<p>I noticed this column as the most emailed NY Times article today. The author says that there is now a new life stages for young adults and older adults. Instead of childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and old age, there are now six stages: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement, and old age. Young people now go through a transition period before settling down to financial independence, permanent career, marriage, and children. I thought these ideas would be of interest to many CC readers: <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/opinion/09brooks.html?em&ex=1192075200&en=ff0efadce05fb58d&ei=5087 [/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/opinion/09brooks.html?em&ex=1192075200&en=ff0efadce05fb58d&ei=5087 </a></p>
<p>I sent this to several people this morning…and intend to chat with my two sons who are facing a different world order for their twenties.</p>
<p>I opened this column thinking that “The Odyssey Years” referred to my current life stage - driving a 2001 Honda Odyssey minivan, purchased as a replacement for my 1988 Volvo station wagon, which did not have enough seats for children. I know that it will be a long time before I can drive a regular car again.</p>
<p>I emailed that article to both my kids. I thought it was dead-on for what they are actually doing right now.</p>
<p>I don’t know if this is actually relevant or not, but I was thinking that when I was a child, people were usually pretty elderlyand not very active at around age 70, while now people are commonly healthier and more active for quite a few more years. So maybe there is now more time in an average person’s life to have an odyssey period.</p>
<p>Thanks MotherOfTwo -
Good article that recasts things from “20-somethings just slacking off”, which is how it can be sometimes seem, to an understanding of the underlying causes.</p>
<p>I think these paragraphs sum it up, though: { The job market is fluid. Graduating seniors don’t find corporations offering them jobs that will guide them all the way to retirement. Instead they find a vast menu of information economy options, few of which they have heard of or prepared for.</p>
<p>The odyssey years are not about slacking off. There are intense competitive pressures as a result of the vast numbers of people chasing relatively few opportunities. Moreover, surveys show that people living through these years have highly traditional aspirations (they rate parenthood more highly than their own parents did) even as they lead improvising lives.
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<p>So it may be that the “wanderlust” is more a result of external factors - the job market - than a result of internal drive. </p>
<p>Think about it: The social contract their parents started under, work hard and keep a good job until retirement, is long broken. Instead, they see their parents scrambling to stay employed until retirement, say nothing about a retirement nest egg. Any wonder they have no loyalty to an employer?</p>
<p>I see this as very much reflecting my D and her friends, and expect to see a similar wandering path for my S.</p>
<p>I was thinking about the column this morning, and inspired by the poetry thread, I invoked Keats’ definition of “negative capability” (“I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason”) as a path for calmness for a parent watching them.</p>
<p>As I’ve said before, it’s like reading a good book where you don’t know where it’s going but you trust the author–they are competent human beings, and I do trust they’ll find their own ways and forge good lives.</p>
<p>If my kids end up wandering I will eat my yoga mat.</p>
<p>We have actively discouraged any notion of returning to home base and we have actively encouraged maximum fuel burn for the early to late twenties–the pre-kid years. The notion that there are years to spare wandering around is rubbish in our opinions. That’s why they had Gap Years. 22? Time to get on with it.</p>
<p>I will also eat my mat if they remain unmarried, given all the falling in love that has happened all over the place from the age of 16. They both will make great husbands (great dad) and plenty of bright girls seem to be switched on to that secret.</p>
<p>also, I don’t have girls but from my professional perspective, girls have absolutely NO time to wander in their twenties if they want a professional career–and the option to have children before 30. I would never sell a girl that option.</p>
<p>Interesting term, Odyssey Years - but didn’t my generation do the same thing? Most of us coming of age in the late 60’s, early 70’s didn’t exactly go straight from college to Wall Street. </p>
<p>In fact, in some ways I think my generation had a bit more wanderlust and experimentation than I see in the current crop, but it may just look that way from where I sit. We certainly didn’t have all the answers, and we knew it.</p>
<p>Maybe the diffference is, we didn’t worry about it. :)</p>
<p>I think I have wanderlust. sigh…</p>
<p>I want to hop in a VW BugBus, or into my own Honda Odyssey (190K miles and counting at 5 years old), and just go out into America in search of my dream(s): a dishwasher, maid, and perhaps, just maybe, a dog that doesn’t shed in shades which contrast with my carpeting.</p>
<p>Seriously - who doesn’t have wanderlust in their 20’s? Even back in pioneer days it wasn’t those in their 50’s who wandered the continent. For the most part, it was the young people in their late teens through early 30’s. Nowadays, people have considerably more money and probably more opportunity to check out the world before they settle down to a mortgage and cable bill.</p>
<p>Pardon me for being thick, but I didn’t really understand what behaviors this guy was referring to. What does it mean to “wander”? Get a job fresh out of college that doesn’t necessarily last you your entire life? What’s new about that? </p>
<p>"Graduating seniors dont find corporations offering them jobs that will guide them all the way to retirement. Instead they find a vast menu of information economy options, few of which they have heard of or prepared for. "</p>
<p>Huhh? How can one complete four or five years of higher level, expensive, college education and never have researched opportunities in the marketplace? :eek: “Surprise! You don’t have the preparation to compete in today’s information economy!” Good Lord. This statement makes college graduates look like short sighted dim bulbs.</p>
<p>I think we had the same stage, but we called it graduate school. 7 old friends (guys), all single and rarely dating anyone (never seriously), living in the same town, attending med school, business school and law school, or working in 1st jobs.</p>
<p>A little bit of drinking was done during those days…</p>
<p>Cheers, Doubleplay–at the risk of sounding like a “short-sighted dim bulb” (:eek:), there are lots of people around for whom “career” isn’t a number one issue, and “maximum fuel burn” just may not be necessary for everyone.</p>
<p>All I ask of my kids is that they support themselves. There’s a lot I might like to see in their lives, but helping them through college did not, for me, buy me a ticket to tell them what to do next, 'cause in the end, it’s their lives, not mine.</p>
<p>Not a ticket of what to do next, but I think you have a right to tell them you don’t want them back on the doorstep. I also do think that Cheers is right that combining career and kids is tricky. There’s no one right way to do it. My situation was further complicated by wanting to be with my husband - academics need to be able to move, architects are generally better off staying put. I spent three years working in Pasadena and five years working in Germany which accounted for precious little back in NY. (Though it almost got me a job with Richard Meier!) I ended up waiting to have kids in mid to early 30s and spent the next ten years working half time in a related field (more interior design than architecture). I did take two gap years, one before college and one before grad school.</p>
<p>Well, as I said, I expect them to support themselves. My D does, even though she works at a lowpaying job that does not require a college degree, and likes it too much to get around to grad school yet.</p>
<p>The kids/career thing–well, she knows how i did it: kids young, limited “career” advancement because I didn’t want the long absences. I think she’ll have them when she’s ready to, and in a relationship where it makes sense (which may be the one she’s in).</p>
<p>My kids know we didn’t follow any specified trajectories and did alright–they can look around family and friends and see all the varieties of adulthood, and figure it out for themselves. Again, their lives, not mine.</p>
<p>I wasn’t referring soley to career opportunities. Twenty somethings need to burn maximum fuel through grad school, world travel, overseas posts, creative development, career development and spouse selection–simultaneously. All of these opportunities are dramatically stifled by the task–I mean joy!-- of raising children. For me, it makes sense to top up the reservoirs while the time is yours for the burning. That’s the advice I dole out to mine anyway, YMMV.</p>
<p>I drew on the reservoirs of my 20s to propel me through my 30s and 40s with much greater economy and happiness than I otherwise would have had if I had not been so focused during those years.</p>
<p>Mind you, I have a 49 year old brother who is still wallowing in his self-absorbed Odyssey years. I’ve realized that my harried father gave his sons extremely ambivalent messages about marriage, children and careers. To this day, when anyone suggests that my brother might need to get a desk job, my father winces and quite unconciously exclaims: “But then he wouldn’t be able to be outside all the time!” </p>
<p>This history absolutely influences the tenor of my advice.</p>
<p>I was commenting on the article’s points, not my own. Author seems to indicate that it is something <em>new</em> for college grads to eschew a permanent one-company job and stick with it until retirement nirvana. He also makes the point that some college grads are unprepared for careers in today’s marketplace (I’m assuming he’s referring to information tech), as if it’s a surprise. It isn’t anything new that college grads aren’t all on the fast track up the corporate ladder right off the bat. Back in the late seventies/early eighties (my era), it was common for grads to spend a few years beating around, working low pay jobs, “finding themselves”.</p>
<p>I’m not arguing for or against, nor impugning anyone’s choices or life path.</p>