Posted on 09/22/2014 4:52:54 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
ONE of the most notable demographic trends of the last two decades has been the delayed entry of young people into adulthood. According to a large-scale national study conducted since the late 1970s, it has taken longer for each successive generation to finish school, establish financial independence, marry and have children. Today’s 25-year-olds, compared with their parents’ generation at the same age, are twice as likely to still be students, only half as likely to be married and 50 percent more likely to be receiving financial assistance from their parents.
People tend to react to this trend in one of two ways, either castigating today’s young people for their idleness or acknowledging delayed adulthood as a rational, if regrettable, response to a variety of social changes, like poor job prospects. Either way, postponing the settled, responsible patterns of adulthood is seen as a bad thing.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
My sister and I left and never came back. My brother was back and forth quite a bit. He was a problem child. But he eventually finally left for good. Some people are just late bloomers and or they are just slow to get the concept.
“The problem is... the drive to have sex is what gave children to drive to want to grow up.”
At the time the nation was founded by the age of 16 boys and girls were doing the work of adults. The alternative was starvation as a child who didn’t work would be kicked out of the house.
When the child did leave home in the late teens, it was much easier for two to work a new farm than one. Again, survival was the driving need. Certainly the addition of children over time helped to ease the burdens on the couple because even at an early age children could do many chores. The work ethic was instilled at an early age and the skills to perform the work required to survive were learned at an early age.
Today’s education system (primary, secondary, college), provides little of the knowledge required to earn a living. Every year in May and June our universities turn out millions of psychology, history, women’s studies, sociology, and other liberal arts graduates who have no skills of value to the small businesses employing 90% of the employees in the private sector economy, much less the large companies employing the rest. Certainly none of these graduates are capable of growing crops or raising animals.
As far as wanting to grow up, my parents made it very clear from an early age I would grow up or starve. I was expected to do chores. I started working (on a neighborhood tobacco farm) at the age of six for 25 cents per day. I had a paper route, I mowed yards, I painted houses, and I performed other work for neighbors until I reached the age I could obtain a work permit which allowed me to work in a fast food restaurant while maintaining my paper route and other sources of cash income. In college I worked for a moving & storage company and in the kitchen of a restaurant. The day after graduation I was went to work full time for a company I had been doing analytical work for part time during my last year. My parents expected me to work and they expected me to be self sufficient.
Looking back on it, the day I left home to go to college I could not have envisioned any circumstance where my parents would have taken me back into their home. I knew I was on my own and survival was up to me. Fortunately, I knew how to use my hands and my mind to make money. None of that knowledge came from the public school system. As I think back on that time, sex was certainly on my mind but most of my efforts were directed at earning enough money to pay the rent and keep food in the refrigerator.
And to think that 18 year olds are allowed to vote.
As I stated you can't “make” anyone grow up.
Anyone can live their entire lives without growing up if they so choose. And with the government or a family enabling them, they can live quite comfortably.
I see your point about the single Mom’s. We are an intact family, but we are in process of building a modest home around us, it is unfinished as we live in it, and my husband works but has some health issues and so my son’s are helping with that as well. I’m having difficulty finding a job right now, hence the working together to keep this ship sailing.
The fact of the matter is:
If girls refused to even talk to a guy who didn’t have a job, a car and his own place.
The age of kids reaching adulthood would be at all time low, and employment of the youth would be at an all time high.
Just waiting for a CEO job in Management to open.
Yeah, maybe could get away with a required core competency exam for those 18-21 years old-
20 questions, pass with 13 correct answers. Multiple choice + T/F + essay. Don’t want to alienate servicemen and women. Offend, maybe. Alienate, no.
I have known single women who just aren't in a hurry for the kids to leave. As long as it mutually beneficial.
I know there has been talk of the boomers moving back in with their parents. Mostly this is due to health considerations. We almost had to move in with my MIL. Thanks be, it was decided that she could afford assisted living. She is 89. But not everyone can. It's about 40,000-50,000 a year to live in one of those places.
The government has made it nearly unaffordable to pass on the family farm, business etc. They just screw us every way they can.
Then again in order to take on dad's business, you have to have a dad.
I heard that in Minnesota they were trying to pass a law that would prohibit a kid from working on a farm unless their own parents owned it. So no working at the uncles or grandparents. I don't know if it passed. We got out of Minnesota.
What causative factors of people living longer, have any effect on someone's early adult development? I fail to see any connection whatsoever.
Back when people were dead by 40 there might have been a greater sense of urgency.
Plus these last couple of generations have been so protected by their parents, that perhaps we've made them afraid to leave the nest. What have they been taught? There is a boogieman behind ever corner and if you ride your bike without a helmet you will die. If you sit in a car seat until you are 12 you will die.
Thanks God some of the kids were not raised that way or no one would be in the military.
Speaking of which our nephew when he was doing his stint recruiting for the Marines, said the hardest thing was getting the moms to let them go.
Then you’re not paying attention. People are staying youthful longer - they are doing a lot of things differently. Some of this is good, some of it is not, but to deny it is to close your mind.
If people entered adulthood at 18 when life expectancy was 35-45-55 etc - that indicates maybe 30 years of the rat race of responsibility. If they’re living to 85 now, it doesn’t make the human psyche and body able to handle 50-60 years of the rat race.
“why else would people still be on their parents insurance until 26”
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When I was a lad 26 was considered middle age.
Single women should still live at home with their parents as far as I'm concerned.
These childish idiots never realize life is not a dress rehearsal. There is no second chance.
:) I won’t tell on you.
If so, then we need to raise the voting age.
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