Parenting

The FP Gal and I sometimes compare our childhoods. My memories of growing up in Austin are pretty good. I remember biking all over the place. We played football in the streets. We made up elaborate make-believe stories. We played 'gun' games (not cowboys and indians but spies and other spies). When weather was bad we played board games, a love that I still have.
I was thinking about all of that while reading this. It's an article about how the parental urge to protect children is going too far. And how that's screwing up children by delaying their adulthood.

Adulthood no longer begins when adolescence ends, according to a recent report by University of Pennsylvania sociologist Frank F. Furstenberg and colleagues. There is, instead, a growing no-man's-land of postadolescence from 20 to 30, which they dub "early adulthood." Those in it look like adults but "haven't become fully adult yet—traditionally defined as finishing school, landing a job with benefits, marrying and parenting—because they are not ready or perhaps not permitted to do so."

Using the classic benchmarks of adulthood, 65 percent of males had reached adulthood by the age of 30 in 1960. By contrast, in 2000, only 31 percent had. Among women, 77 percent met the benchmarks of adulthood by age 30 in 1960. By 2000, the number had fallen to 46 percent.

When I turned 30 a couple of years ago, I finally felt like an adult. I hadn't lived with a parent in over ten years. I haven't even needed an emergency loan in a few years. But I was never serious about longterm plans in my 20's. I never thought in terms of 'career'. I'd have screwed up any marriage I could've gotten myself into.

To be clear, I'm not blaming my folks. I think they did a top notch job with us. It just makes me think about how to raise the next generation. How to balance the need for confidence while keeping them from killing themselves.

Good thing I don't have to start tomorrow!