Failure To Launch, featuring a trim and fit Matthew McConaughey and slim and curvy Sarah Jessica Parker, made Emerging Adulthood look cool: sexy. Emerging or postponed adulthood is the term used to describe an entire generation of humanity caught somewhere between the ages of 18 and 30(ish).
Emerging adults struggle with their journey into the world of adulthood. Apparently emerging or postponed adulthood is more of the norm than the exception these days.
Consider the following excerpt from a piece in the NY Times a few years ago:
“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.” (See, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22Adulthood-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0,)
Some conclude that postponed adulthood is a reality to be embraced.
It may be an anomaly we should resist.