a job that’s qctually related to your major, you’re probably making around 60k, here in California. Rent for a 1 bedroom is probably around 2,000. 60k, when you do the math, comes out to be around 3,500 a month in take home income. So if you want to live alone, most of your income goes towards your rent. You could get roommates, but then you need more bedrooms. You’re most likely looking at around 3,000 a month, split two ways. So you have 2k a month that first needs to go towards your student loans and then has to cover everything else.
The situation for kids who didn’t go to college is much grimmer. That 40,000 median income for people without a degree? That includes people like my mother in law, who have a very respectably paying job thay they’ve held for 30 years, which today requires a college degree to even apply for but which they’ve been “grandfathered” into. Median income for the 20-24 age groups is even lower at 37,000.
And don’t even get me started on what it takes to buy a house.
If young people today are less independent than in the past, it is only because the economic reality today is so much more difficult.
While I agree, I’m going to be contrarian and point out that graphs/data like this don’t prove that going to college pays off, because correlation is not causation.
Not really only - there’s a difference between a person who lives with their parents as a fully functioning adult with household responsibilities ( financial and otherwise) , and one who lives with their parents while continuing their high school existence and giving their parents only a nominal contribution to household expenses. And in the latter case it’s not because of the economic reality - it’s because of the parents. There are people I know in their 60s and 70s who did this as long as they could and got quite the surprise when their parents died and they couldn’t pay the rent and take four vacations a year on their $25K a year dream job.( which you can do on $25K if you aren’t paying rent, utilities , groceries etc.) There have always been some parents who allowed that - but there seem to be many more of them now than there were 30 years ago. And they go further - I know a 75 year old who is still working because his son lost a job a few years ago, and hasn’t found a comparable one. So the father is helping him pay the mortgage on a house in Alpine, New Jersey , where the least expensive houses are over a million. Because why should he downsize to something he can afford. .
I’m not denying that such people exist, but as you yourself point out, they always have.
I would like to see some evidence for the assertion that this is more common today. I know a ton of 20-30 year olds. Some of them do dumb things like live in a city they cannot really afford so that all of their money goes to their landlord and they will never be able to save up to buy a house. Others are more responsible and are headed the right way, although as I mentioned the path to get there is long and hard nowadays. And some, like me and my wife, got lucky through various circumstances and actually managed to buy a house.
Vanishingly few are doing what you described. In fact, the only people in that age group I personally know who still live at home without contributing have special needs that mean they will never be able to live alone (Like, moderate or severe autism cases, not minor issues that people in the past would have just toughed out). And my guess is that I know more 20-30 year olds than you do. So I don’t take such claims seriously unless you can show some statistical support for them.
Here’s a cite that disagrees with your anecdotal evidence:
Sounds like that guy would be better off moving back in with his dad than trying to support a household on his own.
But I guess that would make him a “moocher.”
That article was extremely confusing, and it didn’t list where the survey respondents came from, how many there were, or any other context.
To be clear, my statement was really within a narrower scope of mental health and how ill-equipped young people are to cope with life, including chronic mental illness. I think whether or not older kids are driving at the population level can maybe be used as a rough proxy for independence, but there will always be outliers, including disabled people and city dwellers.
My husband’s specialization is in children and adolescents with anxiety disorders. So he is seeing the kids who are doing worse in terms of mental health, and he has his own conclusions, many supported by evidence, of why there are so many more severe cases than there used to be. COVID is certainly a factor, as are recent local shootings, but the kid’s environment and the expectations parents have for them is a big factor too. In particular he has observed a relationship between permissive, enabling parenting and poor mental health in adolescents and young adults. Which also includes adolescents of driving age who depend on their parents to drive them everywhere, who have no intention of ever learning to drive or to aspire to anything beyond sitting at home wasting time, and who are suffering greatly as a result of their lifestyle. These kids are the ones who deserve the most attention, and I don’t think that denying that they exist in greater numbers than, say, twenty years ago, is doing them any favors.
I mean, I’ve been back at home for a couple months because Dad’s been going through some things. But I’m also a student. And I’m also working part-time. And I’m also still paying rent for my apartment (oh, how I miss you). My monthly budget is $1,000 flat, with roughly $950 going towards rent and utilities.
But isn’t all this getting away from the OP? I don’t remember any children’s stories about budgeting for traumatic events.
~Max, 27, drop in the bucket.
Then by all means, cite that this is the case.
I’m saying that in my experience, 20-odd-year-olds are much more likely to be hard working, well educated, and intelligent than any other age group.
Part of that may be that most of the 20-30 year olds that I come into contact with are either my own friends or young professionals looking to start their career. Meanwhile the older folks I deal with are the sorts of older folks who are working at or applying for what is essentially an entry level position. Meanwhile your husband is mostly exposed to young people with anxiety disorders.
Perhaps neither of us experiences an entirely representitive sample of young people. Hence why I requested a cite for the claim that young people are so much less capable than young people in previous generations.
I made a new thread so we can stop hijacking this one.
This one was featured on the very first episode of Reading Rainbow:
Bambi’s author, Felix Salten, wrote a sequel called Bambi’s Children, in which a poacher is aiming at Geno, Bambi’s son. Before he can fire, Bambi lunges, seriously injuring the poacher with his antlers. It’s an awesome scene.
At the risk of nitpicking, the problem with the chart that you posted is that it lumps all degrees together, when in fact there’s a massive difference.
A bachelor’s degree in literature gets you almost nowhere, a bachelor’s in pre-med that leads to med school, or a bachelor’s in data science, may very well earn you $100-500k annually down the road.
But the chart just averages them all together, as if it’s the degree itself that does the trick. That would be like me saying that because I wear black socks, and so does Bill Gates, that black socks can greatly increase your median income.
Aren’t doctors and lawyers lumped in with professional degrees?