INTRODUCTION
A New Era for Parents
Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties.
—John Keats (1817)
Scott and Elaine Miller, a couple in their fifties, were frustrated when their twenty-six-year-old refused their entreaties to get help. Early on in the Covid pandemic, Tyler lost his job and returned to his parents’ home to live. Online gaming soon filled his time, while his persistent lack of motivation to look for a job gradually eroded his parents’ warm welcome. Their concerns about his stalled progress led them to seek guidance. In our offices, they told us their stories, underscoring recent disagreements and mutual discouragement.
The Millers typify many of the uncertainties and challenges that today’s parents and young adults confront, even before a global pandemic interrupted all of our lives.* Parents who have been intensively involved in their children’s lives face a predicament following the end of K–12 schooling. On the very cusp of their adolescent’s young adulthood, and arguably the most decisive decade of their life, the roster of expert advice evaporates, leaving parents adrift. This guidance gap mirrors the enduring but outdated cultural storyline that adulthood starts at eighteen—when children are up and out of the nest, off to a job or college and the rest of their life.1 Paradoxically, the longest stage of parenting unfolds during these years: the mature relationship between parent and adult child. While once a parent, always a parent, today’s young adults are increasingly turning to their parents for needed support to deal with the numerous tumultuous transitions in their personal and professional lives. In our era of stunning advances and rapid disruptions, developing a tolerance for uncertainty can enrich decision-making and build needed resilience for parents and young adults alike.
The years between the ages of eighteen to thirty carry the weight of great hopes and exhaustive parental preparation, leading up to a young adult’s claim on a fulfilling and satisfying life. This stage lays the foundation for completing education, obtaining a job and settling into a career, living independently, finding a partner, and becoming a parent—what sociologists have defined as the five markers of adulthood. Yet there is no magical age for becoming an adult. It’s neither the eighteenth birthday nor the twenty-first; not college entry or graduation; not the first “real” job or even the once-defining thirtieth birthday. Parenting now extends well past these milestones. Adult maturation is a process with false starts and detours along the way. Invalid notions about when adulthood begins only amplify parental worries. During this decade-plus of emerging independence, parents may house their young adults and also assume the roles of financiers, emotional sounding boards, and even career advisors. These days, the generational baton-pass into adulthood takes longer than it used to. Whether pleasantly surprised or mildly alarmed by this unexpected extension of parenting, parents discover that they’re not done yet.
Like the Millers, today’s parents contend with many uncertainties: “Why is it so hard for kids now, and why are they taking so long to grow up? We did so much to support them. Did we do too much? Why are more young adults anxious, depressed, or discouraged? I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do anymore. Let go? Be there? It can’t be normal. We don’t understand.” And still others ask, “Where do we go for help?”
THE GUIDANCE GAP
This book addresses the dilemma that parents face and fills the guidance gap. We offer parents a game plan that provides reassurance and constructive direction when things don’t go as smoothly as planned. The majority of books about twentysomethings focus almost entirely on the young adult’s struggles, giving parents the courtesy of a walk-on role, often cast in sadly familiar tropes: hovering, overbearing, and even harmful, from whom the young person must recover. We aim to debunk and discard these stereotypes as we emphasize the shared generational mission: completing a child’s complicated developmental transition to adulthood. We extend a helping hand to both generations. You can become a partner to your young adult; your relationship can allow for a component of friendship that is welcome to you both.
That helping hand begins with a new definition of normal parental involvement, because young adulthood now is markedly different from what parents experienced during their own time.
THE NEW NORMAL FOR PARENTS
For the first time in over a century, parents and families have returned to the position of primary safety net for their young adults. The default position for half of young adults—from eighteen through their early thirties—is multigenerational living in their parents’ home rather than with a spouse or partner in their own household.2 Yet parents often feel a bit sheepish acknowledging the extent to which they are helping. Likewise, young adults are embarrassed to admit how much financial and emotional support they need and receive from their parents, as if it were a sign of immaturity. However, the centuries-old historical record reflects the reality that parents have always helped their children gain a firm footing in adulthood. Whether it’s a hundred years ago or today, parents giving their young adults help is not only sometimes necessary but also common, even though it goes against our long-held assumption regarding the normal, on-time arrival of full adulthood. This assumption contributes to the current reluctance by parents to talk openly about their level of assistance. They anticipate judgment from the shaming court of popular opinion, which is equally disparaging of the overinvolved helicopter or child-centered parents, as it is of their dependent kids-turned-young-adults. Both older and younger generations need to more freely ask for input and guidance, receive healthy support, and strengthen their connections. Rather than blame or stereotype, we reveal the complicated realities behind the skewed generational portrayals.
When you talk to parents, you’ll hear a blend of silver linings alongside concern and frustration:
“We’re not empty nesters—we’re open nesters, letting them come and go.”“It was rocky through the college years until they got jobs. Then we enjoyed having them at home, where they could save money.”“We argued about how much dope he was vaping. We worried, ‘Was it stress, depression, poor coping, or a phase he’d outgrow before it got worse?’ ”These comments are sprinkled with complicated questions:
“What advice should we give them for major life decisions?”“What does it take to get a good job? Is it still college, or on-the-job skills training, or online certifications?”“How do we help them get back on track? Are they ever going to grow up?”In a similar vein, ask a group of twentysomethings about their generation, and you’ll detect a high degree of closeness with their parents.† When living independently, they text or call their parents frequently and are often grateful for their financial backup. Many who return home to live aren’t thrilled with what can feel like a regression to childhood dependency. As we’ll show, this doesn’t need to be the case. Their parent-child relationship can grow up too.
Though appreciative of parental support, many young adults express cynicism about their own futures and the world they’ve inherited from the “OK boomer” and the “not-woke” Gen X generations. They are understandably defensive about stereotypes of their slow “adulting” and are well aware of their tags. In classrooms they were “snowflakes” and “excellent sheep” who required trigger warnings before some discussions. In the workplace, they became the norm-defying, goblin mode, Big Quit and Quiet Quitter generations, with decidedly different expectations than their bosses or parents.‡ In turn, they sometimes make jarring accusations of societal and economic burdens that their parents’ generations have shifted to them.
Problematically, each generation holds stereotypes of “What’s wrong with kids today?” (the parents ask) and “You’ve ruined everything; we inherited your mess” (the kids assert). Because cross-blaming increases in times of large-scale social change, today’s families need to do even more to improve communication.
To develop mature parent–young adult relationships, parents can initiate change and relate more collaboratively by moving from correcting to responding, from talking to listening, and from offering unsolicited advice to becoming a safe sounding board. These shifts enable young adults to seek parental guidance when needed and build upon their autonomy and competency. But when a bump in the road becomes a young adult’s off-road excursion, parents may be challenged as never before to know how to help. We’ll explore how parents can be a guide and help their young adults manage these uncertain times and avoid the sometimes-costly mistakes of early adulthood. As family systems therapists, we have advised many parents and young adults alike who are confused by the unexpected changes and who lacked the support they needed to chart a path ahead. We’re here to share those stories and solutions with you.
WHO WE ARE
We are well-established national experts in lifespan psychiatry and in family psychology. Dr. Rostain has devoted his career to fostering resilience in vulnerable youth and their families and made it his mission to find solutions for youth and parents alike. He is a department chair and professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University with expertise in treating youth with neurodevelopmental disorders. He’s also professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, having cochaired the President’s and Provost’s Task Force on Student Psychological Health and Well-Being. Dr. Hibbs has dedicated her career to intergenerational family ethics in her roles as psychologist, family therapy supervisor, educator, and author. Together and separately, we have helped parents and young adults cope in demanding and crisis-laden times.
As parents of nascent adults, we’ve had front-row seats to observe the changes and challenges posed to both generations. Our children taught us what we didn’t know about how much harder growing up had become and how youthful anxieties and the pressures of college and its alternatives, jobs, careers, and even romantic relationships had swerved from the expectations of the prior half-century. Our deep thanks to them, from whom we learned to embrace the experience “You’re not done yet.”
Across our religious, cultural, and familial differences, our own childhoods belong to an era of economic stability and safety. Childhood was more freewheeling and carefree, for kids and for their parents too. Our divergent passages to young adulthood, amid social and political upheavals, shared comforting commonalities. Unlike today, a middle-class job used to be equally attainable with or without a college degree. A college education was affordable. Few questioned the labor market value that a degree would hold or whether it would afford a “good life.” The way it was for us is not how it is for youth today.
We will bring our personal perspectives and professional experiences to bear as we return to the Millers. We’ll revisit this family at various places throughout Part I of the book, as they epitomize a variety of intergenerational concerns, to which we provide practical strategies, support, and hope. When their conflict reached a peak, the parents, Scott and Elaine, consulted us for help with Tyler. We proposed a family therapy session. This was more than Tyler’s problem—and would take a team to solve it.
THE MILLERS: THREE’S A CROWD
When we first met the Millers, Tyler’s anger at his parents was apparent. While avoiding their eye contact, he told us that he was furious with them for making him the problem. His complaints echoed many of his generation. “I’m sick of them harping about how I’m wasting my time online and why don’t I get a job.” He fumed, “They just don’t get it. I can’t even get a living-wage job with my college degree. My generation got screwed. You guys wonder why we’re so stressed? For starters, there was 9/11, where we watched over two thousand people die on TV with hourly replays; then we got to practice shooter drills in our ‘safe’ schools; then we saw polar bears starving from climate change; then the economy collapsed—again. Then Covid. So if we’d known the headlines really meant ‘News flash: your future will get worse,’ we might have been better prepared. Today’s a lot harder.”
After a pause, his mother, Elaine, murmured sympathetically, “Honey, this will get better, I promise.”
Tyler snapped, “Mom, stop trying to bright-side this.”
“Don’t give your mother that,” his father, Scott, said. “What? I should say, ‘I’m sorry for how hard your mother and I worked to provide for your comfortable childhood and college’? Give me a break.”
Predictably, their exchanges devolved into a heated crossfire of blame and accusations.
Compounding the family tensions, the parents disagreed about what to do. Scott accused Elaine of babying Tyler, while Elaine discouraged Scott from his tough-love threat to show Tyler the door. Elaine was in danger of enabling Tyler’s stall through understanding alone, while Scott issued ever-expiring deadlines.
It was evident from the session that both parents and son had significant changes to make. Our work with them would entail best practices for productive conversations, challenges to their generational expectations, and encouragement to rethink their stereotypes. Parental shifts would precede and facilitate Tyler’s acceptance of changes he needed to make and support his motivation to rebuild his adult life. They could resolve their differences and promote sturdier family relationships. We began with their contradictory stories about normal young adulthood.
Rethinking Our Stories
The Millers believe three different versions of what’s normal, what’s gone wrong, and who’s to blame. Tyler’s story is of outdated expectations and broken promises for achieving adulthood; Elaine’s story is of a worried mother, her son’s source of emotional support, who questions their parenting; Scott’s story is one of a father who provided more for his son than he ever got and who faults Tyler for not “growing up.” Each generational view is limited by its singular perspective. Despite their differences, both generations agree that young adulthood is not shaking out as expected. It’s not normal. No one told them that reaching adulthood today is more difficult.
The stories we tell ourselves attempt to make sense of and protest changes that we don’t understand. The contradictions between generational stories create stereotypes and tensions that inevitably lead to confusion and unhappiness for both parents and their young adults. Parents may second-guess their child-rearing practices when their young adults have not hit the big five adulthood markers. Or they might fault their kids. Young people, too, may either blame themselves for falling behind on “adulting” or accuse the older generations of screwing up their chances. In the tug-of-war between the competing views of who’s at fault, something’s gotta give. So, do we need to change the kids, the parents, or their stories?
Each family’s story is different, each person’s perspective is unique, and like the Millers, each family’s efforts—no matter how ineffective—must be understood and respected.3 Yet a single story told from only one generation’s perspective is polarizing and precludes our understanding of the other’s experience. We advise parents and young adults alike to combine their perspectives and incorporate the partial realities that each story holds. Toward this goal, we nudge each generation to rethink their approach, regulate their reactions, and build their resilience to ambiguities. That begins by considering a broader explanation to the question “How did we get here?”
How Did We Get Here? It’s Not All in the Family
Parents and young adults themselves face a problem much bigger than family communication. In a recent Pew survey, young people (eighteen to twenty-nine years old) and adults over fifty were asked if young adults today have it harder than their parents’ generation did. The younger group overwhelmingly affirmed that it’s harder to buy a home, save for the future, and pay for college. The older respondents were the least likely to say these measures were harder for younger generations to reach.4
These generations have had very different experiences of young adulthood. In the 1950s, sociologists defined the classic markers of adulthood. The numbers tell the story. From the late 1940s through the 1980s, between 65 and 70 percent of young adults reached the five adult milestones in their late teens or early twenties or, at the latest, by age thirty.5 In 2020, only 24 percent of young adults, by age thirty-four, had completed the adulting marathon of “finish your education, get a job, live independently, settle down with a partner, and become a parent.”6
If we interpret these facts according to the ethic of American self-reliance and individualism, we have the perfect setup to censure the shortcomings of the younger generation. Rather than assuming that our first conclusion is correct, let’s remain open to additional information. The numbers themselves exist within a historical context. After all, it’s been seventy years since sociologists time-stamped adulthood markers. They are long past their expiration date.
Historians of family life remind us that our beliefs about the past are often idealized. The way we wish it were is usually how it never was, the rough edges of the good old days gradually eroded by time.7 An account of the post–World War II years provides an explanation for why becoming an adult was relatively easy in the United States from the mid-twentieth century through the early 1980s. That period coincided with a unique national growth blip. While much of Europe, Japan, and the rest of Asia were rebuilding from WWII, the United States reigned as the world’s dominant manufacturer and political superpower. Living wages and middle-class jobs were plentiful—and most required no college degree. For many young adults, an early marriage and parenthood were the norm and the ticket for leaving home. Although this thirty-five-year period of exceptional economic boom is the extreme historical outlier of an early and straightforward path to young adulthood, that era continues to influence our current beliefs. It’s past time to change the clock on our expectations for “adulting.”
A New Era and a Shared Story
A shared generational storyline expands our understanding behind the numbers. The likelihood that most twentysomethings will have a predictable, undeviating path to adulthood is inconsistent with current economic and social realities. The 1980s heralded a turn to growing inequalities and harsher competition that crashed into the twenty-first century in what first seemed a once-in-a-century storm, only to be followed by others.
Our young adults have witnessed and grown up with shock after historic shock: terrorism brought home by 9/11, the 2008–2010 financial crisis, a global recession with a flat-line recovery, political extremism at home and abroad, the transformational breakthroughs of the information age, and the era-defining effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Although many parents took a hit from these universal events, the future economic, mental health, and educational damages more deeply affected twentysomethings than they did other groups. Young adults at the start of their lives and careers will carry the aftereffects far longer, resulting in delayed adulthood goals.8
In an unusual twist, the financial vulnerabilities of this period impacted both generations. Parents and young adults suffered long-standing labor market insecurities. The brunt force fell on the middle to lower socioeconomic classes, as well as on women and minority households. Along with heightened caregiving demands and financial liabilities, parents had fewer social and health-care safety nets. The insidious creep of these factors landed most heavily on parents born in the late 1960s and 1970s and then on their children, today’s twentysomethings.
The long-playing impact of these socioeconomic and health threats have converged with mental health concerns. The kids are not all right. Neither are their parents.
Mental Health: The Kids Are Struggling, So Are the Parents
Prior to the pandemic, the term “youth mental health crisis” was in common usage and denoted a sharp and decades-long rise in anxiety and depression. With the pandemic’s onset, a high percentage of young adults dropped out of college or failed to enroll due to online learning difficulties or the need to financially support their families. Others quit or lost their jobs. Gen Z sustained the highest number of job losses across the working generations.9 Their collective loss of a purposeful life, combined with peer isolation, contributed to a historic incidence of youth mental health problems and substance abuse. The urgent need for mental health services for this generation is recognized as a trend for years to come.
Often overlooked in our concern for youth mental health is the parallel consideration: How are the middle-aged parents doing?§ Their mental health has also gotten worse. Their seeming generational ease (less educational debt, more job and housing security) is contradicted by the large numbers who are experiencing historically greater declines in their mental health, even more so in the U.S. than in other high- and middle-income countries.10 Post-Covid, their situation doesn’t seem to be improving. In December 2022, 37 percent of Americans rated their mental health as only “fair” or “poor,” up from 31 percent in 2021.11
The worsening mental health trend among the parent generations has multiple causes brought on by two core challenges: changing intergenerational dynamics and financial vulnerabilities. Intergenerational dynamics have converged to exponentially expand parents’ caregiving responsibilities.12 During the harrowing early years of Covid’s onset, from 2020 to 2022, middle-aged parents bore two crucial caregiver roles. They prematurely shouldered the emotional, social, and medical-advocacy needs of their locked-down, aging parents amid death, medical scares, and reduced social support. Concurrently, they experienced the second challenge of financial insecurities. Job losses befell both parents and their young adults. Despite this, middle-aged parents provided a wide safety net for the delayed and lost educational, social, financial, and career opportunities for their young adults. The opportunity losses took a heavy emotional toll on both generations. One mother commented on her daughter’s setbacks, “It’s heartbreaking to watch,” and a young adult tearfully commented, “I know my parents are worried about me. They have reason to be.” Parents’ caregiving roles included mental health assistance to both older and younger generations. Their individual heroic efforts occurred while most of them continued full-time jobs.
Copyright © 2024 by B. Janet Hibbs, M.F.T., Ph.D., and Anthony Rostain, M.D., M.A.