Half a century ago, it might have been normal to graduate from college (or not), marry in your lower 20s, have a kid, settle down at a nice firm, put in your 40 years and clock out with a good-looking pension. But that’s not the world we live in. Horizontal mobility, part-time projects, rapidly changing jobs: this is the new normal. Maybe it’s because we’ve been hopelessly coddled and our brains, with their flaccid synapses, have been massaged into thinking we could land our dream job at 23. Or! Maybe it’s because the world changed, and it doesn’t make sense to start a family at 24 in the shadow of $15,000 in debt with a thimbleful of jobs that don’t provide health care or the promise of stability.
Henig’s lengthy piece is impressive in its scope of developmental psychology and in its sensitivity to the question of whether 20-somethings need more help than we thought. Her concern is noted, and appreciated. But there are cultural and economic reasons why 20-somethings aren’t growing up that have nothing to do with the pruning of our synapses. When people ask what’s the matter with my generation, part of me wants to say: Have you seen the economy you created? What’s the matter with yours?
What’s REALLY the matter with 20 somethings - The Atlantic (via afghanibanani) (via pearlsbeforeswine) (via mittenstategirl)
Try $50,000 in debt. But otherwise, yes. And it really pisses me off. Particularly that I most likely WON’T be able to start a family when I want to. Of course I never put my life into time constraints, things will happen when it is best to happen, but I would certainly PREFER to start trying to have kids when I am about 28. Maybe some people think this is too young, but I would like to have more than one child, and I don’t want to be 35 and having my second kid. I just don’t. I’d like to be young, able bodied, and around for as much of their lives as I can be. Now if the choice came down to having kids at 35 and not having kids at all, no question, I would totally wait and have them at 35. But it pisses me off that I owe 50,000 in student loans, which with interest over my lifetime will probably be more than 100,000 that I end up paying back, and I make 30,000 a year as a receptionist. There are people here who didn’t go to college and make the same (or more) than I do. I don’t begrudge them that, because I don’t really think college education and studying theory makes anyone more qualified to actually DO a job, but it pisses me off that I could have been doing the same thing since I was 18, saved 50k, probably saved for a house by now, and be starting my family. Instead I am moving to my third apartment in so many years, living paycheck to paycheck and realizing that even though I love and am committed to my boyfriend, realistically we probably won’t even be able to afford to get married for another three years, if that. At that point, we will have been together 7 yrs.
The only thing that keeps me from spiraling into absolute bitterness IS that I have Greg in my life, for which I am eternally grateful, because if we’re ever down and out in the poor house, we will be laughing about it together.
