Adulthood not what it used to be

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In a recent New York Times Magazine article titled, “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” author Robin Marantz Henig asks, “Why are so many people in their 20s taking so long to grow up?”

It is a curious question. One I often ask myself seeing I am 24, not graduated and most likely moving home at the end of this academic year.

I am often told “Oh, don’t worry about it, it’s finishing that counts, not the time it takes.” There is truth in that statement, but why isn’t it as important to finish in four years like it was 15-20 years ago?

Henig writes that the traditional cycle of kids who “finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on,” has been broken.

But even I have noticed the change. It’s not that these milestones are not being met. It’s that sometimes they are met out of  the preordained order, or one or more of them are not being achieved at all, either by circumstance or choice.

Now, as a 20-something in the midst of this “transition into adulthood” I can tell you that I don’t plan on following the baby boomer template.

If I was, I’d have graduated three years ago.

Henig discussed the question of young people in their 20s with Jeffery Jenson Arnett, a psychology professor at Clark University, and he thinks that people in their 20s are actually going through another stage of development: “emerging adulthood.”

Arnett says that through his research there is one aspect that sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s not that we don’t have goals for the future, it’s that 60 percent of those he questioned said “they felt like both grown-ups and not-quite-grown-ups.”

This hits the nail on the head. And I can tell you that I feel the exact same way.

I have legally been an adult for six years. I pay for my own school with loans in my name, I pay my own bills, I make my own decisions. This definitely makes me an adult, right?

We are rapidly approaching adulthood, but simultaneously we resist it on the weekends.

We are being forced to “grow up,” but few of us are ready to at 23, 24 or 25.

I’m not sure when the moment of becoming an adult happens. Or when we finally conquer our ambivalence toward growing up. But if I figure it out, I’ll be sure to let you know.