What Is It About 20-Somethings?

**KelJu** · 09-14-2010, 03:12 PM

I saw this posted over at somethingawful. The New York Times can suck my cock. If you are in your 20s, you probably don't measure up to their so called standard of adulthood.

This question pops up everywhere, underlying concerns about “failure to launch” and “boomerang kids.” Two new sitcoms feature grown children moving back in with their parents — “$#*! My Dad Says,” starring William Shatner as a divorced curmudgeon whose 20-something son can’t make it on his own as a blogger, and “Big Lake,” in which a financial whiz kid loses his Wall Street job and moves back home to rural Pennsylvania. A cover of The New Yorker last spring picked up on the zeitgeist: a young man hangs up his new Ph.D. in his boyhood bedroom, the cardboard box at his feet signaling his plans to move back home now that he’s officially overqualified for a job. In the doorway stand his parents, their expressions a mix of resignation, worry, annoyance and perplexity: how exactly did this happen?

It’s happening all over, in all sorts of families, not just young people moving back home but also young people taking longer to reach adulthood overall. It’s a development that predates the current economic doldrums, and no one knows yet what the impact will be — on the prospects of the young men and women; on the parents on whom so many of them depend; on society, built on the expectation of an orderly progression in which kids finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and eventually retire to live on pensions supported by the next crop of kids who finish school, grow up, start careers, make a family and on and on. The traditional cycle seems to have gone off course, as young people remain un*tethered to romantic partners or to permanent homes, going back to school for lack of better options, traveling, avoiding commitments, competing ferociously for unpaid internships or temporary (and often grueling) Teach for America jobs, forestalling the beginning of adult life.

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. They go through an average of seven jobs in their 20s, more job changes than in any other stretch. Two-thirds spend at least some time living with a romantic partner without being married. And marriage occurs later than ever. 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.

We’re in the thick of what one sociologist calls “the changing timetable for adulthood.” Sociologists traditionally define the “transition to adulthood” as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so. A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early ’70s.

Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/ma...me&ref=general

**maniclion** · 09-14-2010, 04:27 PM

I blame the baby boomers, they refuse to retire or they bounced around job to job until their 40's and so they can't retire or they retire from one job and go someplace else because they failed to save money....I have examples of all three right here where I work....They are making too much money so I am underpaid yet I work as hard as they do if I didn't have a steady relationship and own our home I wouldn't be able to survive, I'd be like the rest of friends my age living with 3 or 4 room mates or heading home to live with my mom....probably not because I am resourceful but not many are like me they have fallback plans, I plan alternatives.....

**Dark Geared God** · 09-14-2010, 05:28 PM

a friend of mine much older than me her son who is a few years younger than me still lives with her and the husband.. the kid is 36 WTF is that
and he has no job

**KelJu** · 09-14-2010, 06:34 PM

I appreciate my mom and dad providing for me until I was 17 and all, but fuck living with them again. I'd rather be homeless. One of the reasons I have done as well, and in most situations, better than my friends is because going back home isn't an option.

But, that isn't the point of my post. Fuck the douchebag who wrote that article. As if I am suppose to live up to the traditions of a failure generation like the baby boomers. The housing crisis, yeah, do I need to say more? Fuck it, I will say more. The delusion that your suppose to get married, have snot nose little brats, and get a mortgage that you will be paying off most of your life is huge fucking reason why the US is in the mess it's in. "Because I'm suppose to" is the dumbest reason do do something. Sit down and think about it. If it isn't something you truly want for reasons that are your own, DON'T DO IT!

I don't want a house and property, or at least not yet. I don't want to be financially bonded to a fucking piece of dirt. I don't want to get married, because I don't want to be financially bonded to a person who at any moment might turn into an asshole. I went to college because I was suppose to, and I saw how that wasn't much more than a money making institution that printed paper with my name on it for 100,000 a pop.

Oh yeah, and by the way. If you are a baby boomer that thinks my generation isn't living up to your expectations, FUCK YOU! You're the failure, we are the product. Old people piss me off! They are lazy, fat, and totally complacent with the mess they made of of what was the most prosperous of times a nation could ever hope for.

**vortrit** · 09-14-2010, 06:41 PM

Originally Posted by KelJu

I appreciate my mom and dad providing for me until I was 17 and all, but fuck living with them again. I'd rather be homeless. One of the reasons I have done as well, and in most situations, better than my friends is because going back home isn't an option.

But, that isn't the point of my post. Fuck the douchebag who wrote that article. As if I am suppose to live up to the traditions of a failure generation like the baby boomers. The housing crisis, yeah, do I need to say more? Fuck it, I will say more. The delusion that your suppose to get married, have snot nose little brats, and get a mortgage that you will be paying off most of your life is huge fucking reason why the US is in the mess it's in. "Because I'm suppose to" is the dumbest reason do do something. Sit down and think about it. If it isn't something you truly want for reasons that are your own, DON'T DO IT!

I don't want a house and property, or at least not yet. I don't want to be financially bonded to a fucking piece of dirt. I don't want to get married, because I don't want to be financially bonded to a person who at any moment might turn into an asshole. I went to college because I was suppose to, and I saw how that wasn't much more than a money making institution that printed paper with my name on it for 100,000 a pop.

Oh yeah, and by the way. If you are a baby boomer that thinks my generation isn't living up to your expectations, FUCK YOU! You're the failure, we are the product. Old people piss me off! They are lazy, fat, and totally complacent with the mess they made of of what was the most prosperous of times a nation could ever hope for.

Word!

**LAM** · 09-14-2010, 07:25 PM

Originally Posted by The Situation

a friend of mine much older than me her son who is a few years younger than me still lives with her and the husband.. the kid is 36 WTF is that
and he has no job

no doubt she probably coddled her child for too long and now he does not have the life skills to function on his own. one of my friends one had a child at 18 and has coddled her son so bad that now in 7th grade he doesn't even "know" how to comb his own hair. at this rate the poor kid isn't going to have a snowballs chance in hell "making" it in society in the US when he graduates HS which he probably won't.

IMO...there are many "adults" in the US that have/had children that should not have. Basically if the parent can barely make it and children model themselves after the parent(s), what chance does the child have at success?

**Dark Geared God** · 09-14-2010, 07:37 PM

Originally Posted by LAM

no doubt she probably coddled her child for too long and now he does not have the life skills to function on his own. one of my friends one had a child at 18 and has coddled her son so bad that now in 7th grade he doesn't even "know" how to comb his own hair. at this rate the poor kid isn't going to have a snowballs chance in hell "making" it in society in the US when he graduates HS which he probably won't.

IMO...there are many "adults" in the US that have/had children that should not have. Basically if the parent can barely make it and children model themselves after the parent(s), what chance does the child have at success?

the funny thing is he want everone to feel sorry for him because his wife left him image that a guy who plays xbox all day

**Zaphod** · 09-14-2010, 07:45 PM

Parents are to blame for most of it. When at university, working in the cafeteria, you wouldn't believe how many kids never had a job until they worked in the cafeteria. Little Buffy and Junior never had to work to put gas in their car let alone BUY the car and insure it. Kids moving back home or never leaving home was put into motion a long time ago. Kids are too coddled.

**OfficerFarva** · 09-14-2010, 10:23 PM

That article is a joke.. I wish I paid the equivalent of what they did in the seventies for University instead of what we have to pay now. I'd probably have a house paid off too if that were the case. And fuck getting married before 30 let alone having kids before than. I don't consider those milestones, more like mistakes or getting tied down to a gold digger.

**maniclion** · 09-15-2010, 01:09 PM

Originally Posted by KelJu

I appreciate my mom and dad providing for me until I was 17 and all, but fuck living with them again. I'd rather be homeless. One of the reasons I have done as well, and in most situations, better than my friends is because going back home isn't an option.

But, that isn't the point of my post. Fuck the douchebag who wrote that article. As if I am suppose to live up to the traditions of a failure generation like the baby boomers. The housing crisis, yeah, do I need to say more? Fuck it, I will say more. The delusion that your suppose to get married, have snot nose little brats, and get a mortgage that you will be paying off most of your life is huge fucking reason why the US is in the mess it's in. "Because I'm suppose to" is the dumbest reason do do something. Sit down and think about it. If it isn't something you truly want for reasons that are your own, DON'T DO IT!

I don't want a house and property, or at least not yet. I don't want to be financially bonded to a fucking piece of dirt. I don't want to get married, because I don't want to be financially bonded to a person who at any moment might turn into an asshole. I went to college because I was suppose to, and I saw how that wasn't much more than a money making institution that printed paper with my name on it for 100,000 a pop.

Oh yeah, and by the way. If you are a baby boomer that thinks my generation isn't living up to your expectations, FUCK YOU! You're the failure, we are the product. Old people piss me off! They are lazy, fat, and totally complacent with the mess they made of of what was the most prosperous of times a nation could ever hope for.

Plus how many of those baby boomers met all of this articles conditions for "adulthood" and then pissed them all away, does that factor into this equation? Most people I know over 55 have been married and divorced more than once, had children in each of those failed marriages and now have no money because they squandered it....

**TheGreatSatan** · 09-15-2010, 02:15 PM

The day after I graduated High School I was out and better for it!

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