Perhaps if the baby boomers didn't rig the financial system in their favor, inflate housing prices, crash the dollar, grant themselves unfunded medicare and social security benefits for their vastly extended lifespan, increase college and healthcare costs 20-40%/yr, start two hugely expensive and mostly pointless wars, burn half the world's oil, scalp the science/tech sectors that their parents built for WWII and the space race, replacing them with finance/real estate ponzi schemes to extend an empty consumer lifestyle, and then outsource virtually everything except for senior executive and imigrant service jobs, their kids could start their own lives?
Couldn't agree more. I'm 23. When my father entered the workforce there was a clear expectation of lifetime employment and a very nice set of increasingly better benefits and career opportunities with time. I worked in the same company a few years ago and the outlook is completely different.
Because of this outlook I decided that I'd be better off working as a consultant and travelling. Really, I see little benefit to working in a corporation when we have today's lack of job security.
And with the exorbitant cost of real estate, which is several times what my parents had to deal with during their time, I see no reason to stay in one place when it'd be actually easier to move around.
The cost-benefit relation to having a commitment to a company and place is not the same as it was before. At least that's the way I see it.
Those are the cards you have been dealt. Now you can either complain about it or you can take action and get yourself ahead. That's part of being an adult. Part of being an adolescent is pointless raging against the machine.
Yes the unfunded social security and medicare is a disaster, but it's not going away, so all people in their 20's now will have to start working out ways around this particular problem.
True, but I think maybe rphlx didn't so much mean to rant himself as explain the questions the article raised. As a 20-something who agrees with him, it is annoying to see these articles which paint my generation in this negative light by members of the older generation who have dealt us a pretty crappy hand.
I don't know, a lot of those aren't really the fault of baby boomers. It's more just government subsidies in these specific areas, which end up distorting prices and incentivizing certain behaviours. The Federal Government provides loans and subsidies for healthcare, education, housing and defense spending, so it shouldn't be a surprise that you end up with massive increases in house prices, tuition, healthcare and war costs.
Speaking as a 28 year who has not yet "grown up" (as defined by the nytimes), I think those of us who find ourselves in this situation shouldn't seek to blame anyone else, least of all the baby boomers. We should remember the good things that the baby boom generation in America has done, like:
- protesting the Vietnam war, which was started and heavily supported by the "greatest generation"
- pushing for Civil Rights legislation in the U.S. for women and minorities
- creating greater awareness of environmental problems, and spreading the belief that we must be proper stewards of our planet, not only for own survival but also for future generations
- developing the computer hardware, software and telecommunications industries, which has made an incredibly positive change in the lives of billions (including all of us here who have these advancements to thank for our livelihood)
The previous two generations have created a system wherein the young subsidize the old. They've placed expectations on the young (go to college, buy a house, etc.) that have led to inflated demand and therefore inflated costs, and they've positioned themselves to profit from it all. And then they get upset at the "kids" who either (1) choose not to dive headfirst into that system but instead to use their parents' built-in advantages to get ahead, or (2) get confused by the system and struggle to get started in it.
Near as I can tell, the real question is "why has marriage/childbearing been delayed?" The answer is the sexual revolution and women's empowerment. Except during the 50's and 60's, I don't think it was ever that common to pick one job and stick with it until retirement on a defined-benefit pension. The 50's and 60's were exceptional.
I think the real issue here is that the baby boomers and later generations enjoy infantilizing their children. First they needed to protect their 10 year olds from nonexistent child predators, wifi and inorganic food. Then they needed to protect their 16 year olds from depraved newfangled sex ("rainbow parties", etc), completely unlike the sex they had during the 60's/70's. Now that their kids are grown up, they need a new reason to remain involved and treat them as infants.
Paragraph one is worth an upvote, but I don't think you need go so far as the pop psych of paragraph two. Paragraph one -- indeed, sentence one, which points out that marriage and childbearing are delayed in modern technological societies -- explains most everything else.
Especially when combined with the key fact that in the USA all incomes except those of the rich have been declining in real terms for over a generation. And independence costs money. Kids stay involved with their parents longer because the marginal cost of the fourth bedroom in a four-bedroom house is a lot smaller than the cost of a one-bedroom apartment.
The other thing I'd point out is that the "traditional American way" to run a nuclear family -- the one where kids hit age 18 and then move out on their own, sometimes to other states -- is (was?) actually a very specific pattern of life from a very specific time in a very specific culture. In many cultures, historically and around the world, households traditionally contained grandparents, parents, and children all living together. It would be considered alien for a child to desert the home of their parents unless they were explicitly married out to another family, in which case the child would be expected to live in the home of the spouse's parents. To strike out on your own would be crazy! What would your family say?
(And one wonders if the nomads of the Tibetan plateau are sitting around reading Tibetan op-eds bemoaning the decline of the traditional Tibetan family: Some women are taking only one husband! What are his brothers supposed to do for a wife? [1])
Traditions can be pretty ephemeral. One of my favorite things to do is to find "ancient traditions" whose inventors are still living.
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[1] Note: I took Anthropology 101 from a world expert on polyandry -- one of the world's most unusual family patterns -- but I should note that I made up this particular example. I actually have no idea to what extent polyandry is in decline, or whether a family of Tibetan nomadic brothers and their wife are likely to read op-eds.
Especially when combined with the key fact that all incomes except those of the top quintile have been declining in real terms for over a generation.
Although I hear this claim made often, I believe it to be untrue. People at all income quintiles have more and better stuff now than people at the same quintile at all periods in the past [1]. That would be impossible if real incomes really went down.
[1] I'm assuming comparisons over at least 10 years, to avoid "during recession" vs "peak of bubble" comparisons.
The claim is correct. The reason that people have more and better stuff is that women in extremely large numbers, have gone out and taken jobs in order to support families.
Principally, the increase in costs to raise a family comes from large rises in the cost of housing and healthcare.
Quote: "The crisis facing the middle class started more than a generation ago. Even as productivity rose, the wages of the average fully-employed male have been flat since the 1970s.
But core expenses kept going up. By the early 2000s, families were spending twice as much (adjusted for inflation) on mortgages than they did a generation ago -- for a house that was, on average, only ten percent bigger and 25 years older. They also had to pay twice as much to hang on to their health insurance."
Do you believe the average fully employed male today has fewer goods/services than in the past?
If not, then my point stands.
(Regarding Warren, see my other posts in this thread. Her data shows that a two-income couple of 2000 has more income and also consumes considerably more stuff than a single-earner in 1970. E.g., the 2000-era couple spends 55% more on 2 cars than the 1970-era couple spent on 1 car.)
It is possible for incomes to have gone down and people to have more stuff. A lot of people have bought their stuff by taking on debt. Incomes over the past 10 years have marginally increased but their debt levels have increased. It seems to me that a lot of people are living a middle class lifestyle without a middle class income.
That is still possible. A lot of the consumption increase is required by both spouses being in the workforce. The second car is not a luxury, but a necessity. Money spend on house-cleaning, eating out, etc. has also perhaps gone up, but due to a time reallocation (away from the 1950s housewife to a 3rd party).
Understanding and measuring the value of things, always fascinated me. It's far from obvious I think.
Can we measure wealth by the "amount/quality" of good/services that you have?
Do we instantly become all richer if somebody discovers a cheaper way to build a car/TV/whatever ? (suddenly more people can afford it), or does the concept of wealth make sense mostly in relation to condition of other people ?
But anyway, perhaps we also have to take in consideration one of our often undervalued stuff: time, our time
I'm not sure, didn't check the data out there, but I have the feeling that modern life for the average people means less time for themselves.
Of course, your increased possibilities (increased wealth or reduced costs) allow you to travel around the world, take tons of pictures, having fun etc in ways that were unthinkable for the previous generations (of comparable incomes).
But we didn't get it for free, we sold our time, little pieces of our own time, one second here, one minute there.
I don't mean only the time we dedicate doing things like working, commuting etc, but also the time we sold by listening to music we didn't choose to listen, by watching advertisements of things that perhaps we don't need, by enjoying shopping, searching for stuff, addicted to all that consumer-mania stimuli which transforms our time, our attention into our perceived wealth.
Yes, because without a huge marked of people wanting to get a car/TV/whatever, those goods couldn't be affordable. Everybody in a consumer society is participating in this wealth transformation, one's own second at a time.
I'd compare it to the cost of housing/food, not the cost of stuff for the purposes of this article at least. "Stuff" always gets cheaper and cooler. The fundamental things you need for independence don't necessarily.
The claim is correct for relative income and incorrect for absolute income. In absolute terms, wages have been stagnating for a long time and combined with technological progress, yes, absolute real wealth may have advanced for almost everybody. The problem is, people define their incomes in relative terms, and with the total excess at the top management levels since the Soviet downfall combined with mass media, most Americans have been suckered into debt. So I would venture Americans' net-worth has indeed declined long-term, even absolutely.
Real wages purport to measure the amount of stuff one can buy, not the income as a fraction of some richer person's income. The claim I'm disputing was made about real income.
> People at all income quintiles have more and better stuff
> now than people at the same quintile at all periods in the
> past
An alternative hypothesis could be that a lot of the putatively better stuff that people have are produced significantly more cheaply today than in the past. Clothing and furniture, for example. The savings on these items would allow people to have other things (e.g. personal electronics) in quantities that didn't exist a generation ago.
Er, that's the same hypothesis, unless I misread g'parent: better and more stuff is cheaper, so even though incomes (measured by commodities or something) didn't go up much, we're all much better off.
When someone claims wages haven't gone up in real terms, they are referring to inflation adjusted wages. So if costs went down 10%, but wages went down 20%, then real wages decreased 10% because people can purchase 10% less stuff than before.
So the claim that "real wages have gone down" contradicts your description. What you describe is an increase in real wages.
This presents a paradox - people often claim that real wages have remained flat/gone down. And yet, people have more stuff now than ever before, which should be impossible if real wages went down.
I think what you're seeing is that there is no "real economy" - there are lots of microeconomies, in each good or service you can buy. Over the last 20 years, we've seen massive deflation in the markets for consumer goods. My first computer, not quite twenty years ago, cost $2500 and was a desktop with a 20 MHz processor and 2 MB of RAM. I now have a phone worth roughly $400 with a 1 GHz processor and 4 GB SD card.
Meanwhile, there's been massive inflation in services, particularly health care and education. When my mom went to college, a $3000 National Merit Scholarship basically covered a whole year's tuition. When I went to college, tuition + room & board was roughly $40K/year, and is higher now.
People are responding to those price incentives, which is why you see people at the poverty level with blu-ray DVD players, iPhones, and netbooks, but with no health insurance or college education. Prices for consumer electronics have come down so much that it's worth more to them to spend half a month's salary on a phone that they'll keep for a couple years rather than try to get health insurance that they can't afford anyway.
Whether this is a good thing depends on whether you consider phones, computers, and entertainment to be more important than health care and education.
If your mom went to college in 1970, GDP per capita was only $5000. So one year of college cost 60% of GDP per capita, now it costs about 80%. That's an increase, but not a ridiculously large one.
In any case, I don't much care about education by itself, since most people value education only insofar as it allows them to get wealth. If people have more wealth, why would I worry about their education? (That's not to say that education is becoming more scarce - far from it. We are more education today than ever before.)
The same applies to health insurance - I don't care about the cost of health insurance, I care about health. By most measures that I'm aware of, health is increasing. For example, life expectancy went up 8 years since 1970 and infant mortality went down more than 50%:
What you say is true, but over the same period the distribution of wealth within the USA has shifted dramatically. Therefore the median family income has not kept up with per capita GDP.
The figures I have from http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php go from 1975 to the present. $3000 in 1975 was 25.4% of a year's income for the median family. $4000 in 2009 was 82.5% of a year's income for the median family. My understanding is that tax rates on the median family have increased, making that picture even worse.
Therefore education is much less affordable than it used to be for the median family.
You are correct to use median income, which was about $6500 in 1970, making $3000 = 46% of median income in that year [1]. You are also correct to say that taxes went up, by about 140% (according to Elizabeth Warren's data [3]).
In any case, this only makes the paradox I highlighted more puzzling. College is more expensive, and yet college attendance per capita is up 40% over 1970 [2]. If real income is flat, then people must be giving up other goods and services to attend college. And yet, people seem to be consuming more goods and services of all sorts in addition to college.
This doesn't make sense. I suspect that real income is being incorrectly calculated.
I know multiple trends that address your paradox, and I do not know the relative importance of them.
The first is that the savings rate has dropped significantly. People who do not save can purchase more goods with the same income. (At least in the short term.)
The second is that due to widening income disparities, the ratio in earnings between the median family and the top fifth has increased. Therefore college has not become as proportionately hard to afford for the top fifth as it has for the median.
The third is that the increasing income disparity has come with widespread recognition that a college education is a good way to improve your odds of being in the top fifth rather than the bottom half. This makes education proportionately more valuable. People are willing to spend more on things they value more.
Fourth, the structure of financial aid has changed. It is less often true that students pay the full sticker price for college today than historically. And the poorer you are, the more likely you are to get a break. (Harvard's policy being an extreme example.)
And last but not least, in a very different tangent, income disparity leads to an increased fraction of consumption being accounted for by a small fraction of the population. So changes in total consumption do not necessarily indicate changes in consumption for the median.
The particular paradox I'm describing is not limited to college - it applies to virtually all goods and services. So any college-specific explanation is incomplete.
It's also not limited to any strata of income - the poor today have more goods and services available than the middle class of 1970. This casts doubt on explanations based on inequality.
Decreased savings might explain things, though I think in the long term it would cause inflation. Would need to think about it.
You've good points - but I think you missed something.
Marriage/childbearing has been delayed because we can't afford it. My father at 30 could afford a bungalow to raise his kids, and my mother could afford to be a housewife.
Try doing that today.
Where I grew up housing has inflated to the point where I'd have to be making the equivalent of 3-4x my father's old salary to even afford the mortgage. Keeping quality of life level, it's hard to imagine being able to own a home in a decent neighborhood, even if your partner works also (which, btw, makes childbearing even less attractive).
IMHO it has less to do with sexual empowerment and more to do with the fact that the middle class is shrinking alarmingly quickly, and fairly soon will be all but a memory. The whole concept of the breadwinner feeding a caretaker and children in a home that he/she owns is practically impossible for most of America today.
Anecdotally, I know 4 or 5 couples who had kids and a mortgage before age 30 in the 2000's, probably two of them with only one income, the others with ~1.5 incomes. Not that your overall point is wrong, but depending on your location and education level it is completely financially feasible to purchase a home and afford kids on one income.
Within three years of college, I could probably buy a house on my own in Pittsburgh or many other areas in America's vast middle, even putting 20% down.
Heck, my friend bought a house in Seattle within six months of graduating. He's leveraged as hell, but has a job at Amazon and is renting rooms to friends.
"In England between 1500 and 1700 the median age of first marriage for women was twenty-six." -Marriage: A History, Stephanie Coontz via Snopes.
I haven't done independent fact-checking of this statement, but assuming it is true, and taking it in light of the numbers given in the article, it seems like the 1970s were the historical aberration where people married younger, instead of the present being the aberration for people marrying older. I think the biggest fault of the article is that it takes as its thesis, "Things aren't like when I grew up, and the way things were when I grew up is the natural order of things!"
I've heard this is true as well. I wonder if this one point is because women were liberated from having to stay with their parents, but were still unable to truly support themselves given income discrepancies.
That last paragraph is one of the most incisive comments I've read on HN.
I'll just add that there's a feedback loop. The more parents infantile their children, the longer the children tend to take to grow up, and the more the parents will feel like the children are infants.
I'll second this notion. I know of a grown family (youngest in early 40's) and without exception, they're all adult-children, incapable of forging ahead in this world. Their parents have continually bailed them out of bad decisions, bad marriages, bad businesses for 2 decades. The only problem is now the parents made some bad business decisions so the whole family unit is in big trouble. I've seen a grown man in his 40's crying to his Mum, who comforts him with the sorts of noises you would to soothe a 5 year old. I'm not talking about 'my friend died' here - I'm talking about 'my life sucks and I hate my job'
I think the real issue here is that the baby boomers and later generations enjoy infantilizing their children. First they needed to protect their 10 year olds from nonexistent child predators, wifi and inorganic food. Then they needed to protect their 16 year olds from depraved newfangled sex ("rainbow parties", etc), completely unlike the sex they had during the 60's/70's. Now that their kids are grown up, they need a new reason to remain involved and treat them as infants.
Well, as long as we're shooting from the hip, I think there's a different reason behind delayed marriage and childbearing. Being constantly flooded with information allows people to form a better picture of where they fit in the world, and be generally more self aware of what they want out of life. That means that people can't live life on instinctual autopilot like they used to. Why spend some of the best years for taking a risk (not just startups, but things like taking a year off to backpack, etc.) doing the most staid and conservative thing a person can do--settle down and start a family?
I could easily be wrong, but I seriously doubt that being coddled as kids has any bearing on the current state of adulthood. That's the kind of thing people have been saying forever.
I think you're wrong about being constantly flooded with information. If anything, it's having the opposite effect. I can do anything? Well, er, um, I don't know what to do.
I'd cite the famous study that showed more choice equals less action with the jams in the supermarket if I could be bothered to look it up.
I know it was much easier for me to make life choices once I had ruled out a massive amount of things.
I also don't see backpacking as drawing out childhood - if anything, the opposite. Well travelled people used to adverse circumstance and problem solving make better adults. It's the ones who never leave home, never make any choices, never do anything that are the eternal kids.
You have great points, except with regard to organic vs. inorganic food. Most web apps get more testing than the pesticides we ingest in our food supply.
Okay, I am now officially sick of this kind of story.
I'm 45, and if this trend of increasingly defining older and older people more and more infantile continues, I could end up a baby again before I retire.
Seriously though, I don't see the newness here. My father told me that his grandfather told him that you don't truly become and adult until around age 35 or so. That bit of family wisdom dates back to early the last century. A hundred years ago.
If we're into social commentary, I'd point out that as we become more and more pampered, we become more and more infantile. I expect to push the button on the iPhone and have the pizza show up 15 minutes later. I expect to be in contact with all of my friends instantly via text message. I expect to have college paid for and a warm house with the folks if things don't work out.
These are probably great things to expect, but when you're not making work-or-starve decisions every day, you can easily start expecting a helluva lot of stuff that just realistically isn't going to happen. We call people who have unrealistic views about their status in the world, an inability to make decisions, and the need to be taken care of, well, chidlike. I love optimism, but that's not what I see from this article. This is different than optimism. Optimism says we'll make the most of it and things will be fine. This is I-want-to-be-a-rock-star. I have everything else I want. I want this too. It's all luck, anyway. Show me the button I push for the limo.
Put another way, these super-cool new things need to be compared to something. If you compare them to nothing, you know what you have and what you don't have. If you have no frame of reference, it's all just "normal". That lack of context makes a difference in being able to do stuff.
I don't mean that as commentary on "those dang kids". I think every generation has an awesome potential, mainly because of all these cool new things. I see no reason why we need a new developmental stage. 20-somethings can fly nuclear bombers, I think they'll do alright with career choices. If we let them. Pointing out they are mentally impaired is no more useful than pointing out the average 85-year-old is mentally impaired. Yet many of them drive, work, and do just fine in the world.
What I think is missing at this age, frankly, is some sense of comparison. You need to know you are unique and special, just like everybody else. I think some form of mandatory national service could help.
Either that or I need to start looking for rattles that I find appealing.
"20-somethings can fly nuclear bombers, I think they'll do alright with career choices. If we let them."
I also found it interesting that the author examines the question of extending adolescence throughout a person's 20s, but never questions whether everything about our current concept of adolescence is a good idea. pg did a good job of skewering our current educational environment for teenagers and its psychological downsides.
Maybe we should be discussing rolling back some of the things introduced to support our current concept of adolescence, instead of extending it even further.
"20-somethings can fly nuclear bombers, I think they'll do alright with career choices. If we let them."
I tend to agree with the general sentiment, but I think this analogy is very misleading. For one, bomber pilots are a very selective group that have been screened. Nobody screens you for life in adulthood. So, most 20 somethings probably don't have the chops to fly nuclear bombers in combat situations. Also, the set of skills needed to perform the function of piloting bombers (where one is also given extensive training in those skills) is not necessarily the same set of skills needed for making career choices and navigating through life where the acquisition of those skills is a lot less clear. So yes, while some 20 somethings can fly nuclear bombers that doesn't tell us anything useful about how well 20 somethings in general are able to make career choices.
I think advocating mandatory national service is fundamentally wrong. You advancing the idea that the theft of a portion of someones life reasonable and good, in short you are advocating short-term slavery.
What does a person get out of national service? I think it'd be better instead to make high schools more difficult and let people start working and having a meaningful impact on the world earlier rather than later.
Other than that I agree with your post in general, I think the lack of a frame of reference/goal posts really sets people back. If everyone assumes that you wait till your 25 to start a business then they may wait till then; if they knew in the past that there were generals as young as 12 years old then twelve year olds may realize they can impact the world in a real way even at their young age.
I will not downvote you but I have a problem with the attitude that (seems to) stand behind this phrase. Remember the context. If you are an American, you grew up in one of the richest countries in the world, you probably had chances for education, access to technology, functioning roads and other public utilities, etc. etc. Of course, your life is your life but it's not like everything society might ask of you is "theft".
> "What does a person get out of national service?"
It's not everything about you, and perhaps you should ask yourself where would you be without the context of the rich country you grew up in (yes, I'm just guessing here, correct me if I'm wrong)? Is every tax "evil" too? Nobody likes paying taxes, me neither, but there is a difference between discussing where the balance of give and take is and just interpreting everything always in terms of "it's all mine". If you had to assign percentages of your success (if any), starting from zero, how much would you assign to your environment, your parents, your effort, your luck?
This isn't about society asking about anything. First off, it's not asking if it's compulsory - it's forced. Second, it's not society it's a few people who are in control -- people who the majority of society things are doing a poor job, as evidenced by congress's approval numbers. These programs are always aimed at the young who have no political voice -- we don't hear about programs to force the elderly or those entering their forties to put their lives on hold so that can give back to society for a year or two -- there'd be outrage, yet when someone is young most don't think at all about the rights of those they are "asking to volunteer."
What does national service to for the nation? It robs people of productive time that could be spent pursuing an education or career. Things that improve the world around them.
Furthermore you second thought is fundamentally flawed, you do not lay a claim on anyone by merely being nice to them. How would you like it if I swept you sidewalk, raked your leaves, etc because I enjoyed the way it made the neighborhood looked and then came to you 10 years later and demanded payment for all the help I gave to you. Your parents, your environment, etc are all the responsibility of individuals carrying out their own will - they do it because it's what they want to do; they may not enjoy it, but they still want it done.
No one owes anyone anything when they did not enter into a formal agreement, the likes of which cannot be entered into by a child. This does not mean that you shouldn't help your neighbor, volunteer your time, donate money, etc - because you want to. But to lay claim, to demand that someone pay debts they did not incur on the threat of violence is a dangerous and unjust claim.
PS if any of this sounds inflammatory, please disregard -- all is intended as a polite philosophical discussion.
You hit the nail on the head, but I'll add a few thoughts of my own.
I'm 22 years old, I graduated with an engineering degree this may and started working 5 weeks ago at a full-time job. The job required me to move out on my own. My girlfriend (of 5 years) and I decided to do it together so she moved as well and she's looking for a job. We pay all of our own bills.
I have an older brother (26) who also has a technical degree and is full time employed, but both he and his girlfriend still live at home and are "planning" on moving out soon.
Financially they are in a much better position. They make roughly comparable salaries as we do, but their expenses are basically only for health care, their cars, their cell phones, and any discretionary spending. The parents pay for a roof, food, utilities etc. They can save up their cash and are trying to move directly from living at home to buying their own place so they skip the renting waste of money (please don't get into that firestorm here, I've heard all the arguments, suffice to say they're saving money by not renting right now).
In contrast, I'm paying absolutely everything. We have roughly $1800 a month in rent and bills that they don't have. It sure isn't as expensive as living in NYC but thats 22 grand a year that we're not putting in the bank that we would have if we could have found a job near home and lived with our parents.
So financially, moving home after college makes a lot of sense. Especially if you have loans. If I were living at home I'd be putting that 22 grand a year into starting my own company instead of paying a landlord and some utility companies.
On the other hand, we're getting an experience they're not. I go home and my brother is considering buying some fancy ass car, meanwhile my girlfriend and I are juggling bills and debt to make ends meet (that first month when you have to pay all your bills but haven't actually gotten a full months of pay SUCKS). It is nerve racking and I feel like we're "maturing" because of it.
In the end will it pay off for us? I doubt it will financially but it might in other ways. But if you look at our friends, maybe 5 or 6 out of 20 that just graduated moved out and the rest went home. It is by far the norm to move home after college now.
(Also your quote about the 20 year olds driving nuclear bombers struck me. I showed up for work (engineer at a military contracter) and suddenly I'm surrounded by a bunch of teenagers in uniform running all of the multi-million dollar weapon systems we make and I got a "they're just kids!" emotion that makes me feel really damn old. )
>They can save up their cash and are trying to move directly from living at home to buying their own place so they skip the renting waste of money (please don't get into that firestorm here, I've heard all the arguments, suffice to say they're saving money by not renting right now).
It's interesting that you feel the need to defend this, whereas in places outside the mainstream US culture, like Hawaii, it's the norm. Children are more likely to live at home through and after college until they've saved enough for a down payment on a home or apartment, and then move out.
Financially it's smart, it keeps families together longer, parents get to bond with their children as young adults, share life lessons the kids may not have appreciated at an earlier age, and other good things. But for some reason it's all taboo in mainstream American culture.
Where I live, I probably wouldn't buy. The town is dependent on exactly three businesses for jobs. There are 30,000 jobs from those 3 businesses, but that is it. One company moving out (already threatened this year) or one canceled government contract (already threatened this year) and boom the housuing market is dead. I wouldn't tie myself in a house here for any reason, so I get there are reasons why renting is preferable.
But renting also feels like such an incredible waste of money.
Unfortunately, a lot of people who are anti-buying jump all over threads that even mention the conventional wisdom that buying is preferable to renting. Like everything in the real world, the answer is always "it depends".
That said, I feel like there is a negative stigma attached to living at home after college for everyone except those in the 22-27 crowd. I know when I was 17 I thought, I wouldn't be caught dead living at home after college. Now that I'm staring the bills down, I totally get it. I'm sure a lot of older adults are saying "how can these kids still live at home, they're 24!", but the economics of it make a lot of sense, and if your parents aren't a hassle why not?
> But renting also feels like such an incredible waste of money.
Just be honest with your accounting, when you buy a house. Apart from doing small repairs and all the paperwork yourself, there shouldn't be much of a difference between living in your own house vs renting and using the capital that would be tied down in a house to buy some shares or bonds instead.
Self-sufficiency is good for the soul. I would suspect that whether he admits it or not, your brother feels some guilt to atill be mooching off the folks at age 26. This is not good psychologically.
Parents don't have to push the kids out of the house they day after high-school graduation, like a fledgling from the nest, but fully covering rent, food, utilities (did they also pay for his degree?) is in the long run not doing your brother any favors -- it is just delaying the lessons he'll have to learn the hard way later about personal finances, choices, and responsibility.
I felt bad living with my in-laws. I moved to Canada from the UK to live with my wife, had to wait for the government to let me work legally (took way too long and went through way too much BS that the government gives a free pass to like the Tamil's who just landed who have been given immigration lawyers at the governments expense, but I was expected to have to pay hundreds of dollars for any chance to get a lawyer and had to do all the paperwork myself) for a job I already had lined up.
We recently moved out and I feel so much better. There was so much pressure that wasn't even being processed by my consciousness. I didn't make phone calls because I didn't want to be tying up the phone line (my in-laws also have a lot of far-flung relatives that stay in frequent contact) for an hour or more talking to my parents. We didn't want to have friends over too often because it wasn't our house.
Me and my wife are covering food/rent/utils/services by ourselves, putting a decent amount into savings and have the freedom to do what we want. We're 22/21 and we're responsibly using credit cards, financing and still saving money; yet my brother who easily earns twice as much as me and is older still manages to go overdrawn because he was never motivated to move out.
A very good comment, thank you for adding your experience.
Financially moving home makes a lot of sense, if the parents are willing to shoulder the financial burden. Those parents are paying for the food and electricity the children are using. They are paying an opportunity cost on that room the children are using (they could have used it for their own purposes or even rented it out).
Granted, there is a certain economy of scale in living together, but you can get a similar effect by taking in roommates (I did that for part of college). If the parents were to insist on the children paying close to fair market value for that food, electricity, and rent then the kids would get some benefit, but it would be nowhere close the huge difference you are talking about.
I think both sides need to be taken into account for full maturity.
Sounds like your brother is taking the easy route but planning for the future. Sounds like you are taking the hard route and learning a heck of a lot more.
Your brother will learn what you are now when he finally gets on his own (albeit up to 6-7 years in his own time after you did), and later you'll be more mature to plan better.
It doesn't need to be either-or. I juggled bills on my own without help from mommy and daddy and within 2 years me and my fiance have bought our own place. All while paying for rent, utilities, food, gas, student loans, car payments, back surgeries, multiple moves, etc.
It all comes down to focus, discipline, drive, and a large dose of humility along the way. Something not many 20-somethings admittedly display consistently.
I've had both experiences. I worked full time from my sophomore year until now. I graduated last august and moved back to Canada with my wife. We can't afford anything right now so my dad was nice enough to let us live whit him. Before graduation I was able to pay everything plus the apartment with student loans and my job. Now that the loans need to be payed and my wife can't work for immigration reason language reason she is still in school.
I don't feel bad about it, it's just the only solution at the moment. Loans are getting paid and our car will be paid soon so it's only a matter of time before were on our own again.
I can respect both ways - I left home at 16, but I once got to know an Australian guy who was still living at home when he got a job in finance, lived on a ramen-and-no-fun budget even while making $60k per year, and invested it all into real estate and became quite wealthy.
I used to think people who don't move out are lame or scared, but then I came to Asia. It's normal here - you don't move out until you get married, but you save the money for a house, kids, whatever. Someone who lives at home and then blows their cash on junk is in the worst of both worlds.
The US long ago abandoned conscription for an all volunteer army and is never going back, and should never go back. Leverage technology for preventing conflict and aggression. The only thing you need a bunch of warm bodies for is unpopular occupation, something it should have gotten out of after the soviet union collapsed. Instead the US is deciding to make the same mistakes as the soviet union (investing heavily in military and occupying Afghanistan).
The issue of failed to launch kids at home is simply a rational utilization of economics during a recession on their part. Nearly 30% of young 20 aomethinga are Underemployed, discouraging the investment in housing or leasing in one location they might move d
From in search of better work for an entire year.
Unless something has drastically changed in the last few years, flight training generally lasts for 2-3 years. 1 year of 'undergraduate' flight training, plus more specialized training on specific aircraft.
I have no idea what your friend is doing that will take a decade(?!) to complete.
source: Air Force brat, father was a flight surgeon.
20-year olds flew the bombers that won World War II, at the very least.
I'm skeptical that bomber pilot training really takes 10 years--that seems a tremendous waste in the military. 10 years is half of your active duty career if you stay in the military until retirement.
Well, the other half of WWII ;) Naturally you'd pick a very experienced pilot to drop The Atomic Fucking Bomb, but the average age of bomber pilots over Europe was famously in the early 20's.
His comment meant that 20-somethings shouldn't be disallowed from flying nuclear bombers due to age alone. In other words, if your friend somehow finished training in 5 years but wasn't allowed due to being less than 30 years of age.
Indeed so many are arguing that it really does take longer to grow up in modern societies, but it makes me wonder. If the society move up de-facto age of adolescence, should the de-jure part follow? Maybe increase the age of majority to 24 or so.. voting age, age of consent as well?
That would be likely to exacerbate the problem, further marginalizing young adults from their community. Also, the thought of raising the age of consent in this society progressing towards sexual and moral liberalization is laughable. As for voting rights, young adults have shown themselves to be a significant political force in recent elections in the US, guaranteeing the issue wouldn't be touched with a 10-foot pole.
It's funny, because I'm 46 and I've spent most of my adulthood wondering when I'm going to 'feel like an adult'. At some point it just happened, but to be honest, I'm not entirely happy about it. As George Bernard Shaw said, "Youth is wasted on the young."
"If we're into social commentary, I'd point out that as we become more and more pampered, we become more and more infantile. I expect to push the button on the iPhone and have the pizza show up 15 minutes later. I expect to be in contact with all of my friends instantly via text message. I expect to have college paid for and a warm house with the folks if things don't work out."
It seems to me that its largely due to the fact that our society doesn't let you do anything until you are 18, sometimes 19. For example, when my parents were teenagers, you could get your full drivers license at 16, now in British Columbia, you get your learners license at 16, your 'N' at 17 and you don't get your full drivers
license until you are 19.
Also in British Columbia, you can't rent an apartment without someone signing for it until you are 19. So its hard for someone to grow up until they are in their late 20s because they are used to society protecting them until such a late age and then when it is time for them to move out etc. they don't know what to do with themselves
because they haven't been able to learn what to do when they are on their own.
So if our society wasn't so over-protective, people would be growing up faster, but instead we are treating them like children until they
are almost 20.
Anecdote time. For two summers while in high school, I joined the Youth Conservation Corps, basically living away from home the whole time working in the fields and national parks. I was like 14 and 15. Great times. Got paid working while in camp for two summers. Yeah my parents worried but they let me go anyway.
Young people can do a lot of things if you let them.
I wouldn't say protective vs more holding you back. People don't want to sign contracts with minors because minors do not have to hold their side of the contract and it's been like that legally for a long time.
So thats why you make legal age something sane so people who are currently "minors" but are actually 18(or whatever age is best) can move out and grow up. I mean really, people in British Columbia, who are 18, can be charged as an adult and can enter the military but they can't get a credit card? I don't know what the situation is like in other areas, but in BC, at least, its insane!
One thing that I noticed in the article is that several of the sociological milestones cited are all distinct to American culture. For example, the "leaving home" milestone doesn't exist in a lot of cultures. Kids live in the same house as their parents and grandparents - forming extended families. The concept of a "nuclear" family consisting only of parents and children is a distinctly American one, and even then it only became the norm at the beginning of the twentieth century.
As far as marriage goes, I think the advance in marriage age is a good thing. I mean, do you really want children getting married and having children at an age when they're too young to handle the responsibilities? Its not that the kids are changing, but rather that society has enough resources to better accommodate the needs of its youth. I don't think that's something to be afraid of.
And where children are concerned, I fail to see why that's a milestone at all. By that standard, Bristol Palin is more of an "adult" than most responsible and hard-working twenty-somethings.
I object to the "moving back home" and "leaving home" terminology. Even at 40-something years old, I still hear people say they're spending their vacation "going back home".
What is it about the place your parents live that makes it "home"? (Especially when that place isn't even the house you grew up in!)
As I see it, "home" is wherever I live. So "moving back home" is a tautology, and "leaving home" on a permanent basis is an oxymoron.
Yes in some cultures (China) children often don't leave home at all. And the result? Life long infantilization, seriously Chinese are treated like children even after they marry.
" I mean, do you really want children getting married and having children at an age when they're too young to handle the responsibilities? "
I mostly agree with your sentiment, that perhaps society now is better equipped to handle the youth. but if 17-25 is too young to be having kids, don't you think it a bit odd that those are the most fertile years? I think most folks associate "adult" with "responsibility". and having a kid induces a lot of responsibility.
I would love to see the Times do a piece on "Why won't septuagenarians just die already?" But since older folks are the Times' main audience, it's more profitable to look at those damned lazy kids these days and pretend that societal changes are totally localized to their generation.
While it's true that the life expectancy has risen for older people, this isn't because longevity itself is much greater, it's because there are fewer infant mortalities dragging down the mean.
Upon safely reaching mid-life, the life expectancy has been around 80 for decades.
exactly. The way I see it, as the average life span of a human increases the pace of life will slow to a more leisurely elven type speed. Things are a lot more complex and there is a great deal more to know than say a century or even half a century ago, it takes a bit longer now to come up to speed.
Yes, and I don't think it's easy for women to have children at 60 or 10, however it's still possible. Biologically it's probably optimal to have children in the 16 - 22, socially 25 - 35 is probably ideal. However, I was simply pointing out that the limits of biology are well outside the shift in optimal range we are talking about.
It's pretty obvious why: the jobs situation sucks (they don't pay well or are non-existent), college/other debt is higher, more education than ever is needed to get the few jobs there are.
If the jobs were there that were there in the 90's or 80's, which required less investment, had more reasonable starting salaries compared to housing/medical/car costs, many people being drifters and living with mom and dad wouldn't.
I do think the tech industry is still doing better than most though, and requires relatively smaller amounts of training, so I'm not sure HNers empathize with what it's like for non-tech people.
I am 2 years behind career-wise due to the recession. While other people who graduated a year or two before me are qualified for senior-level positions, I am stuck with dead-end opportunities that don't expand my skill set.
Luckily I don't plan to be an employee for life, but if I did want to be a company woman I'd be screwed.
I'm not sure that housing/medical/car are more expensive. I don't know about comparing 2010 to 1990, but I do know that if you compare roughly 2000 to 1970, all of those expenses went down.
See Elizabeth Warren's book "The Two Income Trap", which shows that basically everything besides taxes and expectations went down in cost (you need to read carefully, she plays down the tax numbers by presenting them in a confusing manner).
[edit: to clarify, housing/medical/car are more expensive. But incomes went up as well. As a percentage of income, those expenses went down.]
"So we looked at the data for two-income families today earning an average income. What we found was that, while those families certainly make more money than a one-income family did a generation ago, by the time they pay for the basics -- an average home, a health insurance policy, a second car to get Mom to work, child care, and taxes -- that family actually has less money left over at the end of the month to show for it."
"...[A] big part of the two-income trap is that families have basically bid up the cost of living. Housing is a big example. A generation ago, an average family could buy an average home on one income. Today you can't do that in three-quarters of American cities. We all know that housing prices are going up, but what most people don't realize is that this has become a family problem. Housing prices are rising twice as fast for families with kids. ... Average mortgage expenses have gone 70 times faster than the average father's income, and the only way families are keeping up is by bringing in two incomes."
"The point is that families today are spending their money no more foolishly than their parents did. And yet they're five times more likely to go bankrupt, and three times more likely to lose their homes. Families are going broke on the basics --housing, health insurance, and education. These are the kind of bills that you can't just trim around the edges in the event of a downturn."
See my response to masterj. She presents the numbers in a rather confusing manner, sometimes listing percentage increases, sometimes a percentage of income. Virtually everyone who reads her book/watches her talks is confused.
I presented the raw data in a homogeneous manner in my response to masterj, which will hopefully reduce the confusion.
Or maybe you are just the one that doesn't actually understand it.
It is like inflation not counting energy prices - it doesn't matter what happens to prices on some things, it matters what happens to the prices of things you actually spend your money on.
So if housing prices went down per square foot compared to income but the size of the houses increased by a larger percentage than the decrease in price per square foot, the net result is more money out of your wallet.
A good example of this: I tried to get a small place, I don't need the space, but when I looked I couldn't get any smaller than where I'm living. I'd love to lop off 400 sq ft and get that percentage of my money back, but I just can't. That is what exists in the market today where I'm living. The end result is more money out of my paycheck than I'd like and an empty bedroom in my house. (Luckily we can afford the place off one income at least)
There are a lot of reasons why this happens, but the biggest one is that the cost difference to the builder of making a small house compare to a big one is a lot less than the price difference they get for building them. The same goes for boats, and today you can hardly buy a small boat anymore, they've all figured out the fatter margins are on the bigger ones.
A similar question applies to her numbers for income. Income averages have increased, but that is a result of increasing income disparity more than an average increase. So what is the change for someone in the 1st percentile? The 25th? The 75th? the 100th? It is an impossibility for those numbers to be the same because the income disparity has increased so somebody is white washing the data here.
She's being directly quoted by the grandparent. How can you get a direct quote wrong? In any case, I think we generally agree with her data.
The 2 income trap is real, and the US seems to have fallen for the ridiculous trap that is expensive housing. The sad thing is that it will take a societal shift away from obsessing with McMansions in order to affect any meaningful change, and it's unlikely to happen in our lifetimes because the realtors are the #3 top donor to government (See opensecrets.org - the NAR is #3)
I didn't get a direct quote wrong. I simply referred to a post where I give the data rather than her opinion. I even explained why in that post - I think her data is correct, but her analysis and presentation are misleading.
I saw her speech. It's great by the way, but you're wrong about healthcare. Healthcare is more expensive in every way than it was in the 70s.
She shows how everything in our society is less expensive now, except the places where we are spending all our money: Housing, Healthcare, and Education. And how ridiculous it is for families to have 2 incomes just to afford a house in a neighborhood that has "good schools". This is the 2 income trap. 2 income families are twice as likely to suffer the loss of one of those incomes, and if their mortgage requires 2 incomes to pay, there goes their house.
For some reason the US has fully bought this ridiculous obsession with housing. A $3,000 or $4,000 a month mortgage that takes 50-75% of their monthly income is considered "normal" somehow, and keeping up with the neighbors in conspicuous consumption is considered normal as well. No wonder it is unsustainable and our economy is suffering.
The house is 60% bigger [1], and according to Warren's data, costs 70% more. Most likely, it also includes more amenities such as washer/dryer (which were uncommon in 1970). We spend more, but also get more.
See my other post which gives numbers on healthcare. I agree that college costs are out of control.
People choose to take on a riskier financial profile in order to consume more. That doesn't mean things are more expensive.
You're picking [1] to the exclusion of Warren's own numbers. Per Warren's numbers, the increase in house size was essentially restricted to one additional room. Certainly not the 60% increase in size you posit.
The cost increase in housing was non-uniform, and the largest increases in cost were driven by houses in good school districts and we're talking tens of thousands of dollars across school catchment areas in the same metro.
Thus the increases in house prices were disproportionately leveled on families with school-age children.
Prior to the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA86), the interest on all personal loans (including credit card debt) was deductible. TRA86 eliminated that broad deduction, but created the narrower home mortgage interest deduction under the theory that it would encourage home ownership.[1]
Basicly housing has been subsidized relative to other purchaces. EX: A 55" TV included with a new home costs a lot less than one paid for with credit cards.
>I'm not sure that housing/medical/car are more expensive. I don't know about comparing 2010 to 1990, but I do know that if you compare roughly 2000 to 1970, all of those expenses went down.
... I'm fairly certain she showed that medical expenses + housing + need for a second vehicle accounted for the majority of the change in expenditures for the average nuclear family.
According to her data, income rose 75%. Mortgage increased by 70%, but note that houses are bigger and have more amenities. Two cars in the early 2000's costs 55% more than 1 car in 1973. Health insurance increased 60% and pays for far more procedures and treatments than in 1973. Taxes increased 140%.
You are confused because she presents the numbers in a strange way.
She presents the increase in mortgage/car/health insurance as a percentage increase: [mortgage 2000 / mortgage 1973 - 1] x 100% = 70% increase.
She then presents the increase in taxes as a percentage of income: 33% of income in 2000 - 24% of income in 1973 = 9% of income.
Her raw data is great, but her presentation is really confusing. I'm rather leery of her conclusions - she is great at gathering data, but terrible at analysis.
[edit: really curious why a simple presentation of the data is getting downmodded.]
I'm not sure that housing/medical/car are more expensive.
She presents the increase in mortgage/car/health insurance as a percentage increase
According to her data, income rose 75%. Mortgage increased by 70%
Yes, they are more expensive for the same family in real terms. Essentially, the second income has gone to housing.
According to her data, income rose 75%
But with an additional person in the workforce.
Mortgage increased by 70%, but note that houses are bigger and have more amenities.
House size increased, but only marginally, an extra bathroom or bedroom.
Health insurance increased 60%, and pays for far more things than in 1973.
While I haven't read the book, she said the exact opposite in her talk. That hospitals are sending people home "quicker and sicker" and hospital stays or having a sick worker are much more dangerous and expensive for the modern family due to lack of coverage and the need for the second income. When a child or grandparent gets sick, someone needs to take care of them. In the past this was the stay at home parent, but now a worker must be out of work, but as we've already seen, they need the income in order to make the house payment.
She then presents the increase in taxes as a percentage of income: 33% of income in 2000 - 24% of income in 1973 = 9% of income.
Taxes increase because the second worker's income is taxed after the first worker's, at a higher rate.
And her main point, from what I understood it, is that the need for a second worker in the workforce to keep the same standard of living made the family much less stable and susceptable to tragedy, something presenting the costs as a percentage of family income fails to demonstrate.
How is a 60% increase in house size marginal (see my other post), but a 70% increase in cost non-marginal?
Health insurance in 1970 didn't pay for a huge amount of things that it now pays for. For example, MRIs, viagra, birth control, etc. Far more diseases are treatable. I'd love to see her evidence otherwise.
The problem her book raises is that many families take on a riskier financial profile in order to consume more (though given her poor data analysis/presentation skills, I'm obviously skeptical of her conclusions). Her opinion is that costs have risen.
Her data shows that costs (besides taxes) have increased less than income.
How is a 60% increase in house size marginal (see my other post)
I was quoting her presentation. This 60% increase in housing size is not what the video that I linked to says. All of my points come from this and other interviews I've seen her in. If they are nonrepresentational of her views and data, then that is why, however I sincerely doubt that she would be presenting the opposite views in a presentation of about a book that she presents in the book itself.
Health insurance in 1970 didn't pay for a huge amount of things that it now pays for. For example, MRIs, viagra, birth control, etc. Far more diseases are treatable. I'd love to see her evidence otherwise.
The specific example she gives is hospital stays for childbirth. I'm out of my element here, so I will say no more about health care.
The problem her book raises is that many families take on a riskier financial profile in order to consume more
This is the opposite of what she's tried to convey in every video I've seen of her. That people are making smart decisions such as buying houses closer to good schools, which drives up prices for parents with children. That the need for a second worker leads to a riskier financial profile. She says the idea that people are fiscally irresponsible and consuming more simply isn't true.
Her data shows that costs (besides taxes) have increased less than income.
I don't know why you keep harping on income, as it just isn't the point. The additional worker is. A family needs a second worker, earning a second income, taxed at a higher rate, leaving no one to take care of children or the sick, to have the same lifestyle their parents had with only one parent in the workforce. This need for two workers makes them twice as susceptible to lost income and serious illness.
Whether she is right or wrong, I feel you are misrepresenting her argument.
I'm not attempting to represent her argument at all - I'm only relying on her data (which seems reasonably solid). I believe her presentation is representational of her views, but I believe her views are contradicted by her data. I also believe her presentation of the data is misleading (and I explained why).
The 60% number I got from a quick google search, not from her book. I didn't watch her online videos, so I don't know what she claims there. I believe the claim she gives in her book is that houses today have 1 extra bedroom/bathroom, but I don't recall her quoting square footage (the book is at home, so I can't check).
Also, as she clearly shows in her book, a family needs a second worker to have a higher standard of living (bigger house, two cars, better medicine) than their parents.
Regarding her numbers on childbirth, I truly don't understand why she would look at duration of hospital stays. Maybe if hospitals were cutting corners and performing worse it would be a bad thing. But if fewer complications requiring a long hospital stay occur, that would be a good thing. The data on maternal death rates suggests the latter is more likely: in 1970, 25.7/100,000 women died in childbirth (14.3 in 1978), compared to 13.3/100,000 in 2006 [1].
That sort of thing is why I generally ignore her opinions/viewpoints. I'm sure the data point she cites is correct, but she seems to interpret it in a really strange way.
Also, as she clearly shows in her book, a family needs a second worker to have a higher standard of living (bigger house, two cars, better medicine) than their parents.
This is not her view, nor what she argues with her data. You are certainly free and encouraged to interpret the data yourself, but it was unclear that you were giving your own view and not her's, which is what I found so confusing. This is why my approach to this conversation was one of correction, not discussion.
I tend to agree with her analysis of the data and feel that yours is misleading. I suspect that this arises from a difference in priorities or viewpoint that would be impossible to address in this space. You have, however, inspired me to read her book, so for that I thank you.
...but it was unclear that you were giving your own view and not her's,...
From my first post: "According to her data," [...] "(you need to read carefully, she plays down the tax numbers by presenting them in a confusing manner)."
From my second post: "Her raw data is great, but her presentation is really confusing. I'm rather leery of her conclusions - she is great at gathering data, but terrible at analysis."
Not sure how I could have been clearer that I was relying on her data rather than her opinion. If I cite her again, I'll be sure to use all caps.
I'm also not sure why you feel my comparisons of square footage, # of cars or maternal death rates are misleading.
From what I understand of Warren's tax numbers: They're higher because its the income of 2 people required to pay for all the necessities, which is in part of the tax scale designed to catch higher earners.
Basically, the stuff costs more, but the lower end of the tax brackets aren't adjusted for inflation based off household income, as the tax burden has shifted to the middle class from the upper class.
Thanks, but I'll keep the state decided minimum of what an adult (18) is rather than some have some professor define what my goals should be. Since the adult "adults" are useless with any helpful advice. This is the vibe I get from the adult adults (US-specific):
* A house and senate that behave like toddlers (complete with screaming matches, name calling, and taking their ball home)
* An aging population more concerned with their pensions than the debt they are assigning to their children.
* Complete and utter disregard for the environmental devastation they are leaving behind.
I've learned more from the previous previous generation than I ever did from this last one (this doesn't include mom, my mom is the best). Mottos like, "Do your job, do it well, get a better one". Look out for your parents (ie. don't stick them in a home and wait for them to die).
> A house and senate that behave like toddlers (complete with screaming matches, name calling, and taking their ball home)
This is not US specific. When I was in high-school I dismissed politics as politicians behaved like little children from my point of view. In some countries there are even childish physical fights between politicians in house (probably not senate).
It wasn't always like this. The previous generation of senators had some old ideas but they were courteous and civil to one another. The current electives are basically firebrand, chickenhawks.
"The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were young, was 21 for women and 23 for men; by 2009 it had climbed to 26 for women and 28 for men, five years in a little more than a generation."
They've cherry-picked the trough of median age at first marriage in the modern era. Looking back a little farther shows that for men first marriage only dipped into the early 20s during a few decades in the middle of the 20th century. For women first marriage has been steadily rising, however.
I feel like a lot of people are responding to this article as if the title is meant to be incendiary; the way a jilted friend spits "Grow up!" at the object of their indignation. I don't think that was the intention, though. I wonder, in fact, how many of these commenters thoroughly read the article, because--as a guy/boy/man/child of 25--I found it to be a fascinating exploration of why the trappings of my life, and my peers' lives, differ so much from that of our parents at this age. I don't see it as an attempt at bastardizing our ability to take responsibility for ourselves.
What I find grating is the NY Times invocation of the Royal We:
"If society decides to protect these young people or treat them differently from fully grown adults, how can we do this without becoming all the things that grown children resist — controlling, moralizing, paternalistic?"
I don't see how "we", as society, need to do anything. If a parent wants to allow a child to live with them until he's 30, if people want to get married or have kids later, or if a parent wants to kick their kid out of the nest at 18 or two 19 year olds want to marry while still undergrads, I don't see how "we" as the broader society need to do anything. Leave it to the individual.
I find the idea that society is obligated to change to accommodate the indefinite extension of adolescence to be controlling, moralizing, and paternalistic.
(And this is coming from someone who got married at 29, just under the 30 deadline. I just don't see the need to reinforce the decision I personally made as a social norm.)
Somewhat tangential, but related: does anyone else question age stratification, generally? In the days of the single room school, older kids would mix with and tutor the younger ones. Or perhaps, a teenager would apprentice in a trade with older adults. Households would span generations.
Now, we're segregated by age classification. You grow up only amongst kids your age. Adults work only with adults, and the grandparents are away in a home. Events where generations or age groups mix seem rare. I'm not enough of a sociologist to know whether there's anything inherently wrong with this, but it gives me pause.
Adults in the work force range from late teens/early twenties to mid/late sixties. A lot of times I go to lunch with people from work and they are talking about things from their high school years that occurred before I was born. So I think there's a decent mix there.
I'm 38, and feel like I'm only just turning the corner on adulthood. My career has been grad school followed by a string of postdocs: relatively sheltered from the consequences of failure. I haven't married or had kids, and I don't have a mortgage. (I do have substantial savings.)
In a bad mood, I think I'm retarded. In a good mood, I think it's neoteny. Certainly I'm better off than my parents, who unconsciously followed societal expectations, had kids in their early twenties and in so doing doomed themselves to decades of misery because they're profoundly incompatible. It's not clear to me that I've lost anything of value by the path that I've taken.
It takes a long time to truly grow up. Here's Confucius' journey:
At 15 I set my heart on learning;
at 30 I firmly took my stand;
at 40 I had no delusions;
at 50 I knew the Mandate of Heaven;
at 60 my ear was attuned;
at 70 I followed my heart's desire without overstepping the boundaries of right.
Easy. Because their parents don't suck to hang around with.
In contrast, the "greatest generation" hit their kids, hated their hair and music, and didn't know how to party. They were easier to love from a distance. The current crop of parents were also plagued with prosperity and overbought housing, thanks to our distorted tax system. Therefore they have cheap space available.
There was a time in U.S. history when it wasn't uncommon for several generations to be living together under the same roof. All of this "oh, he's twenty-three, why's he still living with his parents?" non-sense would sound very, very strange to someone from yesteryear.
This seems to be a largely western hemisphere phenomena. My girlfriend is South African and moved to Canada once we got serious and was amazed at how many of my friends lived at home with their folks even though they have full time jobs (most are teachers and unlike in the US, being a teacher in Ontario is a pretty sweet job). In South Africa, once you're 18 you're out the door and you learn to deal with it. The thought of being in your mid-20's and at home with your parents is tantamount to being water boarded for a South African.
But one of the commenters here hit the nail on the head: real wages are going down, cost of living going up, plus throw in a little stigma about "renting being for poor people" and you'll find young adults waiting to save up to buy a house and as a result getting out on their own later.
Another observation for your sample (also South African).
Left home at 17, crashed at a mates place until I could find a job, any job. Most everyone in my circle of friends left home by 19 or 20.
I think there is a fair bit of pressure to be "independent" and "stand on your own feet", at least in the culture I grew up in; especially if you're male. You're expected to have "guts", and not going out and making it on your own, is seen as not having any.
Because of that obstinance, only in the past 3 or 4 years has rent been a low enough percentage of my income that I could start seriously saving (though I didn't, until a year ago), since I felt compelled to live up to the lifestyle people thought I had (the classic trap of coming from a "poor" family).
If I could do it over, I'd have probably stayed with my parents for a couple of years and built up a cushion.
But then, would I be the person I am today, or would I have been as adventurous?
I don't feel grown up though, despite being 30.
Maybe just more aware, and somewhat more responsible. And acknowledging of the fact that a large part of my ability to be "independent" is that I was quite lucky to enter the workforce in 1998 as things were starting to boom.
Society has been going to hell in a handbasket because the younger generation is (lazy, stupid, disrespectful, ignorant, wanton, lustful, unmotivated, etc...) since Plato's time. I think it's B.S. The people in the 20'S are the ones that we've asked to fight two expensive, difficult ground wars for us in a decade, and they've stepped up. I trust that generation (I'm a mid-40's Xer) more than I trust the Boomers or my own, as we're the ones that have racked up a 13 Trillion dollar debt. We're now leaving it to the twentysomethings to pay off. Dear Twenty-somethings: On behalf of my "older and wiser" generation, I apologize. Sorry we wrecked the economy and spent so much of our nation's wealth on crap that we can't even afford to hire teachers any more.
The people in the 20'S are the ones that we've asked to fight two expensive, difficult ground wars for us in a decade, and they've stepped up.
Oh, please. Proportionally, that's nowhere near the number of young people sent to Vietnam, much less WWII. The expense of those wars is again, nowhere near the expense of Vietnam, much less WWII. The casualty rates are at least an order of magnitude lower than Vietnam, which themselves were lower than WWII.
The rise of helicopter parenting. I'm 24, and my mom was roughly half a helicopter, and it was unbearable. I can only imagine how bad it could have been...
"Helicopter parent" is a slang term for a parent who always hovers over their children to "help out" and potentially make their lives easier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_parent
Because they can. We live longer now than we ever have...We don't have to be married and having kids by the time we're twenty, before the plague or dysentery gets us. A female friend of mine just turned 30 and she's just getting into an actual career (and she's perfectly fine with taking her time).
"We don't have to be married and having kids by the time we're twenty, before the plague or dysentery gets us."
There are many choices for life, and choosing never to get married and never to have kids is exactly the right choice for many people. People don't need to build an army of labor to tend the farm or whatever anymore.
Having said that, the human body is geared to having children young. A lot of women are putting off having children and then finding it either impossible, or learning that the risks of an endless array of defects goes up quite dramatically.
I think orphans have existed about as long as children have, and adoption has always been there too.
Surrogacy in the sense of "my sperm and your eggs in her body" is new, but men having multiple wives with the younger ones for child bearing is not. So I'd say the concept is old, and only the technology is new.
This article makes a lot of the "brain development" of people in their 20s. But that can't have changed too much over one or two generations, so I wouldn't look to it to try to explain why people in their 20s are taking longer to "grow up" than they did 50 years ago...
I think so much of this is just economic. My brother lived with a room mate until he was 34. He was an assistant professor at SF State, and his roomate was a high school teacher.
I know two men in their sixties (they are parents of my friends) who raised their children in San Francisco. They were... drumroll... a professor at SF state and a high school teacher. They both purchased houses in their late 20s/early 30s and got on with it.
Maybe the professions I've chosen are unrepresentative samples, maybe the city I live in is unusual for a high cost of housing... but in the early 70s, professors at state and school teachers could buy houses in SF. Now, they can afford to rent a 2br house with a roomate.
Flash news: post-Baby Boomer generations fail to follow social expectations (early marriage, early job, lifelong career) set by pre-Baby Boomer generations. Social scientists hard at work describing the problem and wondering how to fix it.
These articles never seem to mention the word 'laziness.' I mean shouldn't they at least consider that children of recent times have so many leisure pursuits growing up, so many easy way outs, that they get lazy and dependent?
As a 23 year old who has worked almost every day of my life AND held a job since I was 13, this is bullshit. There is work if you want it, nothing is beneath you. Don't settle, but always be working towards something more. The key is always be working.
Seriously though, what is this article going on about? People complain, I know. Shit sucks. But get over it, and get to work. There is always work to be done, money to be made, goals to be reached and people to marry. It`s not so bad.
Perhaps part of it is because they are told that the "real world" is deferred until they are out of college. Now that they're done with college, they are at the same point in life as the average (young) teenager a few generations ago. The invention of the modern consumer society called "childhood" is being extended further and further, and until someone does something about it, we'll see more of this.
Welcome to the coming lost decade of the US. We are repeating the cycle of Japan. Growing unemployment. Aging baby boomer population. Recent college graduates can't get jobs, so they live with their parents.
We are coming very close to recreating the Japanese culture, with all of their societal problems (40 year old unemployed men living with their parents and reading manga porn all day instead of working).
Quote:"In Italy, more than half of all young men live with their parents until age 30. Katherine Newman and Sofya Aptekar, in their chapter in The Price of Independence, trace the transition to adulthood in Europe, finding that youth there are responding to high housing costs, less stable jobs, and higher unemployment by living at home longer."
High housing costs. Less stable jobs. Higher unemployment.
Bam! How do you become an independent adult and start a family against that backdrop?
I am 23 years old and still in school. I do not remember what the stats are but I do remember a lot of students graduate in 5 years are more.
When you spend the majority of your life in school the last thing you want to do is settle down right away. I am sure that people who did not go the college route are a lot more settled then I am because they had plenty of time to do what they want.
Speaking as a 23-year-old who graduated a year ago...
-Because we came out into a terrible economy our professional lives are naturally chaotic.
-Because we have little regard for the 'status quo,' the 'way things are done.' We've been told all our lives that nothing is 'normal'--we grew up thinking that attitude was normal to the extent of never questioning it. See: http://xkcd.com/150/
-Disregard similarly for vaguely Western assumptions. From the article: "Sociologists traditionally define the transition to adulthood as marked by five milestones." As someone else noted, leaving home isn't a global thing.
To put a bit of Angry Young Man spin on it, why should we be concerned with "growing up?" Why should we follow your (this is directed more at the NYT than at anyone here) roadmap? It's not like you did such a great job as far as we can see. (And I know that sentence has been said in some form throughout all of history.)
Since the article includes people throughout their 20s, such as 28-year-olds who "came out into" the boom economy of the mid-2000s, the first reason doesn't really ring true to me.
I have a feeling the hardship of the economic recession(s) will make a lot of people grow up at an earlier age than their parents.
This is a time of humility following a time of arrogance and complacency. A lot of good will come from all the bad that past generations have handed down to their children and grandchildren.
Looks like I fit the definition of an emerging adult like a glove.
Still in college, so I live on my parents dime.
Haven't done anything on my way to adulthood.
Undecided about my future, and career choice.
And, guess what, I just turned 20 last week.
Since, emerging adulthood doesn't happen to everybody, perhaps it is the default "life stage" when we have no monetary requirements, and no expectations (which would really only happen in our situation, other than, perhaps, after retirement, but I have no experience with that one).
I'm not sure what will happen when I finish school, and I prefer not to think about the details of its existence (time after school). But I am considering career paths (ones that vary greatly) which is the main point of the "life stage". (If you have a path decided; you do it, sometimes. If you don't have one decided, but you need income; you do a convenient path. But if you don't have one decided, and don't need one, you linger on it untill the prior is true).
Now, as I said before, I'm undecided, and what is really scary is knowing that we basically jump into a job, with little to no real world experience (not theoretical or technical knowledge, we get that through school) about the career. Internships, would be the closest to what I'm thinking about looking for, but we have to compete for the one's that we want, our dream jobs may not even be looking for interns, and we're basically restricted to one per summer.
Perhaps what would help is a program, that allows for an array of different jobs, that you jump from each month. Assuming if your interested in the career, you would have some technical knowledge about it, and that there are enough companies signed with the program to allow the plethora of jobs.
Okay I'm probably talking out of my a- ...bum, because it'll have the same problems, and I'm sure there are those out there to tell me it won't work.
I think there are a couple of factors at work here. The first and most obvious is that young adults are more often engaged in higher education, which effectively delays the point at which they enter the "real world". The second is that it's harder your young adults to earn a wage which can support a family. In my parents and grandparents generation it was possible to leave school aged 15 or 16 and after a few years of apprenticeship be earning a full wage sufficient to start a family without a massive amount of financial struggle. The post WW2 baby boomer generation seem to have had things especially easy in this regard. I think it's only when people begin taking on significant responsibilities - like having children - that they really mature.
Perhaps that's true, and that it's people's perception of what it takes to begin adult life which has changed. Probably there is greater marketing of higher education than ever before.
Many college-age people I know these days are aware that college is just a marketing ploy for most people, but nobody is going to individually risk calling its bluff.
Isn't it common in countries outside of the US for the younger generation to stay in the same home as the older generation? Perhaps this 20-something phenomenon is just a sign that Americans are becoming more established in their communities and closer to the world norm.
In countries outside of the US there is also trend of children leaving the nest later that before. This is especially notable in Italy and Japan for what I know.
Personally I correlate this mostly with pricing of housing that is essential and limited resource. Housing is hoarded by capital owners in purpose to lend it to people who have not amassed enough capital (yet).
Because of that price of housing raises uncontrollably to the point where almost no young people can afford not only buying a house but even renting one. In Japan when you start renting a flat you are obliged to give owner customary 'gift' that is worth two years of rent.
Because keeping house empty is small cost for owner it's better to keep it empty than sell it at lower price. This prevents prices from dropping even when there's no demand at high price. Prices of rent follow prices of houses.
Of course all of that is just my uneducated guess.
I couldn't quite figure out the source of the more eyepoking stats. "The 20s are a black box, and there is a lot of churning in there. One-third of people in their 20s move to a new residence every year. Forty percent move back home with their parents at least once."
I think he's suggesting that social norms generally permit neighbors access to each other's lawns, and that violating these norms is associated with cranky old men.
> I think he's suggesting that social norms generally permit neighbors access to each other's lawns, and that violating these norms is associated with cranky old men.
Actually, they don't. The social norms allow access when you're interacting with the relevant residents.
It's like toys - you get to play with Pat's toys while playing with Pat. Otherwise you ask, and even that can be creepy.
Financial stability is harder and harder to come by. No 20-something wants to move back home, but often, there isn't much of a choice. Between inflation knocking the hell out of the dollar and putting a strain on social security and that fact keeping older people in the workplace for longer, nevermind the withering away of the American manufacturing, opportunities for stable, decent paying jobs that might actually cover your student loan payments are few and far between.
People have always been "nest huggers" - look at traditional societies like those in India. Adult children live with their parents and it is nothing new. It is new to the baby boomers in America, who grew up independent in the war and moved out to suburbia to fuel a population explosion. But not new in a biological sense. It seems that infantilization is actually a defining trait in the developed primates like humans.
Sounds like analyzing why so many people these days take 10 types of medications daily just to survive. Oh, wait, they're 70 year old... ah, OK.
A hundred or so years ago the life expectancy in the west was 40 or something. These days we watch our 80 year-old grandparents work part-time, drive, go on vacation 3 times a year and generally have a good time. Is it really strange then that the urge to "hit the milestones" has lessened.
This article makes a lot of broad statements without citing statistics.
We 20-somethings ARE growing up, the process just looks different due to a combination of technology and a slow economy. I bet that as we grow older, we will adopt many of the practices that people older than us (the type of people who write articles like this) should have been practicing; i.e. fiscal responsibility.
20-somethings experienced 9/11 during our teens, a time when most people feel invulnerable. At the same time, we've seen the transformative power of technology. I'm old enough to remember booting up DOS from a c-prompt, but young enough to see a world of limitless opportunities. Cautious, but optimistic.
In other aspects of life, we will be measured and thoughtful about our choices. Rushing into commitments simply because we've reached a certain age isn't smart. What isn't mature about taking time to understand why you want to get married, have kids, or commit to a career path?
There will always be people who can't handle pressure or who are just lazy.
Maybe because their parents' generation sold all the blue-collar jobs down the river to China, and there's nothing to do but raise your beak to momma government and hope for some worms?
I am really curious to see what happens in 10 years when the baby boomers start to die. The younger gen Y has been so throughly infantilized by their parents that we're going to be this "Home Alone" nation without any adult supervision. Gen X will have to step up to a very unfamiliar leadership position.
Just sayin.