There’s a crisis of coddling in American families.

Youths stay close to nest later, longer

It’s evident in the frantic efforts of parents who write their children’s college-application essays, then provide long-distance homework hand-holding after their kids hit campus. We see it in the millions of twentysomethings who have moved back in with Mom and Dad. And we notice it in the workplace, where entry-level employees expect bosses to look after them the way their mothers do. These signs of “extended adolescence” have been building for years, of course, yet the answer isn’t as simple as “Just let go already!” Family dynamics in our culture have been changed by divorce, the high cost of living, latchkey childhoods and the trend of delayed marriage and parenthood. As a result, parents are struggling to find the right balance.

Leslie Park, a travel agent in Washington, D.C., says she didn’t know what to do when her son, now 25, was living at home several years ago “and spent half his day sleeping and the other half watching TV. I’d go to work and he was just going to bed. I’d come home and he was just getting up.” She recognized, though, that he was “floundering and kind of lost,” and opted to err on the softer side of tough love – insisting that he enroll in college courses, while letting him slowly chart a course for his life. In time, he got himself together. He’s now a film editor in New York – and still getting help from his parents. Ages 18 and 21 are no longer the true entry points into American adulthood, as more young people today take soul-searching breaks after college or put off starting their “grown-up” lives. A 2003 poll by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center found that most Americans think adulthood begins at age 26. Understandably then, many parents don’t know when and how to disengage, which can leave their kids overly dependent into their 30s and 40s. Young adults also feel torn. Courtney Reilly, 28, moved back into her parents’ Manhattan home in 2001 while in graduate school, and has remained there ever since. “There’s a stunted independence of twentysomethings today,” she says.

On the positive side, many parents today have close bonds with their adult kids, and both generations benefit, says educator Susan Morris Shaffer, co-author of the new book, “Mom, Can I Move Back in With You?” But she finds too many parents become their adult kids’ lifestyle-subsidizers, bail-out specialists and chore-completers.

Jeffrey Zaslow
1 February 2005

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/living/10786850.htm

home / Previous viewpoint