FOREVER ‘YOUNG’
Single? Live with your parents? The Census says you’re a child
ACCORDING to the four “common milestones” of adulthood, I’m not there yet.
And I’m not the only millennial supposedly falling behind.
A new report from the US Census Bureau looking at the state of young adults in America identifies “four common milestones of adulthood” as “getting married, having children, working, and living independently.” In 1975, 45 percent of those between the ages of 25 and 34 had achieved all four. Now, it’s down to 24 percent.
Millennials just won’t grow up, right? Not quite. Maybe millennials are coursing a different path precisely because they want to do “adulting” well.
Living with your parents because you want free food and rent while you play video games in the basement is a disgrace. Living with your parents because you’re saving to start a business or want to foster a close relationship shouldn’t be embarrassing.
Ditto with other life choices. I’m not married because I value marriage: I’m waiting until I meet a guy I could realistically see myself spending the rest of my life with. And since I think children deserve to have a mom and a dad, I’m not going to rush into parenthood before marriage.
But having spent the past eight years of my life taking responsibility for my actions, making my own decisions in accordance with my goals and my values — and, yes, assembling Ikea furniture — I think I’m a grown-up, milestones be damned.
Because ultimately these milestones harshly limit the kind of life you can lead. For instance, my twentysomething brother, who is studying to be a Catholic priest, is on course to never “achieve” getting married and having children — and his vow of poverty guarantees he’ll never be boasting about financial independence.
But he’s gearing up to spend a lifetime in prayer and helping men and women grow closer to God. That’s hardly a sign of immaturity.
And it’s easy to think of other cases where a person’s goals make those “milestones” irrelevant: consciously choosing to focus, for a time, on a career that doesn’t easily allow the work-life balance required for both men and women to be fair to one’s family; spending months or years volunteering; forgoing financial independence, with Mom and Dad’s approval, to pursue a start-up dream.
Of course, none of this makes those milestones not worth pursuing — if that’s what you want. Several of my friends married in their early 20s, and it’s been a joy to see them set their own path and to watch their children grow up. And personally, I’ve loved financial independence, living on my own and having a career I’ve relished.
There’s another problem with the Census criteria for adulthood: Many millennials might be making their life choices not out of convenience but necessity. Living at home because you want to be close to your parents is great; living at home because you can’t afford to pay student loans without doing that isn’t so great — but it doesn’t make you immature.
Ditto for those living at home because they can’t find a job or a good-enough paying job — possibly a consequence of higher minimum wages making it harder for young adults to score that vital first job.
On the relationships front, it’s one thing to forgo marriage because you’re determined to meet the right person in order to avoid divorce. It’s another matter if marriage is being avoided because our culture’s porn habits have made young adults less capable of intimacy, of the true vulnerability crucial to relationships — or because they’re determined to hold out, no matter how many years it takes to rack up the savings, to have a wedding all their social media “friends” will swoon over.
Likewise with children (a not-insignificant concern, given the declining US birth rate): If young adults are delaying because they’ve been scared by the outrageous standards and expectations fostered by our helicopter-parenting culture or by the intimidating cost projections of having kids that never seem to prominently include the fact that those costs per child can decline with more kids, thanks to bedroom sharing and hand-medowns, that’s a shame.
Yet ultimately, a new openness to what it means to be an adult could help liberate people to pursue their best lives. We all have different gifts and talents, leading to a variety of career and volunteering paths — and while marriage and raising children is wonderful, cultivating richer relationships with friends, extended family and, yes, one’s parents can bring their own joys.
Maybe the most “adult” realization of millennials is that it’s nonsense to measure maturity by these milestones.