SYSK TRENDING - Why Young People Dread Adulting

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0:32For generations, growing up was something young people couldn't wait to do. You got your own place, made your own money, made your own decisions, and finally nobody could tell you what to do. So why does adulthood now seem to fill so many young people with dread? There's even a word for the unpleasant chores and responsibilities that come with it. Adulting. Paying bills, finding a career, cooking dinner, making appointments, it can all seem overwhelming. And that's why today's SYSK trending topic is why young people dread adulting. Julie Lithcott-Hames is the former dean of freshmen at Stanford and author of Your Turn, How to Be an Adult.

1:16She says there are some very real reasons for this and parents may be a big part of the problem. So how do we make adulthood something worth looking forward to again? Julie is here with some answers right after this. Starting or growing your own business can be intimidating and lonely at times. Your to-do list may feel endless with new tasks, and lists can easily begin to overrun your life. So finding the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything as a built-in business partner can be a game changer. For millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10 % of all e-commerce in the U.S.

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2:58What does it mean to be an adult? For many generations, young people long to grow up and get out of the house and see the world. But that seems to have changed. becoming an adult, something people used to look forward to, has become, for many young people, something to dread. So what's caused this? What can we do about it? How and why did the fear of growing up and moving on become a thing? That's what Julie Lithcott-Hames set out to discover. Julie's a writer, former college dean, former attorney, and author of the book, Your Turn to Be an Adult. Hi, Julie. Welcome. Hi, Mike. Thanks so much for having me.

3:41So briefly in broad strokes here, explain this thing, this thing that didn't used to be a thing, this fear of becoming an adult. I think my heart swells with compassion for millennials, first and foremost. I was a dean at a university working with the millennial generation, hearing students on my campus lamenting, I don't know how to be an adult. I don't want to be an adult. Adulting is scary. I scanned the national landscape and quickly saw that this wasn't just my students. It was really an entire generation of people expressing trepidation or reluctance to enter a stage of life. I think the older set just entered without as much thought.

4:21And I didn't come with a critique of them. My response was instead, wow, what has changed in our society, in our world? what changed about how they were raised or what they confront as young adults such that they're feeling discomfort at approaching a stage of life I frankly and perhaps you also looked forward to. Yeah, I guess that's why I find this so interesting because, you know, I left home basically as soon as I could. After high school, I went away to college. I went far away to college and I really was looking forward to that of, you know, the world is opening up. My life is ahead of me.

4:59And I looked forward to it. So maybe what it means to be an adult is different now. So what is the definition of being an adult today as compared to perhaps what it was before? Well, the first thing I want to say is I also wanted to leave the minute I could. And I think we have to ask ourselves, why is it that adulthood or adulting looks so unattractive to young people now. If you and I couldn't wait and yet young people now are feeling trepidation or reluctance, what has changed about what adulting looks like such that they feel that way? The definition, the old definition, Mike, was simple. Five things more or less in this order.

5:40Finish school, get a job, leave home, marry and have children. It harkens back to an era where everyone was presumed to be straight, where women were the property of their dads until they were the property of their husbands. Their job was to have children, and that was really their primary, if not sole purpose. We have so many more freedoms now, and it may be impossible for you to move out of your parents' home today because your wages slash salary have not kept up with the cost of a one-bedroom apartment in the town in which you are employed. And so there are some macroeconomic realities that make the old definition very out of date.

6:19So I have come up with a different definition. Adulting is simply the knowledge that when you wake every day, you are more or less responsible for yourself. In contrast, in childhood, you are more or less the responsibility of someone else. So it's not about you're a lone wolf, you're a lone actor, but it is that intrinsic knowledge that, yeah, it's pretty much on me to take care of my bodies, my bills, my business, my belongings. And guess what, Mike? That feels deliciously satisfying, right? There's a high, there's a hit we get from knowing, hey, I accomplished something. Not I'm the most amazing person in the world, but just simply that sense of, hey, I handled what I met today.

7:07And I'm absolutely fine. And so what is it that younger people who are entering adulthood are afraid of? I think on the one hand, we who have raised them, and I'm a mom, I want to say, I have a 22-year-old son, a 20-year-old daughter. I'm very in it. And we who have raised kids who are older Gen Zs and millennials tended to have been incredibly involved, incredibly needing to know their every move, watching them constantly at the park and as they played and knowing every little detail about their schooling and attending their every practice of soccer or clarinet. We were just so hyper vigilant.

7:51We have seemed so stressed out and worried as adults, like every single aspect of childhood matters. Everything is of consequence. I think that has to have something to do with why adulting looks so unattractive to them. They're like, why would I want to grow up and be as stressed out and worried and anxious all the time as my parents are? But I think that has contributed. I know that that has contributed. Anecdotally, I know that has contributed to many young adults feeling like, hey, why would I want that? The other thing is, if we've over-parented, Mike, we've deprived our kids of developing the very skills they need to have if they're going to thrive out there.

8:28So if we've always tied their shoes, unscrewed their juice drinks, cut their meat, prepared every meal, filled out every form, argued with every teacher, argued with every coach, we have deprived them of the small experiences in childhood, which in the aggregate would have led to a sense of confidence within them that, oh, hey, I can make it through a day. Oh, I can problem solve. Oh, I can handle that. Oh, I can make a choice. OK, if we've over parented, we've undermined the development of the very basic sense of I know I can, i.e. agency or self-efficacy that every human has to have in order to make their way forward.

9:10Well, there's a lot in what you just said, because you can see it. I mean, you can see this kind of over parenting in a lot of cases. And in fact, if you're a parent who doesn't over parent, you kind of stand out like a sore thumb. And certainly cell phones have added to the problem because now you can track and find out where your kid is every second. And so parents do. And also, it seems like we've trained kids to be afraid, you know, stranger danger, that everybody is a potential threat. And when you think that way, I mean, there's a lot of stress in that. And I want to be super clear, Mike, I don't blame the kids.

9:47The kids didn't ask for this childhood. They didn't ask for this kind of upbringing. They may have asked for a cell phone, but not so that their parents could track their every move. So you and I can sit here and say back in the day, I was allowed to play freely. My parents said, come in when it's dark or come in when we call you for dinner. Kids today don't know what to do with themselves. If they have a free 15 minutes, they feel like something's wrong because they're accustomed to being scheduled. They're accustomed to being told precisely what to do and how to do it. And they're accustomed to being checked up on to see if they did do it.

10:18they just when I talk with young adults about making use of downtime so that they can imagine and create and brainstorm and dream they look at me and they say that would terrify me downtime would terrify me and that makes me so sad and so what do we do what because you can't just flip a switch and say okay you're on your own good luck let me know how things work out So there are two things. There are two answers. One is what should young people do? The other is what should parents do? With respect to the parents, I would offer this. We were supposed to have gradually let go, meaning gradually taught them to do more and more for themselves in the years from, say, 2 to 18.

11:04We need to make up for lost time. You don't just wish a skill upon a person. You're supposed to teach it. And there's a four-step method for teaching any kid any skill, which is first you do it for them, which we're really good at. Next, you do it with them, meaning they're there. They're watching you do it. Maybe you're narrating to how you do it, teaching. Step three is where we need to get to, which is you watch them do it. You say, hey, kid, it's your turn to make this meal or make a grilled cheese on the stove. I'm going to watch you do it. I'm going to be here in case. I don't want you to set the house on fire, but I'm here just in case.

11:38And then step four, they can do it themselves. So we've got to move from steps one and two to steps three and four with every single skill a kid needs to learn. And that's what I want any parent listening to think about. Ask yourself, what is your kid not capable of at whatever age they are, yet you were capable of that very same thing when you were their age? What are three things you can decide to teach your kid this weekend or this month or this semester, depending on how intricate the skill is. We're supposed to be building skills, handing the reins over to them, so to speak. For young people listening, it's please know that this is your life, not anybody else's.

12:19You are not a project of somebody else. You are not a pet on their leash. You are not the evidence of their worth. You are a precious individual. This is your one wild and precious life. And here I'm quoting the late poet, Mary Oliver, who said in her poem, Summer Day, tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? And I want young people to hear that, Mike. It is your one wild and precious life. What does wild mean? I think it means untamed, unplanned, unscheduled. It will be, it'll make of itself what it will, anything is possible. So please be curious about who you are, what you're good at, what lights you up, where you feel joyful, and in what kinds of environments you thrive, and with whom you feel a sense of belonging.

13:13We are talking about growing up and being an adult, and why so many young people today have a real problem with that concept. My guest is Julie Lithcott-Hames. She is author of the book, Your Turn, How to Be an Adult. Mr. Monopoly here. Miss me? Monopoly is back at McDonald's with millions of prizes. A 2027 cheap charity. A Carnival Cruise vacation. Gift cards from DoorDash and Best Buy. He'll then play in the McDonald's app. Get your bag. No purchase necessary. 50 U.S. and D.C. age 18 plus. See play at mcd.com for rules and play at mcd.com slash amoe for info and playing without purchase by mail by November 2nd.

13:53Chance card game ends November 8th. Game ends November 22nd, 2026. See rules for prize details. Monopoly is a registered trademark of Hasbro. Brussels clean up nicely at Sweetgreen. Maple glazed, roasted, and edges perfectly caramelized? Sweetgreen's fall harvest is back on the menu, and the season's most overlooked little green vegetable is dressed to be devoured. You know what to do. Order on the Sweetgreen app. So, Julie, it's one thing to help kids understand that they need to do things for themselves. They can make their own breakfast. But there are times I think where it gets really hard is when life smacks your kid in the face and to let them handle it.

14:36That, if you haven't been doing that, to watch your kid have to suffer and figure it out is really hard. Absolutely. And look, I'm not a sadist or a masochist. I'm not trying to watch my kids suffer. I'm trying to help my kids learn how to do for themselves because one day I won't be here to do it for them. We're supposed to give them the opportunities for all of that learning while being there to prevent them from drowning, falling off a cliff, and in some other way, harming themselves. So here's the more practical example. When the kid constantly oversleeps and you are still waking up your eighth grader and now you're waking up your ninth grader to get them to school, you have to ask yourself, am I going to be waking up my college student?

15:26Am I going to be waking this kid up when they're in the workplace? No, that would be absurd. I'm supposed to teach my kid to be accountable to an alarm clock. And you think to yourself, well, but it's eighth grade. The stakes are so high. I'm here to tell you the stakes only get higher. You are undermining your kid's ability to wake up when they need to. You have made yourself the solution, which is an impermanent solution. So you have to say to your kid, hey, kid, you know, I'm always waking you up. You always miss the bus or you're this happened to me with my kid in the seventh grade, my daughter, Avery.

15:54Sure enough, two days later, she overslept. I made breakfast. She wasn't there. I let her sleep. Someone knocks on the door. It's her friends. They're like, is Avery ready? I was like, no, I haven't seen her. They race upstairs. They bang on Avery's door. They get Avery. She's mad. She's throwing things. She's muttering. She comes downstairs, glares at me, leaves the house. She was never, ever late for school again. She learned that lesson and it was a little hard to teach. And if the friends hadn't come by to bang on the door, I would have had to say, what do I do now? Let my kid just sleep in and discover it's 10 o 'clock and she's not at school.

16:29Yes, that was the right answer in that moment. Here's the thing. If your kid, however, has failed to wake up for this standardized test that they've studied for weeks, if not months, that's not the day to teach that lesson. That would be cruel. We want to be helpful. We want to be useful, of course. And in those moments of big consequence, we should bring the forgotten clarinet so they can play in the recital, drive them to the SAT. But in the run of the mill everyday moments, we need to say, oh, my gosh, you forgot your clarinet. That must be so frustrating. How do you think you're going to handle it?

17:06And that tells the kids developing brain, it's mine to deal with. And my parent thinks I can. And that's the most undermining aspect of over parenting, Mike. Every time we rescue, we're telling them, I don't think you can, so I will. I don't think you can be successful at algebra, so I'll fix it and make it better. I'll do your science project. That tells your kid, you're not capable, don't worry, I've got it. It undermines their sense of agency, which undermines their chances for good mental health. All of this is connected. You know what I wonder is why my parents and the parents in that generation of my parents didn't struggle with this.

17:47They didn't have to hold themselves back from over-parenting and for doing everything for their kids and being overly involved with their kids. It somehow seemed easier for them to be at arm's length. something that I've read that really intrigues me is there's a preciousness about children today. We tend to have two of them instead of five or eight. We often go to some lengths to conceive them today. So if we've been watching them at the stage of sperm, egg, and embryo, you're going to be damn sure we're going to keep an eye on them. That is hover over their every move and take their temperature constantly and measure every poop and pee and all of that once they're born and out into their toddlerhood and out into their elementary school years.

18:35So I think there's something to it. But also a parent's ego is involved today in our children as that project, as that pet, as that evidence of what we can do. So there is this societal pressure around, let us see what your child has achieved, and we will decide how we feel about you accordingly. And that feels like a very, very contemporary concern. I wonder if parents see this in themselves. In other words, I think people are aware that there is this over-parenting and that kids are having trouble developing. And people see it on a societal level. But do they see it in their own house? Or do they rationalize and say, well, things are a little different in my house.

19:26My kid's a little different. He needs a little more help. but I'm not contributing to this problem because, you know, I've got it under control and people don't recognize that they are contributing to the problem. What do you think? I was an advocate for other people's kids at the college level. I've got my own, as I said, 22 and 20. And they, and I am here to say, it turns out I was over-parenting them. I didn't realize it, Mike. I was railing against the problem while simultaneously contributing to a problem in my own house. I was cutting my kid's meat when he was 10. And that was when I realized, oh no, I am that parent who's doing way more than my parents ever did.

20:08Therefore, I'm depriving my kid of building skills. How am I going to let go of him at 18 when he can't even cut his own meat at 10? And I began to try to repattern in my own house. And I'm still hard at work at that. My son has given me permission to share. He's now 22, that we have been hard at work at this through family therapy during the pandemic. He came home after two years of college, had had some serious mental health issues. And we read this really damning article out of The Atlantic that came out in May of 2020. It was the cover story, and it's on anxiety in children. My son suffers from anxiety as well as it deals with ADHD.

20:47And this article out of the lab of Ellie Leibowitz at Yale shows that when parents over-accommodate a kid's fear, we can end up fomenting full-blown anxiety, or we contribute to the creation of full-blown anxiety in our kids. And over-accommodation looks like this. When they're afraid of the dark and we say, don't worry, you'll never be in the dark. When they're afraid of being alone and we say, don't worry, you'll never be alone. When they only eat certain things and we say, I'll make sure you always have that food you like wherever we go. We think it's loving. Turns out that that behavior on our part of accommodation can lead to this inability of the kid to cope in circumstances that are difficult.

21:32They have a lot of fear. What our over-accommodation has taught them is, hey, that thing you fear is so legitimate, I'm going to curate your environment so you never experience it. What we're supposed to do is empathize and empower. I can see that's hard for you. I'm here for you. Do you want to talk about it? Listen, listen, listen, empathize with their feelings and then empower. Say, you know what? I know it's hard now, but I know it's not always going to be this hard. And you smile and you walk away. That's what we're supposed to do. So I have experienced that reality in my own life. I was that parent over-accommodating my kids' sensitivities, I would call them.

22:08I thought it was the loving thing to do. But now the evidence is increasingly clear. That short-term solution of, I can't handle my kids' sad feelings or feelings of discomfort or what have you, such that I will swoop in and handle, undermines his ability to handle for himself. So, I am actively undoing that with great results. Now, I'm able to look at my 22-year-old when he's dealing with a difficulty, and instead of feeling responsible for sorting that difficulty out. I look at him like, wow, that looks like it's really tough. If you need my help, I'm here. But you know what, kid, you do hard things.

22:43And I smile and I walk away. And he comes back to me with this look on his face like, I do hard things, mom. I took care of that. You know, and I can see him building that agency, which leads to a degree of mental health and wellness we all long for. And those of us who have been jostled awake by our kids' depression, anxiety, we know we have to turn this around. And we who have seen it are motivated to stop the over-parenting. And so I do see so many people shifting, so many people saying, I'm not taking a chance with my kids' mental health. I don't need that outcome so badly for them that I'm going to undermine their mental health and wellness.

23:24Something else that I've noticed, and I have no data to support this, but another contributor to this problem that I have seen is that I think parents are friendlier with their kids today than in previous generations. I mean, you know, I'll lie on the floor and watch TV with my kids, but my father would have never done that with me. I listen to the same music as my kids do, but I didn't listen to the same music that my parents listen to. That there's a blurring of the lines, that parents today are friendlier with their kids and being friendlier, you want to help them out. And it just, it seems like that contributes to the problem.

24:05It's a beautiful thing to picture you on the floor watching a show with your kid. I think anybody listening who's in their 40s and 50s can relate to how differently we are with our kids versus how our parents were with us, right? We've come out, we're long past the era of children should be seen and not heard. We're long past the era of my way or the highway authoritarian parenting in the main. We do care and love in a way that is so evident and beautiful. There is a friendship and a friendliness and an awareness and a caretaking, right? We're so involved. Your parents probably couldn't remember the name of any of your teachers.

24:50We know not just every teacher's name, but the homework that they've assigned, right? We know every other parent on the soccer team, we've created quite a presence for ourselves in the lives of children, and that has yielded so many positives. But yes, to your point, I think maybe we have swung a little too far. We need to go for that friendly, present, loving connection. Connection is so good. It's such a protective factor against the world's ills. But we must never lose sight of the fact that our primary job is to make sure they can do more and more for themselves. So as we're sitting there watching the movie, we've got to then say, all right, kiddo, take care of the dishes, please.

25:36I'm going to go take out the trash, like invite them into the work of the household. Expect them to contribute by way of doing chores. Hold them accountable for the things they need to learn. Both are possible. Well, it's an important discussion about a topic that really didn't used to be a topic a generation or two ago where people don't want to grow up or don't feel equipped to grow up. So it's really important to understand what's going on and what we can do. Julie Lithcott-Hames has been my guest and the name of her book, Is Your Turn, How to Be an Adult? And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes.

26:13That's it for this SYSK Trending episode. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thank you for listening today to Something You Should Know.