<p>I found this article interesting and wondered what others thought of it.</p>
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<p>[Long</a> Road to Adulthood Is Growing Even Longer - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/us/13generations.html?src=me&ref=homepage]Long”>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/us/13generations.html?src=me&ref=homepage)</p>
<p>So many factors! Part of becoming an adult is owning your own home, something mentioned indirectly in the article. Can’t own a home when the prices lock you out of the market; oh yeah, you can rent but renting is not part of the “American Dream.”</p>
<p>At the same time, can’t become an adult when your parents are financially supporting your education, and in many cases, your mistakes.</p>
<p>Nothing like a hungry stomach and urgent responsibilities to make an adult.</p>
<p>This article spends an inordinate amount of print tying adulthood to marrying and having children. Only when you get further down in the article does the discussion turn to financial independence as the start of adulthood.</p>
<p>Heck I didn’t get married until I was 30 and then had my kids in my mid-thirties (in the 1980s), but I was financially independent as soon as I graduated from college. I expect the same from my kids today. Both know that we will support them through 4 years of college. The expectation then is that they get a job and a roommate and fend for themselves. My oldest son is already well on his way as a rising senior: has lived in rented houses, has held jobs, purchased a car and major appliances, set up his own utility accounts, can cook, and remembers birthdays and anniversaries. Any lengthening of pre-adulthood probably can be blamed squarely on indulgent parents who do not set clear boundaries and a time-limit on financial support.</p>
<p>Perhaps we should remember that not so long ago, young adults very often lived with their parents until they married, and this was considered entirely normal.</p>
<p>My parents married when my father was 29 and my mother was 27. Neither went to college. Except for 3 years when my father was in the Army and 1 year when my mother had a job in a different city and shared an apartment with a friend, both lived with their parents until they married. Nobody thought that it was unusual for them to live with their parents or to move back in with their parents after their experiences in other places (the Army or the job in a different city) ended. Today, in many cultural groups in the United States, people would think there was something wrong with them.</p>
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<p>I disagree entirely, especially since many people are content with apartment living. I do think that living away from parents is part of adulthood. There’s no reason that owning a home is necessary. I think renting an apartment in DC or NYC is just as much a part of the American Dream as owning a sprawling home in the land of unchanging suburbia. And certainly not everyone wants a family and/or kids!</p>
<p>This is the only passage I thought related at all, to “growing up:”</p>
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<p>The rest was about making different choices than the previous generation, but had nothing to do with determining whether one had achieved “adulthood.”</p>
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<p>Why wait? To lessen the duration of a bad marriage? These kinds of sentiments sadden me.</p>
<p>“Any lengthening of pre-adulthood probably can be blamed squarely on indulgent parents who do not set clear boundaries and a time-limit on financial support.”</p>
<p>Well, yeah. It’s easy to assume that the child who has excelled all through school will have no difficulty transitioning to adulthood … but it doesn’t work out that way sometimes. As another poster said, hungry stomach and urgent responsibilities greatly speed up the maturation process … but who wants that for their kid?</p>
<p>@Archiemom - a lot of times, even 25 years ago when I got my degree, women married to “get out of the house.” A married woman was considered an adult, never mind that she went from being financially dependent on her father to being financially dependent on her husband. And being singe in your late 20s carried a stigma, even if you had your own money. I think women marry later now (and for the right reasons) because they are more financially independent.</p>
<p>^ I agree. I think nowadays, it is both okay to marry as early as before, or wait until you feel ready/have your education and/or career set up, or never to marry. Days of past, I think women married for some reasons that were not necessarily ideal and now they have the ‘luxury’ to wait until it seems like a better time.</p>
<p>^^I also agree with the two above posts^^</p>
<p>And while it may be more difficult for today’s college grads to immediately find jobs that allow them to be self-supporting, I am not convinced that it’s impossible and that the majority of parents need to continue to financially support the kids after college.</p>
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Well, I kinda do. I’m mostly concentrating on facilitating that maturation process though and not on the misery I’d be putting them through.</p>
<p>In one of the recent threads about marriage in the college life forum, the general sentiment by many was that one’s 20’s are for self discovery, etc, (which was why they didn’t want to marry or have children until their 30’s.) I thought it was interesting that somebody would want to spend SO much time in the “self discovery” stage-- while of course you are always discovering yourself, I can’t imagine still putting that ahead of moving on with my life at 25. I wonder if that kind of a mentality could contribute to the other factors of adulthood mentioned in this thread. Perhaps some of my peers are putting some things off, not just marriage, that are considered traditional aspects of adulthood figuring there is no rush and they want to be youthful and adventurous and find themselves before committing to adult responsibilities. </p>
<p>Given my financial situation with my fiance, I am choosing to live at home during the year between my graduation and the wedding instead of moving out on my own so that I can save money for our emergency fund and any start up costs we may incur when we do move in together after the wedding. If I weren’t getting married, my loans would be a factor in how soon I moved out of my parents house most likely because I don’t know how I would have afforded them with everything else on one income.</p>
<p>In HI, there are many “kids” who live at home until they marry & need to have their own place. Some move in with their folks to help save money & keep an eye on aging loved ones. It’s often a mutually beneficial arrangement & saves a LOT on housing, freeing up the funds for other things like education, travel, healthcare. On our street, there are many multi-generational homes/families. It works when folks are willing to be flexible & compromise and often beats the alternatives. They can live in a nicer place & have more eyes and hands to help.</p>
<p>My S will NOT be returning to the nest in the near future, since he has a job 5000 miles from our home. If he had accepted one of the jobs on our island, he had intended to live at home. Not sure where D’s path will lead her, but she knows there is always a place for her at our home.</p>
<p>This article also doesn’t mention many of the cultural aspects to this. In many cultures (I know in west Africa, where my parents are from, at least) the whole “leave home at 18 and never come back thing” never really caught in. The tradition of the “Big House” where huge extended families live still persisted even after my parents moved here. As they became more Americanized, the “Big House” broke up but definitely at first it was one big happy family so to speak for a long time before that.</p>
<p>I live at home again after being independent for nearly 3 years. That was a huge blow to my pride, but I had to do it because I lost my job due to the economy and looked for several months before giving up. I think the rec(depr)ession is returning a lot of Americans to the ‘Big Family’ mode of living.</p>
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<p>This guy is 58 with a 26 year old girlfriend and 2 year old son, and his parents are paying for him to sail around the world for years at time.</p>