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nwhikerI'd love debate on this one...
Someone recently said something like -paraphrased- "she's 20, so an adult, but I still think she needs me" about her daughter, and it got me thinking.
18 is damn young to be asked to be an adult.
I think things are different now.
Yes, people will talk about how, "back when", kids were working adult jobs at 16, and marrying and having families at 18 blah blah blah.
Our world has changed since then, though. Our expectations for our children have changed. We want them to go well in high school, to go on to college, to attain, in most cases, a middle class intellectually demanding position.
That 16 year old doing an adult's work? What was his schooling like? Did he graduate from high school, with the expectation of going to college? I'm not saying he was dumb, to be clear.
We except kids to be mature intellectually, to learn a hell of a lot during their high school years, but also mature like that 16 year old of yesteryear did, being given real life responsibilities.
Oh yeah, of course there are those who can do both, who can be both intellectually and "common-sensically" mature. Those aren't the norm, though. They're the exceptions, the farm boys who became surgeons, the rag-runners who made a fortune, the shoe-shiner who owns blah blah blah.
At 18 these days, kid's are usually just out of or finishing high school. They've had no real world experience, we should not expect them to. I'm not taking about delaying the legal age of adulthood, but about our expectations of what it actually should mean. I don't think it should mean that they "should" be able to be on their own at that age. If they can, great. If they can't... well, I don't think it's such a terrible thing, really. If they need a few more years to figure things out, with parents being a bit sheltering, I guess I don't see it as such a bad thing.
In this day and age, a job that could truly support you at 18 with just a high school diploma? Few and far between. With the cost of paying for college, working part time and going to college is an iffy proposal. I remember someone telling me, not long ago, that she expected her kids to get "jobs during the summer" to pay for their tuition. I hope she changes her mind because do you know any jobs available to 18 year olds that pay 10k in a summer? I don't.
But it's not just financial, it's emotional too. Maybe kids do "mature" later, but again, they're walking into a very different world, a very different society, and what they need to know to move into adult life is vastly different. If a kid still needs help and support at 20, 21? I think I'd be fine with that, because I think I'll have asked my children to learn different things when they were younger than was asked of other generations.
I've seen a lot, over the past years, blaming parents for being "helicopter parents", always hovering and preventing their kids from growing up (some do, not all by far), and kids for being "immature" well into their twenties. I don't see it as a fault thing at all, simply as a result of the differing expectations between generations.
Someone recently said something like -paraphrased- "she's 20, so an adult, but I still think she needs me" about her daughter, and it got me thinking.
18 is damn young to be asked to be an adult.
I think things are different now.
Yes, people will talk about how, "back when", kids were working adult jobs at 16, and marrying and having families at 18 blah blah blah.
Our world has changed since then, though. Our expectations for our children have changed. We want them to go well in high school, to go on to college, to attain, in most cases, a middle class intellectually demanding position.
That 16 year old doing an adult's work? What was his schooling like? Did he graduate from high school, with the expectation of going to college? I'm not saying he was dumb, to be clear.
We except kids to be mature intellectually, to learn a hell of a lot during their high school years, but also mature like that 16 year old of yesteryear did, being given real life responsibilities.
Oh yeah, of course there are those who can do both, who can be both intellectually and "common-sensically" mature. Those aren't the norm, though. They're the exceptions, the farm boys who became surgeons, the rag-runners who made a fortune, the shoe-shiner who owns blah blah blah.
At 18 these days, kid's are usually just out of or finishing high school. They've had no real world experience, we should not expect them to. I'm not taking about delaying the legal age of adulthood, but about our expectations of what it actually should mean. I don't think it should mean that they "should" be able to be on their own at that age. If they can, great. If they can't... well, I don't think it's such a terrible thing, really. If they need a few more years to figure things out, with parents being a bit sheltering, I guess I don't see it as such a bad thing.
In this day and age, a job that could truly support you at 18 with just a high school diploma? Few and far between. With the cost of paying for college, working part time and going to college is an iffy proposal. I remember someone telling me, not long ago, that she expected her kids to get "jobs during the summer" to pay for their tuition. I hope she changes her mind because do you know any jobs available to 18 year olds that pay 10k in a summer? I don't.
But it's not just financial, it's emotional too. Maybe kids do "mature" later, but again, they're walking into a very different world, a very different society, and what they need to know to move into adult life is vastly different. If a kid still needs help and support at 20, 21? I think I'd be fine with that, because I think I'll have asked my children to learn different things when they were younger than was asked of other generations.
I've seen a lot, over the past years, blaming parents for being "helicopter parents", always hovering and preventing their kids from growing up (some do, not all by far), and kids for being "immature" well into their twenties. I don't see it as a fault thing at all, simply as a result of the differing expectations between generations.
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Date: 2 Jul 2011 23:51 (UTC)But yeah, you hear a lot of older people bitch about how "in their day" blah blah blah. I hear it from my own spouse ALL the time, about how when he was this age blah blah blah. I always have to remind him that, um, he wasn't autistic, and um, he was pretty neglected and expected to do things wholly inappropriate for his age at that time :p. Does he really want his kids to have to live like that? Of course the answer is no, but he keeps forgetting that part :p.
Anyway, I fully expect to be supporting my kids into their 20s. I just hope I don't end up being the 75 year old woman walking through the grocery store with her 45 year old son who still lives at home :(.
Paula