I haven’t been able to read every single post, but did anyone suggest the possibility that, because of less employment opportunities, young adults have been obliged to stay in school longer, therefore postponing their entry in society as contributing citizen? How can one be expected to get married and have kids if without any financial revenues? Where is the place for young adults in a society where parents (baby-boomers) are largely occupying all the spheres? Is it possible that young adults have been marginalised through unemployment, and are reacting accordingly?

(sorry for the English, I am French).

Louise

2) i think the idea of kidults is just as bad as the idea of thinking that your teen years are the time where you can party and not think about life too much and have fun. i know a lot of people like that……. which brings us to question 3……

3) yes i do know some. i know 3. they are my stepsisters. my second oldest (my oldest stepsister is the opposite of them) is roughly 24 and has two children. one of them is roughly 2 and the other is 8. she doesn’t have a job or a house. she is at the bad side of a divorce. and she has absolutly no money. she smokes i think she drinks too. then there is my 2nd youngest. she just turned roughly 22 yesterday. and she is just like her older sister. although she did quit smoking, she has no job, lives with various people, and has no money. she steals money and once she signed a contract that she could not keep so we (me my mom and my stepdad) had to pay 12000 dollars to keep her out of jail. that was about 2 years ago. and we gave her 900 dolars to rent an apratment. she will never pay that back. and my stepdad just keeps giving it to them! my youngest stepsister just turned 19 yesterday too. she does not have a job she is like my 2nd youngest stepsister. she has no where to live. she has no job. we paid for her to go to summer school so she could graduate but now that she graduated she didn’t go to college and is doing nothing, she smokes too.

They are all the nicest people, some shy, some teasing, but a lot of fun to be around. I find myself thinking about them often - perhaps because out of 8 kids there is only one girl, so age-wise there are “potentials” in the family. (I know, pretty twisted.) But I can’t think seriously about a relationship with someone who is content to stay where it’s safe, never gaining life experience, not even stepping outside themselves to help the family.

Another 20-something I know lived at home with his parents for the last year. But he was employed by his dad in a totally different scenario than the first family. He switched to working part-time and was active in music, children’s work, and audio recording at our church. For the summer he applied to a Christian camp to work as a counselor, and he ended up with a job for the whole year on staff at the camp. While he was living with his parents, he was also taking charge of his life and not depending on his parents to get him to the next step.

I don’t know if you can tell the difference between the two in what I’ve typed here, but there is a significant difference. Both are very nice, fun to talk to, and not “scary” to be around. But the directions their lives are taking, due to each individual’s initiative, are nearly night-and-day different. The contrast is more apparent when you know the people, of course.

There’s another family of six who attend our church. Their youngest is twenty, their oldest is married with a family. All but the oldest went to college for at least a year and came back with debt. Know what they did? They found a very small house that the three of them could rent together, and all three went to work at separate jobs to pay off their separate debts. All three have their own lives, not one of them is looking longingly toward their parents to save them from their mess. At least one of them is going to continue college part-time so she won’t incur any more debt.

The first family is not serious about life. Not really. The other two cases I mentioned couldn’t be more serious about life. That doesn’t mean they have no fun. The serious young adults can often have more fun than the kidults, because they have clear direction.

All that being said, I find myself drifting towards kidultness. I’m almost 19, and am going to college in the fall, halfway across the country from home. I plan on using this opportunity to grow up mentally. With the Lord’s help, I can be emotionally mature, even at 19. Some excuses may be given for kidultness, but a serious young person is vastly more admirable and attractive than a 28-year-old goofing away his life.

Death comes when you least expect it. Do you want to be remembered as the young person who had good intentions, but could never get away from the computer long enough to do anything about them? It is in your power to do hard things, great things, with your life right now. Why would you waste the limited time God has given you?

These are questions I must ask myself daily.