So say he of the 35" lego in his house.

----

I keed, I keed, I didn't move out until I was married, why mess up a good thing? But I had a steady job and and MR2 - priorities, you know.

I was raised old school.

Hey, that's 37 inches of Lego, Sandy!

Seriously, though, it's in my house with my mortgage. The best part of growing up is knowing exactly when it's OK to act like a child.

Neener.

The Time piece asks, "Could growing up be harder than it used to be?"

Gee whiz, I dunno....I recently attended a holiday gathering where an 18 year old informed me of her plans to study in Europe for 6 months next year on her parents' dime. I don't mean this perjoratively; the 18 year old in question is a perfectly fine person. However, I silently contrasted this 18 year old's plans for her first European experience with the initial European experience of someone close to me, a person who wasn't present at the gathering for the first time in my memory.

That eighteen year old's first European experience was somewhat rustic, as walking across the continent clutching an M-1 Garand tends to be. It wasn't without excitement, however, like his first visit to German town, which featured being chased down the street by a Panzer tank. The only reason I know of these experiences is because he wrote them down just prior to his death. These memoirs are an elegy for too many other young men who he witnessed dying.

I am not a "greatest generation" fetishist; I have other people close to me who were in their 20s this year when they proved that today's young people are every bit as capable of extraordinary sacrifice as those who preceded them. For the vast majority of young people today, however, growing up is so much easier than it was for those that preceded them that it is barely worth mentioning. My older friend would have dearly loved to have grown up more slowly, and easier, outside an abattior.

Nope, I think growing up today is pretty damned easy for most.

Is it harder to grow up or are we closing a window of opportunity and once past it the urge to move up and out is less.

I got married at 22 (my husband was 21) and people thought we were young. Try making the suggestion today that a 20 year old has the maturity to make a life decision and people are going to be all over you. You'll get told about how you aren't the same person at 30 as you were at 20. For how long have we been pounded with the refrain "kids having kids" that equates 15 or 16 or 17 year olds with babies, as if they are the same, instead of the mothers being the age when, historically, women started their families.

How many times have you heard our soldiers in Iraq refered to as "girls and boys" or "those kids"? Hm?

I do have kids. The oldest two are 12 and 13. (Yes, my 12 year old daughter looks a whole lot older but it's not because she wears sexy clothes or make up, it's because she's taller than her mother and has a much better figure.) In any case, at 12 and 13 they are obsessed with growing up. If my son takes after my side of the family he may not do his 5 feet to 6 feet tall seemingly overnight trick until he's 16-17 but he wants to participate in whatever the grown ups are doing and talks all the time about when he gets his own apartment.

I could encourage this "we want to grow up" thing, or I could freak out because my daughter has boobs and insist, dammit, that 12 year olds aren't young ladies, they are children. When my son talks about what job he might have and getting room-mates to help pay rent I could be relentless in my reminders that he's a kid and shouldn't have to pay rent for a very long time.

They know better what they want out of their lives than most 18 year olds seem to. Why is that?

Why aren't the Bush girls in the Army instead of living at home?

BusterStronghart@Gmail.com

The Bush Twins are living at home? One has already become a teacher at a DC school, and the other is going to Africa to work with HIV/AIDS victims.

Neither job sounds much like summer camp.

My son, at 26, is living under our roof for a while. It is our roof because he signed the building we gave him as a wedding present back over to us after the divorce; he is living there while preparing for a major move west. When we sell the big house and move into that one, we will reimburse him for the new furnace and water heater he put in while the place was his.

He is just old enough that we were never forced to put a helmet on him. I believe this to be why he has never had an accident which did more than scrape paint off his car. In fact, he drove a jacked up bright red '70s Nova with an Edelbrock 350 under the hood for a year and only got one ticket.

P.S. Hi, Julie, it's been a while since we were both posting to the same forum.

I think this phenomenon you so entertainingly addressed might result partly because people do not seem to think about the stages of life in the same way they used to. It has resulted in blurring the distinctions, kids without real childhoods, young adults without maturity.

Years past, many extended families were closer, kids grew up knowing their grandparents as real people, talked with them and listened to their life experiences, observed the sometimes painful processes of aging and how it changes lives.

They saw their parents being responsible adults, and parents were (sometimes) people to be respected, while kids had their own life stage.

Now, many kids never interact meaningfully with grandparents and great-grandparents, have no reason to think about "gee, someday I will be old, but before then I have a job to do, like my own parents". If their own parents stay together, the kids are pushed to schedule their days with endless activities, appointments, and the quest for more stuff.

If the parents split up, the kids get the message that it's each for one's self.

In any case, they lack the personal exposure of progressing through life's stages, and the awareness that it's part of the deal.

First off, the only people who should be eating at an Olive Garden are people with little children.

We folks with kids go to chain restaurants precisely because our kids can scream/cry/whine and the other patrons won't complain - because they've got kids, too.

When we go out for "dinner," however, we don't take the kids - we want a quiet dinner, too. And we don't go to the Olive Garden.

.. there are too many frickin' kids there.

I have some friends like that. It is laziness (or a lack of courage) at some level, but a lot of it is also the coddling of kids by their boomer parents. Society also takes the blame, since we keep hiking up the age at which you're actually expected to take an ounce of responsibility for yourself.

The "age of responsibility" seems to have drifted from high school grad, to college grad, to now a few years after college. Pretty soon you'll be seen as precocious if you do anything for yourself before the age of 30.

I think the result is you see a lot more people kind of drifting around with no sense of purpose. Hedonism eventually gets old, and theres a fine line between "twixter" and Principal Skinner. A lot of these people are going to end up unhappy and alone and have no idea why (as several of my friends are).

I'm 26 and have a wife, 2 kids, and own my own home. I don't think I'm better than my live at home friends, but it's much harder to relate to them. And yeah it's real hard sometimes, but given the opportunity to exchange what I have for a paid off student loan, sports car, endless free time, and next to no responsibility...I'd still have to say no.

Of course, I never wore a bike helmet either. And most of the outdoor activities my friends and I did when we were young (neighborhood-wide hide and seek, battles with the old style ultra realistic looking plastic toy guns) would probably get us shot by the police these days.

Maybe the voting age should be going up, not down.

Interesting subject. Regarding playdates. I'm a stay-at-home mom of a baby and a three-year-old. Before I became a parent, I couldn't wait for the day when I could open the door to my house and let the kids out to roam and explore and have an adventure. Unfortunately, turns out all the other kids are in daycare. And if not there, they are solidly booked for dance class, music lessons, and The Little Gym, etc. Nowadays, good, wholesome, spontaneous adventure needs to be planned out way in advance.

BTW, the marketing begins early--all the Disney princess stuff is prominently displayed in glitzy fashion where ever Mom shops. Chuck E. Cheese? They're a proud supporter of Sesame Street, and they have excellent commercial advertising to prove it.

A lot of weird things have been going on the past couple of decades.

First, I don't know how, but somehow a lot of folks have gotten the idea that childhood and innocence and all that stuff is good and enjoyable, not a necessary evil to be endured until we can be left without a keeper without hurting ourselves.

My own parents had this attitude (I'm 30) - I shouldn't want to grow up "too fast", and they took it as a personal affront when I got my own place at age 18 and basically bribed me to spend the summer at "home" instead.

And why do we still tolerate taking off three months every year? If not for that, people could graduate high school at 14 or 15. People think that it's a biological imperitave that 14-15 year olds are helpless idiotic children, but they're helpless because they don't have any marketable skills, and they're irresponsible because responsible behavior doesn't shorten their sentences or show any other big payoff the way it does for older people.

The very idea that young people, and even young adults, should shoulder responsibility and be held accountable for their actions has become less commonly held over the years. Louise Woodward's judge reduced her sentence for killing a small child with her bare hands because he thought her age (19!) was a mitigatinig factor.

You and Ed make good points, and come very close to another one: there is no adult culture anymore (at least not readily accessible).

Symphonies are dying in many cities along with the greatest generation. Television, movies, popular music are all geared toward pre-teens to early twenty-somethings, or at least don't exclude them. Two of the most interesting movies of this year were Garden State and Napoleon Dynamite. I love Norah Jones and Allison Krauss, but they're not a culture on their own.

The closest thing we have on television is probably HGTV and the Food Network. Home Depot and Lowes may have race-car shopping carts, but there isn't much else there to appeal to kids (Nick-inspired paint colors notwithstanding); compare that with any other big-box retailer.

So while the marketers are encouraging the kids and twixters to get out and spend money, the grown ups are being encouraged to spend money on domesticity (a lot of money according to some HGTV shows), and then just stay home!

Here, here.

My girls are 5 and 6, and we don't do 'Bratz' in my house. That term, as I have explained to my kids, refers to kids I would rather not have around me, because they are rude, mouthy, and would tempt me to misdemeanor battery.

We have 'grown-up' and 'kid' areas, and tables, on holidays and at family gatherings. Chores are done because the kids don't pay rent (if they can fork over their $250/month share, they don't have to do the chores...fair, huh?), and, as I have told them, "I'm not your friend, I'm your dad."

They deal with me if they back-talk their mother, they get their mouth washed out with soap if they say things they shouldn't, and they are told the difference between needing something, and wanting something.

My dad was born in 1934, and that's how he was dealt with, and that's how I was dealt with. That's how my kids are dealt with, and they are good kids. They'll also be responsible for their college tuition....either scholarship or they'll work.....we'll pay for the books.

All good points... but still not quite getting to the deeper root of the matter, in my mind.

These points still feel ethereal to me... as if they are addressing symptoms rather than causes.

After reading the comment from Julie, here… Ah, I think... now this feels like it's is getting close. Add into the mix, a book that I've been reading... "Home Alone America" by Mary Eberstadt, which also seems to be an attempt to wrestle with the difficulty of getting the intellect around the problem of "kids today."

I look at all of this... the book, the article, the discussion... and it seems to me to have a very real and deep common thread. It appears to me to be a problem of Soul.

And I don't mean in the Church-going, Christian sense, although that might be a useful framework for some folks to get a handle on the meaning. I mean in the sense of a feeling of my personal alignment in energy with my own purposes, my own reasons for being here. I mean that missing ingredient in so many families, that missing commitment to a deeper sense of "who I am."

I have so many examples in my personal life... you probably do too... the people who can always find their reason for being in a situation or a life... and the people who can't. What is it that makes the ones who can... different? Is it the "vision thing"? Is it faith? Is it just a deep-down knowing, unforgotten through all the trials and tribulations of life? I think that's the closest to "the truth."

I don't think the problem has to do with pushing them around Home Depot in a race-car pushcart (or,really, any young-child activity). Parents are rightfully protective of their young children now-a-days (my dad used to let me sit by the front door of stores while he shopped - can't do that today.) I think it has to do with the permanent state of young-adult status we give to 18-25 year olds. I don't understand WHY any of them would want to live at home - I wanted my own place ASAP. These parents must be MUCH more allowing and forgiving than mine were. I certainly wasn't a hellion, but a desire to have my OWN kitchen counter ... and have complete control of my life (I can set the thermostat WHEREVER the heck I wanted to) was a really strong drive. Before I had a new car, before I had the perfect wardrobe etc, etc. Young adults are spoiled.

You are 100% correct...None of my 20-something kids are married yet because they are all still in school at various levels, but they all agree that today's kids are being raised to be pansies. They ain't gonna do that to their kids.

I lived with my parents all through college (basically because it saved money) and didn't leave home until I went out of state to go to graduate school. There are times I think that it was a mistake and that I would've been better off going off on my own at 18......and there are other times I think it was probably a good thing I avoided on campus life in the mid-80's.

Regarding raising the voting age- only if you raise the draft age right along with it. If you're old enough to die for this country, you're old enough to have a say in who runs it.

Ask some of today's 12-18 year olds what chores or responsibilities they have around the house. Most will have none. Ask those that do have chores if they are Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts.

Sit down to at least one meal a day with the entire family. Talk about your day while you eat. Learn what each of your family members is doing. Say I love you once a day to each. Never go to bed angry or not knowing where everyone is. Let the kids make suggestions about where to go on vacation, what sports or activities they want to take part in (but don't let them quit when it gets too hard--they made a commitment to the group), what to have for dinner, anything that they will participate in.

Responsibility is the key. Give it to them and then make sure they follow through.

Your kids will be whiny little brats in restaurants and movie theatres if you let them-and there aren't many movies which the little ones should be exposed to in the first place. If people can't control their toddlers, what happens when the kids turn teen? The "good ones" are tough enough to handle!

A few years ago, the "problem" with the aging children living at home was supposed to be that they expected the same high standard of living they grew up with...Imagine having to live in a less-than-safe neighborhood or have actual roomates to split the costs! Maybe the problem on the part of the parents who can't seem to get their house cleaned out , is that they still haven't figured out how to say "no" to their hulking darlings.

(...I too, am surprised that we greying ones ever survived the playgrounds and bicycles of our youths---but I don't knock seat-belts. My parents paid to have them put into our cars in the early 60's- and they saved our family's life when we went over a 20 foot cliff after a blowout...)

It can't possibly have anything to do with the soaring housing prices and soft job market, can it? No, it's all the youngster's fault and their negligent parents. So much more fun to tut-tut and make up stupid journalistic social theories than actually think.

How's your pal David Brooks doing?

I am 20 years old... And while this article should completely offend me, I can't deny that it's true. I see it every day in my bratty, spoiled, immature friends who still depend on Mommy and Daddy to pay for their bad habits and childish behavior (with little or no responsiblity to accompany the monthly allowances and payments). Many have no jobs, while I've been employed since I was 16. I currently work 2 jobs and am looking to fit a third into my schedule to pay for school, rent, utilities, everything. Often we're told college is the time to "have fun" and "enjoy youth," but at the same time it's a test to see if your child will sink or swim when left in the pool alone. Birds shove thier babies out of the nest knowing that if they didn't learn what they had been trying to teach them, the dog below could eat them... but they still shove them. Life's not all having fun and enjoying youth... it's hard and you have to work for what you have. Learn that now, or learn that when (God forbid) your parents die and you're left to figure out what the world is like without a safety net.

Gee? At my age, 70, I usually have well thought out opinions and reactions on practically everything. Few things take me by surprise, but I find a lot of conflicting thoughts and emotions running through me about this topic.

Right off the bat -- the Olive Garden and restaurants of that genre. There will be kids there, so if that bothers you, go to a loud sports bar or somewhere a lot more expensive and you can bet there won't be many kids there.

Some of us grandparent types actually like to go where there are children behaving like children (not brats). It's a lot more entertaining than loud "music" and yuppies trying to impress each other with their wit and brilliance bragging about getting the latest toys or trying to pick each other up*. It's cute when the people are in the their 20's or even 30's -- older than that, it's pathetic however, at my age, it's back to cute again. Not that I want to try it.

*Sorry. I don't know the au currant language.

I have to think about why people don't want to grow up. It's probably because they don't need to and there's no stigma to working the system.

They get all the rewards, but none of the responsibilities of adulthood. Mom and dad take care of the house, pay for everything and kids can pick and choose those benefits of living at home that suit them like mom doing the laundry and dad changing the oil in the car.

Not so when I was a kid, everything I wanted was reserved for "when I grow up." Naturally, I couldn't wait. In my first generation middle European family, girls didn't go away to school, so I had to make do with a commuting college. I didn't really grow up until I got married. My husband and I were both 20 when we got married in June right after graduation. Our 21st birthdays weren't until the fall. When I think of it now, it really does boggle my mind and what made us think we could be parents at 23 is further mind boggling. I majored in math and my husband is a CPA. What did we know about kids? As it turned out, not much, but we figured it out as we went along. After my daughter had her daughter, she asked me how I always knew what to do when they were growing up. I was stunned. I thought they figured out long ago that we were just winging it.

My own kids went away to school at 18. They thought they were grown up, but of course they weren't. However, by the time they were graduated at 21, they were almost there. They have all done well and are parents of the most beautiful, brilliant and talented (and well behaved) kids the universe has ever known. Go figure. Just the luck of the draw.

Our oldest grandchild is only 13, so we won't know how they turn our for quite a while. Their childhoods are totally different from their parents or their grandparents. Main difference, the fathers are a big presence in their children's lives. They don't help mom like my husband did, they are the dad part of the parental team and totally involved with everything. It's absolutely wonderful. The kids are (or were) in day care and private schools, have lessons of every variety, trips, etc and there's no lack of love and affection all round. They seem to be thriving and are the light of their grandparent's eyes. Time will tell how it all turns out.

Stephen -- I dare you to show this to your mother. She must be dropping hints about not getting any younger (her, not you) about now.

You might be obscurely gladdened to know that this rant was directly responsible for my daughter (age 3 years 2 months, and way cuter and smarter than yours) being assigned her first regular chore. She now has to set the table, which is trickier than it sounds if you have to get on tiptoes to see the silverware.

Other possible root causes to consider:
smaller family sizes, resulting in more parental attention per kid and fewer close examples of older children/teens.
greater returns to education: 30% of US adults now go to college, up from something like 5% pre-WW2, and that's largely because college really is worthwhile from an ROI perspective. Grad school and post-graduate enrollments are up even more, albeit from a smaller base, for the same reason. Longer times in the comforting arms of educational institutions are not likely to encourage personal responsibility, for all their other personal and societal benefits.
greater specialization in adult jobs: My grandfathers were sharecroppers and factory workers, who could easily show and explain their work to their children in a long afternoon. My dad was a public high school math teacher, I saw his job being done every day, and learned the math at his knee. I'm a virtual-VP-levelled computer programmer at a Fortune 500 company, doing things I can barely explain to my graduate-degreed wife, let alone my daughter. Her introduction to the world of work is unlikely to be natural, no matter how I try.
better toys: My daughter just mastered her handheld DVD player with LCD screen, so that she can watch her movies on her own (and I don't want to think about how many movies she has). Such a device was literally unimaginable when I was her age, and now they cost about as much as I spend on a fine dinner and a couple of bottles. Hell, I'd stay a child as long as I could too if the accessories were that good. (Plus, hey, Lego Star Destroyers, ya know.)

We have really extended adolescence into our twenties, which isn't a suprise when you think about it. In less than a century, the average lifespan extended over 30 years. It's no longer necessary for the continuation of the human race for people to procreate before they turn 20. So we've extended the education process, which often times keeps us, if not completely dependent, then at least somewhat dependent on our families. I know that getting a college education was important for me because of the importance my parents put on it. They supported me through it, while still encourage me to be independent. It's a tough balance to find, but I think they did a pretty good job.

That being said, does it excuse those of the twenties age group that are useless slackers? No. But there will always be people like Matthew McConaughey's character in Dazed and Confused. The old guy at the club.

I lived at home in between semesters at college and about a year after while I found non temporary work. I moved out soon after I got a regular job. My parents would have let me live there longer, but I didn't live off them. There's a difference, I think, between parents who help and support their children, and parents who let their kids run their lives.

And I never wore a helmet as a kid, and according to my parents, sang and danced to "American Pie" standing on the backseat of the Chevy Covair at the age of two. I'm still here, and I've never been in a major accident. Someday, if I have kids, they'll be belted in but still encouraged to sing.

Wow. . . I'm 14 and I agree with everything you said. Does that make me a preemature old fogey?

"It can't possibly have anything to do with the soaring housing prices and soft job market, can it?"

Mortgage rates are at 40 year lows and the unemployment rate is less than 5.5%. Housing construction is a booming industry.

So to answer your question, no, not really.

No need to worry, Foster...But do keep an eye on the mail-your AARP card should be arriving soon (part of their new "Early Admissions Program"!)

Cassy,

actually, birds don't shove the fledglings out of the nest. The adults show the juveniles how to fly before encouraging them to do it with supervision.

Humans could take a lesson: Provide good examples and support while encouraging independence.

"We have really extended adolescence into our twenties, which isn't a suprise when you think about it. In less than a century, the average lifespan extended over 30 years. It's no longer necessary for the continuation of the human race for people to procreate before they turn 20. So we've extended the education process, which often times keeps us, if not completely dependent, then at least somewhat dependent on our families."

Just because we have a few more years tacked on to the back end doesn't mean that we should have them taken away again at the front end.

Wouldn't a more reasonable accomodation to the fact that more education is useful be the elimination of summer breaks all through elementary, middle, and high school, so that people can begin college earlier rather than finish it later?

As it is, high school takes up several of our prime childbearing years, and college takes even more. If there's a society that gets everyone to put off childbearing for that long, I've never heard of it. The sooner that people get through their education, the lower the likelihood of the process being derailed by a pregnancy.

(And there's no law of nature that says parents have to keep supporting their adult children through college anyway...)

This topic's been fascinating me since I looked at my 13-year old brother, 24 years my junior, and saw how different his life is with older, affluent parents than as the child of a working, single mom in the seventies.

The link I provided is to Psychology Today's article about raising a "nation of wimps" and the delayed maturity phenomenon.

Like Ed Driscoll, I couldn't wait to be cool and adult and able to call my own shots. I wanted to understand what the adults said and be allowed to contribute to the conversation. At 9, I could speak up if I wanted, but it was made clear I wasn't adding a lot of substance. I was encouraged to listen and learn. Today, I'd be celebrated for my bravery in voicing my emotional truth not sent to a history book to correct my ignorance.

My brother has no chores to speak of and doesn't know the basics of self-care and householding that I'd mastered by his age. He has an excess of material wealth as measured by toys, gadgets, and cash, but I wouldn't trust him to run an errand. He's smart, but missing the savvy and- dare I say- "scrappiness" that I used to expect from any 13 year-old, and not just one with street smarts.

When the parental universe revolves around kids: their entertainment, acquisitions, and transport to social obligations, there isn't much incentive to grow up and move out. I remember when I felt more like a servant to my parents than the other way around. I also know that older parents tend to be more permissive by inclination and energy. However I think a big culprit is that, in modern culture and education, ESTEEM is more important than achievement. See the PT article for more on this particular car in the train wreck.

I worry, because of the delicate flowers that I meet, that this group of kids will have serious catch-up to learn the skills and resilience necessary to enjoy self-sufficiency.

So- I'm not as savvy as I thought.

Here's the link
http://cms.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20041112-000010.html

Well, I can't say I identify with anyone who would willingly choose to live with their parents after either their 18th birthday or their high school graduation, whichever happens to come first. (I'll make some allowance for a frugal desire to save money on rent during college if attending college close enough to make it an option...although frankly my share of my first apartment's rent was less money than my mother had been charging me ever since I got my first job at 14.)

But even though I spent most of my 20s impoverished by $80,000 and change in student loan debt and terrified by the mobster-esque tactics of the collection agencies the university hired to come after me for it, it never even occurred to me to move back in with my mother. Pushing my career forward and moving on with my own life to the best of my ability was simply what I had to do. To do otherwise would have constituted an admission of failure, and meant that the only honorable course would be to kill myself.

Now, in retrospect, I sometimes wish I were one of the people who have a relationship with their parents so painless that they can contemplate continuing to live with them even when they are no longer required by law (or choice-denying poverty) to do so.

But the fact remains that, at 29, I'm a more functional person than a lot of my peers, because I have more experience in the real world than they do. And I do feel a bit sorry for people who hit 30 (or 25, or 22, or 18 for that matter) still unaccustomed to pulling their own weight. It must be an awful shock, and I can only imagine it'd get worse as you went up the age scale.

Just to clarify something about my post above. We gave our son a two unit property, bought out of the windfall we got moving where housing prices were much lower than where we'd sold. We dumped it in his lap, and other than helping him install the new water heater, and snowblowing his sidewalk along with mine, it was all his to deal with; leaky roof, bad tenants and all.

I am 24 years old and just getting started on my Masters. My parents not only pay my tuition, they pay for my apartment, my books, my health insurance and any emergencies that might come up. Am I incredibly lucky? You betcha. Without their support I would not be able to get the education I have, or live anywhere near as comfortably as I do (I live in a nice studio apartment with my cat).
But am I spoiled? Bratty? Immature?
...I don't really think so.
I am oftentimes uncomfortable, even ashamed with how much my parents give me. I have asked them on several occasions to let me take over most (if not all) of these expenses. They have refused. They tell me that I'll pay them back by sending my own children to school. They don't want their grandchildren to be worried about post-graduate debt.
I am also responsible for buying my parents a house, "someplace nice and swanky" to live after they retire. "With a pool! That we don't have to clean!"
I consider that to be a pretty good deal.
Please don't assume that all twenty-somethings who are supported by their parents are innately lazy people. Some of us are working on interest.

I think it has a lot to do with economics. After the Depression and WWII it hasn't been really Bad anymore. Poor people don't spoil their children in material ways, for one, but the outlook on life has always been good for us (I'm 33 but this applies to anyone under 50). Then the sixties came along and we learned that the individual is more important than the community. So now we're egocentrics - even though some of us are still decent, classical music loving, educated ones.

Over here in the Netherlands the average woman has her first child when she's 29, by the way. There's a lot to be said for taking the time to mature and to learn to take care of yourself behore you try and raise a kid, imho.

Gee - degrees of separation... my Dad is an MMA alum.

Panzer Tank is one of my pet peeves in the Department of Redundancy Department. (Nothing personal Will - my crusade, my cross to bear, Panzer means "tank" in German)

Sigh. "Why aren't the Bush Twins in the Army?" Um, because they don't want to be? Because there's nothing to compel them to be? Could you at least produce a sequitur? And, if they were, especially in the *current* operational environment, they wouldn't be in Iraq or Afghanistan because of the kidnap/propaganda coup potential in the current kind of war. This ain't WWII, where Roosevelt's son, a volunteer, did serve at the sharp end - it's a different kind of war for different kinds of reasons (regardless of what you think of it).

Because my father has a price on his head from his activities in Korea during the Korean War (only criminal in Chinese eyes because they were so successful) I, during my 24 years in the Army, could only be assigned to Korea as a true volunteer. Go find something other than a strawman to stick your rhetorical bayonet in.

As for my 19 year old son - he's never had a job (he's a slacker, I admit it) but in exchange, he was an honor student.

Now that he's in college, and last semester lost his standing in the honors business, so too did he lose most of his subsidy. He'll be working this summer, and moving out of the dorm (thought that's his choice there). Our goal for his education was the same as our parents gave us - out of college with no student loan debt.

The deal for him was - do the work, get the scholarship money, and the money we have will stretch to help support the Master's he'll eventually want/need.

His choice has been to take the easy route, and be too busy (and now has damaged his GPA enough to make it hard even if he did) to apply for scholarships, etc. So, if he wants a Master's, he's going to have to pay for it.

He's a work in progress... but then even though I'm a retired soldier, my parents still look upon me as a work in progress...

Let's not get too worked up about bicycle helmets. Bicycle deaths dropped from 1,003 in 1975 to 660 in 2002. More importantly, in 1975, 68% of bicycle deaths involved children 15 or younger, whereas in 2002, only 24% did. Helmets are a good thing.

http://www.bhsi.org/stats.htm

I'm 21 and will be graduating college in may ... and i am working my ass off to get a job before i graduate because the idea of moving back into my parents' house actually makes me ILL.

I know the type of which you speak (many of my high school friends went to college locally so that they have not and will not move out of their parents' homes for a long time to come) ... but i can't understand them. and i certainly don't want to be like them.

American Mother-

I haven't recieved the AARP card yet, but i have discovered a sudden fondness for Walter Brennan. . .

I think that while Twixter could be used to describe a certain kind of person, I really don't think it is all that widespread. Most parent will be sick and tired of their kids living at home at some point and will start charging them rent to "encourage" them to move on with their lives.

While slacking and mooching could be taken to extremes, I don't think that it is necessarily bad that young adults have a chance to move back in with their parents for a few years to try to find themselves. Of course the child should at that point have to pay rent and share responsibilities for maintaining the house.

These kids that sort of live off their parents into their 20's are the exception and not the rule. I'm 21 and most of my friends from high school might be living at home but they're completely on their own for everything including: car payments, insurance, tuition, as well as any other kind of spending money. It is hard if not nearly impossible to try to go to school taking 8-16 units as well as working to completely support yourself. There is no doubt in my mind that my friends who still live at home but work and go to school, know the value of money and have a lot of maturity, even though they still might not hav their own place.

Which way is better, having the semi-spolied child or one who is tough as nails and got thrown to the wolves when he was 18, I don't know. My best friend got kicked out of his house the summer after high school graduation and had to live on his own from then on. He never went to colllege, and ended up in an abusive relationship for 2 years (Yes it can happen to men also) Could he have better options, like school, in life had he not gotten kicked out, I think so.

The complete opposite of him is actually myself. I suppose I could almost be a Twixter in training. I've never actually had to hold a job, except for extra money. Mother has been generous enough to cover all my expenses for college as long as I keep up my good grades. She's even going to be paying for my grad school, which could last another 2 years. But 5 years from now which way ends up being right, my friend who has had to learn the hard way about what real life was like and coping with it, or myself who got coddled, but who'll have an MBA? I really don't know.

On another point, this phenomenon has been happening in Japan for a long time. I wish I had a link to a really good article I read a while ago but I don't, it was in USA Today. Pretty much Japan has had Twixters for the last 20 years or so, a lot longer than the US actually. There concern was what was happening to the Twixters after their parents died. It was good stuff

I dunno.. personally, I think a lot of the problems we are seeing with "young people" (admittedly, my generation) is a result of allowing strangers to raise our children. A very important thing happened around the time all these kids were born - the feminist movement. Suddenly mothers were at work, and Johnny was left at the daycare center all day.

We cannot be surprised that children are growing up without values and morals, considering no one is teaching them any. They are dropped off at a storage facility (aka a chain daycare) and then picked up at the end of the day. It's not surprising parents aren't encouraging their children to grow-up; they are missing out on their childrens' childhood by leaving them for 9/10 hours out of the day.

Sorry.. didn't phrase this right - "A very important thing happened around the time all these kids were born - the feminist movement." Should have been 'A very important thing happened when these kids' parents were growing up - the feminist movement.'

Why haven't I gotten married and started a family? It's because I can't AFFORD it.

This year marks a new even in my life. Continual employment for one whole year! Wow! Ok, it's not regular job, it's a contracting assignment.

As for the previous poster who said College is worth it in the long run. No, it isn't. It's worth it if you went to college in the 50s, even the 70s. But now? The sheer amount of college grads in the market has devalued it. If I had simply found a job and went to work, I wouldn't have wasted years of my life getting that useless piece of paper. Probably would of been married with a house by now.

1st year making over 25k and I'm in my early 30s. Time to break out the beer.

I can't see what the big deal is about this issue. When it comes to waiting until you are a bit older to get married and have children, all the studies show that they tend to do better in the long run.
When it comes to getting started in their career, they do have some problems, but a lot of people do. Not to be crass but, we do need waiters and waitresses don't we? I waited tables when I was in my twenties, I turned out all right.
A lot of these kids probably got some pretty bad advice when they were choosing majors and careers, probably coming from hippie baby boomers, such as "a broad liberal arts education will always be valuable" or "you really should go into __________ if that is your passion" even though it may be a dying profession or one that very few actually are successful in like film-making. And truly, there are so many people with bachelors degrees, it is almost like having a high school diploma. Heck, I'm a doctor, but I found out how much plumbers made, and I think I would be doing much better financially if I had gone to plumbing school.
As to the true loafers, if they are in their mid-20s and still being supported by their parents, it is the parents responsibility to cut the umbilical cord. I think a lot of parents have to get used to the idea that their children may never be as financially successfully as they were or are themselves. Once the kid realizes he has to support him/herself, I betcha they'll change.
I'm going to end with this... The way things are going with Bush as President, there is a good chance a lot of these kids will find a good hard-working job...once they are drafted. Believe me, they'll grow up right quick!
Bob, aka Navy Doc