Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It’s Good for Everyone

by Settersten, Richard; Ray, Barbara E.

  Parents can also help prepare young adults by teaching them a set of life skills that extends beyond book learning. High-achieving and elite parents regularly instill these skills in their children, including etiquette, comfort with and respect for adults, time management, strategic thinking, responsibility, and self-management. All families, regardless of income, can impart these valuable skills to their children. In the case of less advantaged families, however, it’s hard for parents to coach children if they haven’t learned to play the game or kept up with how the rules have changed. These parents can still help their children, though, by encouraging them to make connections outside the home in after-school programs, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, church, and other places that foster these critical life skills.

  In our interviews, it is clear that closeness to parents is mostly about mothers, not fathers. Many young men and women have detached relationships with their fathers, and destructive relationships are almost always with fathers and almost always in the lives of treaders. In an era when we herald the “new” father, it is both disappointing and painful to hear these stories continue. But they remind us of how important it is to continue the quest to improve fathers’ involvement in the lives of their children—and not just when the children are little. The young adult years are the perfect opportunity for fathers to begin building stronger relationships with their children. If relationships between fathers and children are on shaky ground going into the early-adult years, which is true in so many cases, it’s hard to create closeness later on. This is a call for fathers who are uninvolved or marginally involved to get more engaged with their children. It is not just children who benefit: many middle-aged and older fathers want closer relationships with their children. It is an enduring theme in the lives of men.

  … But Recognize When to Step Back

  Being an involved parent and helping in these ways is different from doing everything for a child. It is in the doing part that lines are easily crossed, and it is precisely here where parents can get themselves into trouble by going too far. Young adults can and should distinguish themselves from their parents by the time they are in their twenties, even if they have not yet managed to completely separate themselves psychologically, socially, or financially. Despite their best intentions, parents can be overly protective, which only sustains the dependence of children on parents. Tending the skills and opportunities of young adult children is different from coddling them or refusing to let them grow up. Some problems need to be experienced and solved by young people in order for them to mature, even if it is difficult for parents to resist the impulse to step in.

  Parents feel a sense of happiness and self-satisfaction in seeing their children succeed in adulthood, but our child-centric culture, which prompts such great investments in children, can also create anxiety, guilt, and shame when children do not succeed, especially among middle-class and elite parents. Not only do these parents often feel responsible for their children when they become adults, but they judge their own self-worth and value on the successes or failures of their adult children.

  Parents of young adults should also resist the impulse to say or think “When I was a kid …” because the expectations and conditions that exist now are not the same as when they were making their way into adulthood. These comparisons will only leave children feeling defensive. Parents should be sensitive to the challenges that young adult children are facing, whether in the economy, school, work, social, or romantic life. They should try to imagine what it must feel like to be where their child is in life, and to ask what it feels like and how they might help. Above all, parents should be mindful of the fact that the relationship they have with their young adult child is being reworked from the child’s vantage point too.

  The closeness and contact between young people and their parents today is unprecedented. So, too, are the many decades of life in which they co-survive. These simple facts mean that the boundaries between parents and children are no longer as rigid as they once were, and that relationships need to be continually revised not only as children are becoming adults, but as they move through adulthood, become middle-aged, and even come to know their parents in old age. But what this also means is that there are no clear scripts for how adult relationships between parents and children are supposed to go as everyone grows older together.

  One basic piece of advice is this: Hyperinvolved parents, step back and don’t do so much for your young adult children. Underinvolved parents, step in and get more hands-on. What we are advocating is something like what Michael Kimmel, author of Guyland, called in a recent interview, “Power-Strip Parenting: You help keep your kid grounded. You help them plug in. Then, if there’s an overload, you run interference.”6 Hyperinvolved parents should turn the wattage down, and underinvolved ones should turn it up.

  What’s Wrong with Living at Home?

  One of the biggest changes between today and the recent past are the growing ranks of young people who live at home with their parents well into their twenties, whether because they’ve never left or because they’ve boomeranged back. There has been much hand-wringing and moralizing about this trend. Yet living at home needn’t carry the stigma it does in the United States. In fact, too firm a push from parents to leave home, or too impulsive a jump from young people themselves, may lead to trouble.

  Living at home can help ensure more positive futures—if young people are actively engaged in activities that move them forward while they’re at home. Time at home can permit young people to pursue an education, and allow them to offset costs for an interim while they get on their feet. It can offer a built-in set of supportive ties of family and friends to bolster progress toward a successful future. It can lend young people some space to gain work experiences and marketable skills and contacts, especially if they’re in low-paying or no-paying internships or apprenticeships. And it can provide resources for other growth-expanding experiences, such as pursuing special interests and hobbies or traveling abroad. Again, what is most critical is that the time at home is used to its full advantage in cultivating skills, credentials, contacts, and experiences.

  Living at home also allows young people to save for a future down payment on a home or to gather a nest egg for a stronger launch. In an era of retrenched budgets and tight labor markets, it will take more time to find a decent job to get started. Because earnings in the early part of one’s career set the course for future gains, staying at home longer may be a particularly good strategy for those who have a shaky foundation. As long as these young people are contributing to the household in some way and are pursuing higher education, training, or actively looking for work, a longer stay can help ensure a better future—even if it inevitably creates some challenges or tensions. Parents and children should talk about expectations related to rent and other household contributions, rules to live by, how long children can stay, and the like.

  While living at home makes good sense in many cases, what if young people are not working, not in school, or not engaged in any forward-moving activities? Should parents resort to “tough love” and kick their kids out of the house? In our view, tough love rarely works. And for kids who have little capital to make it on their own—skills, credentials, steady work, maturity—being kicked out can send them spiraling downward. In these cases, what seems best is for parents to clearly communicate their expectations, to set clear and realistic goals with (rather than for) the young adult. When progress isn’t being made, parents—and young adult children—must face difficult decisions. Parents’ responses must be sensitive to the family’s unique circumstances. There are no hard-and-fast rules or tried-and-true responses. But what we can say is this: In our interviews, young people who have been in this situation have, especially in retrospect, told us that they needed guidance and appreciated that their parents didn’t give up on them or create ultimatums that might have backfired. When children live at home, however, most of that cost is still carried by parents. Not all families can aff
ord to offer this support to their children.

  For young people who are not college-bound or whose families cannot afford to provide for them at home, we wonder whether it might be possible to create innovative, alternative living spaces, subsidized by public or private resources or partnerships, that might mirror what is provided to students who live on college and university campuses. Four-year residential colleges function as a replacement for parents—professors, advisers, administrators, and residence hall directors all track and monitor the academic progress and social life of students, and the very organization of student life, even the curriculum, facilitates friendships and peer groups. College campuses are also full-service institutions, one-stop shops for a wide variety of amenities: housing, meals, shopping, counseling, banking, health care centers, fitness centers, student organizations, and social activities. To some degree, the military is similarly designed to nurture the futures of young adults by providing a setting in which they can live, work, and learn.

  Why not design something similar for young people who are not bound for four-year colleges or the military, but who are instead working or commuting to community colleges or trade schools? These residential settings could provide one-stop shopping for job advice and networking. Employers could offer weekend seminars on the kinds of jobs in their organization, the skills required for those jobs, and what typical career trajectories look like. Young people could have access to mentors and job coaches who volunteer their time. They could also find other needed services, such as information on college loans, health insurance, or social supports. As Network associate Thomas Brock of MDRC also notes, it is an irony that the most selective institutions of higher education take the most capable students and wrap them in support, while the least selective institutions provide the least support—and barely any support or advice is directed toward those who are not bound for higher education. Finding ways to create similar opportunities for these latter groups is critical to improving their futures.

  Don’t Underinvest in the Future

  Living at home while preparing for the future leads to one of our most critical messages: Young adulthood is a time to invest. But too many young people and their parents are, for a variety of reasons, risk-averse. They fear taking on debt to finance their futures. As we have argued, however, young adulthood is the prime time in life to take these “risks” and invest in oneself and one’s future. This inevitably comes with debt, but there is such a thing as good debt.

  Young people as a whole drastically underconsume in their twenties and early thirties by failing to borrow against their future earnings. Young adults and their parents should view college and other forms of training after high school as long-term personal investments rather than short-term, high-price-tag expenditures. As access to college has opened and its costs have risen exponentially, many young adults and their parents understandably worry about how to finance it. It is precisely the families who are not well positioned economically who may see education as being beyond their reach, something that is discretionary rather than required. This leads us to worry that those whose lives are tenuous—our treaders—will be the ones to opt out.

  More grants and scholarships are needed for those young adults who are capable and eager to get started in college, but whose families earn too little to help them invest in their futures. The value of Pell Grants, the leading source of grants for low-income students, has not kept pace with inflation or with the rising costs of college, meaning that these grants now cover a lower share of the burden of paying for college than they originally did. The 2010 overhaul of the Federal Family Education Loan program, a bank-based student lending program, redirects $36 billion over ten years to Pell Grants for low-income students. The bill also adds automatic increases, tied to inflation, in the maximum Pell Grant award. However, this translates to a rather paltry $500 increase in the maximum Pell Grant for a year. The legislation does make the loan slightly less burdensome for students by enhancing the income-based payment plans and shortening the point when loans are forgiven outright. In 2014, young adults will not have to devote more than 10 percent of their incomes to student loan payments, down from 15 percent today.

  Despite these slight improvements, families are being called on to foot larger bills than ever before, and not all families can keep up. The GI Bill after World War II is often credited with jump-starting the streak of innovations and economic advances that positioned the United States as the world leader in science and technology. It would be more than a shame to lose the talents of bright young people simply because they perceive that they cannot afford to attend college. While the middle and upper classes can invest in their children’s futures by sacrificing some of their luxuries today—and therefore are less in need of government subsidies—the working class and lower ranks do not have that same leeway. They cannot cut back any more than they already have.

  For students who have the credentials to get into the nation’s finest institutions of higher education, the difference between going to a top-tier school and one just below it won’t likely make much difference in terms of life outcomes. These students are certain to go to college, get degrees, and do well, no matter where they go. Any gains or losses from going one place rather than another will be marginal. For those with more tenuous credentials, what matters is getting a degree. One’s life chances and outcomes will be dramatically different for it. And yes, even in today’s house-of-cards economy—especially in today’s economy—the evidence is clear: a college degree still pays. The costs of college will be recouped and will result in cumulative gains in earnings over a lifetime of work.

  This comes with an important caveat: We can say with certainty that college pays off when students finish. If they get there and fail, it’s another story. For students who are ill prepared for college or unsure about whether it’s right for them, it can be an expensive way to wander. It’s also a serious risk for a young adult to take on college debt if the likelihood of failure is high. Without a degree, young people will lack access to the jobs and opportunities that will make it possible to pay off these loans.

  While some of the responsibility lies with the students’ earlier education in elementary and high schools and with parents, some of the risk of not graduating lies in the incentive structures at universities themselves. Federal funding is tied to enrollment rates, not graduation rates. Flipping the equation and tying funding to graduation rates might spark new innovations and support services for at-risk students. Likewise, other perverse incentives that favor churning freshmen through the system should be reviewed. Prospective students and their parents are often at a loss about graduation rates, as they are rarely published in meaningful forms—at least not as frequently as enrollment rates. Magazines such as U.S. News & World Report should include college rankings by graduation rates along with the other criteria that they advertise. They might follow the example of Washington Monthly, which has devised a measure of the “social mobility” of a college—the number of at-risk and low-income students the school graduates. The formula predicts a school’s likely graduation rate based on its percentage of Pell students and its average SAT score. Schools that outperform their forecasted rate score better than schools that match or miss the mark. Another positive step is that the federal Department of Education now informs financial aid applicants of the graduation rate at the college to which they are applying. More of these efforts should be instigated.

  Money is a touchy subject for most families. Yet understanding money and budgeting is perhaps one of the most important lessons families can teach their children. Young adults may make some bad mistakes with credit because they are inexperienced in handling money or because they do not understand the fine print of their credit cards or loan arrangements. A solid dose of financial literacy is as important as learning world history or quadratic equations. High schools and colleges offer little course work on managing spending, taxes, and saving, and few students understand the practical meaning
of the debt they are accruing. The assumption is that this is the responsibility of children’s families. Yet in many families, parents rarely talk to their children about finances; family finances may even be kept under wraps. Much more should be done in schools and at home to equip young people with the skills they’ll need to manage finances in everyday life once they’re out there on their own, such as teaching children how to manage checking accounts, how credit cards work, how credit scores are determined, what it means for one’s future chances of getting loans for homes and cars, and how to establish a budget. Parents should voice clear expectations for who will pay for what—and young adults should definitely be responsible for some part of the outlay. When parents cover all expenses, they do not foster financial independence.

  Beyond College for All

  There is another topic we talk little about in this country: the reality that not everyone can or will succeed. There is an enduring myth of self-invention and a level playing field for all. However, the playing field is very different for young people depending on the family, school, and work environments in which they and their families are embedded.

  Everyone has heard the mantra: College is the ticket. Yet we fool ourselves in believing that a four-year college degree is possible for and desired by everyone. In fact, it seems dangerous to mislead students into thinking they are college material if it is clear they are not. Yet the very ones who need good counseling, clearer direction, and stronger directives are the very young people who don’t get these things. It is here that more supports are needed. Guidance counselors in high schools may have helped in the past, but these services have been severely pared down or outright eliminated from fledgling or failing schools. As with parental support, the lack of such services in these under-resourced and challenged schools is all the more debilitating for students when it is measured against the extensive guidance services provided by privileged schools, with their troops of counselors writing letters, making calls, and helping with applications.