Only the kind of analysis your normal stoned teenager thinks while watching mom and dad go off to work. Let’s face it, if reality would let us get away with a comfortable standard of living without working another day most of us would take it. Ostensibly that’s our goal when we save for retirement, so that we can once again live like carefree teenagers only without having to follow our parents’ rules. Well that’s the life these kids have, they’re retired, their parents don’t really have any rules for them, so why change.
I’ve talked to David about what happens when happens when the last of his parents that are willing to put up with his crap die (he’s already halfway there). It’s a big shoulder shrug, doesn’t know, doesn’t care, that’s the future and like a teenager he’s living in the moment. The problem I see with his family is they are unwilling to admit they failed, which keeps them from taking the next step. Kicking him out at 29 would admit they should have kicked him out at 19. In some ways they’re afraid of his own success, if they kick him out and he actually transits to functioning adulthood then everybody (including him) knows they failed him utterly for years.
I was livid with my mother at the time, but looking back on it, especially comparing things to David, it was probably the moment of her greatest success as a parent that did me the biggest favor. I’ve thanked her for it many times since then. I had to pay 1/2 of 1 average paycheck in rent, which since my first job was fastfood wasn’t much. But it was massive on a personal level, I had a bill, I had to hold down a job, I couldn’t just quit because it sucked unless I lined something else up first. Also the act of paying this bill made me start targeting moving out, if I had to pay bills anyway why would I want to put up with her rules, got out by age 20. Really all of my success as an adult stems from that moment, and when I met my wife, but I met her at work, a job I wouldn’t have had if I didn’t have to.
I put the blame on both sides. Yeah the parents did a crappy job of raising him. But he’s 29 freaking years old, somewhere in that some light should have gone off. He’s lost a lot of his childhood friends because they grew up, every time one of them exited to a comfortable life on their own the light switch should have flipped, but I think he unscrewed the light.
I know it’s a harder road to adulthood now. But the majority of the current failure to launch crowd hasn’t even looked at the road, they’re in the backyard having fun.