I just read this not-particularly-interesting New York Times article about “20-somethings” that do not act like “adults”. The article fights the timing but not the content of the incredibly old-fashioned five milestones in the transition to adulthood:

1. completing school
2. leaving home
3. becoming financially independent
4. marrying
5. having a child

In Erik Erikson’s 8-stage model of psychosocial development, if you don’t figure out how to make a long-term romantic commitment by 34 and raise a child by 65, you are developmentally delayed, unable to ever move on to higher stages of development. As you age, your options become constrained and you’re supposed to enjoy this forced focus of your energies.

I think it’s not that “kids today” have inserted another stage, pushing back the timeline for developmental milestones, but rather that our society is dismantling the linear progression:

1. School is not completed in a single sprint; the knowledge economy requires “life-long learning”.
2. Dwellings with a maximum of two generations are only standard in the West. Many baby boomers are spending so much time caring for their parents that we have to come up with something more convenient for the next generation.
3. The creative class are supposed to have a changing portfolio of income sources. Education and career changes form a continuous cycle.
4. Given divorce rates, choosing a marriage partner is not an item to cross off a list but a recurring project.
5. Nuclear families suck.

Personally, I’m trying to engineer a life that’s more dynamic than the track laid down by previous generations. That being said, the fact that I could relate to an article about “20-somethings”, when I’m at the end of my 20s made me feel a little old.