I think this can be both things true at the same time. Too much coddling can produce adult children who never learn to adult. OTOH, it is also true that it is not always necessary for Child B to become self-sufficient at the same age Child A became self-sufficient
It’s easy to take this article at face value and say “this is too much babying. Those students should be able to take care of themselves.” But I don’t want to make the mistake of limiting our adulting-clock to college students.
I know of family situations where teenagers moves out of the home soon after high school graduation, get full-time jobs, and start paying rent, auto insurance, and every other bill in their lives. Maybe even become young parents who handle raising a baby on top of everything else. Should we look at those 20 year olds, compare them to 20 year old college students, and demean the college students because the college students haven’t become as self-sufficient and capable as the 20 year olds not in college who are fully self-sufficient?
If necessary, I’m okay allowing my kids to marinate a little longer. Don’t want to go to college at 18? Fine, take another year … or three. In college, but having difficulty with non-class life things? Fine, I’ll help you through it. Need an on-site stand-in parental-like figure? If I could afford it, why not?
Every person is unique. When it comes to expectations of my children, I often think of Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi, the Italian inventor of the telegraph. Marconi’s childhood was one of secluded comfort. He was tempermental in a way we might described as “spoiled”. He did not take classes as other students might, preferring tutors his parents brought in for him. When he was older, instead of becoming a true college student, his parents arranged for him to “sit in” (audit) classes where the stress of actually taking a class would not cause anxiety. This set-up also allowed him to skip classes when he did not feel up to attending - something we would deride in a modern college student. All his life, he was allowed to learn at his own pace, both academically and socially. Marconi went on to become a renowned inventor and businessman.
Everyone adults at their own pace. I’m glad to allow different people different timetables when it comes to learning different things. This is especially true for individuals who might be on the spectrum and have difficulty learning to read social cues as promptly as non-spectrum students.