I recently received a mailing from Human Resources at Penn State telling me that I can now keep my adult children on my employee health insurance plan until they turn 26 years of age. Apparently, the new Obama health care plan will eventually make this an option, so the administration at PSU decided to move forward with it now. Prior to this new initiative, dependents over the age of 18 could be covered only if they were full-time college students under the age of 24.
Political and financial arguments aside, this decision provides a great example of how our culture is prolonging the process of ‘growing up.’
Back in the day when I was taking undergraduate classes in human development, I remember learning about Erik Erickson’s eight stages of life: infancy, toddler, pre-school, childhood, early adolescence, young adulthood, adulthood and seniors. Each stage comes with a different view of the world and different tasks and physical, emotional and social challenges. The theory is that we have to master one stage before moving on to the next, or the issues of that stage will come back to haunt us at a later time.
Where do we put a 25-year-old who needs to be on Mom or Dad’s health insurance plan in the life development spectrum?
Psychologist and researcher Jeffrey Arnett has proposed that we tweak Erickson and other child development theories and add the category of ‘Emerging Adult.’ In numerous books and articles, Arnett and others have proposed that the developmental years between 18 and 25 are a relatively new, yet significant, period of development in our culture.
Turn the time machine setting to 1950 and the average age that people got married and started having children was around age 20. Settling down, getting a job and taking on adult responsibilities were not something to be avoided or put off. Women mostly didn’t go to college and trained to be teachers or secretaries in largely temporary jobs until they could find a husband and become mothers. Young men were encouraged to find a career and begin the process of providing for a family and putting away childish interests and hobbies.
Fast-forward to today and the average age for marriage is closer to 25 for women and 27 for men, with babies coming later than that. Across the country, colleges and universities are filled with both men and women in equal numbers with female students taking the lead in some areas. Traditional ‘male’ professions are encouraging women to join and often include graduate school training. While most 18- to 25-year-olds live semi-independently, away from the scrutiny of parents (on their own, going to college, maybe with part-time jobs), Mom and Dad are footing the bill in many instances. Arnett proposes that this age group is the most self-focused of any life stage – the perks of being an adult without all those hassles and responsibilities.
When people in this age group are asked if they are adults, a significant number give ambiguous answers. Yo dude, am I an adult? Uh, maybe. Sort of-kind of. It’s not adolescence, because that puberty stuff is all over, but it’s not quite grown up yet either.
For those of us who live in State College and interact with college students, we see the emerging adult concept in play every day.
Compared to the 18- to 25-year-olds of past generations who were working, paying bills, getting married and having babies, our ‘kids’ have it a little different. Adult-sized children sign leases for apartments that require a parent’s co-signature. They remain on their parent’s cell phone and car insurance plans. If one of them doesn’t like a grade or a decision that a professor makes, Mom or Dad will make the call. We pay their tuition, credit card bills and sometimes their legal fees.
Generalizations aside, kids are spending longer time in this ‘in between’ stage. Adolescence is starting earlier and adulthood is starting later.
My parents married in 1953 when my mother was 18 years old and my father was 25. (We used to tease him that he was a cradle robber). He had been in the service. They met in the workplace where my mother was a bookkeeper and my Dad had returned to the job he had been working since he was 14 years old. He had run out of tuition money with only two years of college under his belt. His parents had the money to help him finish but never offered it and he didn’t ask. I am the third of four children, born when my mother was 25 years old, and my parents were living in their first purchased home.
I graduated from Penn State and started my first job after being hired by the agency where I had completed my internship. On the night that I was offered that job, I can remember crying my eyes out, thinking that job offer – which I gladly accepted – meant I was going to have to be a grown up. I was 21 years old. By the age of 25, I had moved to a second job and had been promoted to Department Head. I’ve been covered by an employer’s insurance policy since 1982.
My 20-year-old daughter sighed with relief when she heard that she could stay on my insurance until she is 26 years old. ‘Phew!’ she said. ‘That takes the pressure off of me!’
Her lame attempt at a joke got the appropriate eye-roll reaction from her mother. With two more years of college, a probable internship, the fluctuation of the job market and her status as an emerging adult, she may be 30 before she goes out on her own. She is hardly an exception in her peer group.
Might our culture and the recent phenomenon of the emerging adult be a clue into the anti-social behavior we are seeing in our local community of late? Delay taking responsibility. Put off growing up. College is the last hurrah. Enjoy the party years before becoming a grown-up. Mom and Dad will save me from anything that makes me uncomfortable because they are still very much a part of my life.
Marriage, babies and careers? How about beer Slip-and-Slides, State Patty’s Day and Super Seniors? After all, you can’t expect me too much of me. I’m not really an adult.
My parents are still paying for my health insurance.
