The Shock of Adulthood

Why crossing the barrier into adulthood is so difficult and what to do about it

Photo by Bethany Legg on Unsplash

As I’ve said before, one of my favorite reads on Substack is

Ryan Burge

’s “Graphs About Religion.” And yesterday he posted a new article on young people and flourishing that caught my attention. Among the many interesting graphs is the following, tucked in at the end:

As Ryan notes, “It is absolutely the case that 13-17 year olds indicate a significantly higher level of flourishing than 18-25 year olds. I mean you can see it as clear as day when comparing a 17 year old to an 18 year old - the difference in flourishing score is 6.3 vs 5.1. While the score does tend to creep up for respondents in their mid-twenties, it’s still half a point lower than someone who is 14 or 15.” In my nearly 20 years of teaching college freshmen (first at a community college in California, then at Baylor, and for the last 10 years at Oklahoma Baptist University—so some diversity in population), I’ve witnessed a lot of young people make the awkward and difficult transition into adulthood. And I have to say that these numbers don’t surprise me in the least. For everyone, moving into adulthood is hard; for some it is deeply painful. Understanding the challenges facing young people entering adulthood can help us prepare them and guide them through this process.

The Challenges

Uncertainty and Choice Paralysis

Every person setting out “on their own” has suffered the anxiety of uncertainty. Can I get a job? Can I provide for myself? And so on. What hasn’t helped young people today is the quickly evolving job market. On the one hand, A.I. threatens to take over entire industries, on the other hand, we live in a global marketplace where people can work from home, enabling young people to apply for jobs almost anywhere. In addition, there’s ethical, social, and political instability. What was a moral obligation one year (marching in protests, saying certain pronouns) is no longer relevant the next year. The laws and political norms of one administration are completely reversed within four years, dramatically so. All these things are concerns of adults. To enter into adulthood in the modern world is to enter into a world of constantly shifting norms and values wherein you are now responsible for staking your own perspective and defending it.

Relatedly, choice paralysis makes choosing a career and potential spouse overwhelmingly difficult. All opportunities are open to you, all people are open to you, and you are more aware of the possibilities, but you are also aware of your weaknesses and the exceptionalism of others. And so choosing one path feels impossible. You freeze up. You fail to act.

Reckoning with the Past

One of the most common experiences I’ve witnessed is the need for young people entering adulthood to look back at their youth and reckon with past experiences. Traumas, problems, conflicts, and issues that lay submerged and suppressed for nearly two decades can no longer stay put. In order to move into adulthood, they need to surface and confront these issues. Ideally this takes place with a good therapist and the support of pastors, family, and friends. But “ideally” is hard to come by. I think that as young people get space from their parents and realize more of their independence, they have the freedom to reflect on their upbringing and experiences. For some, that reflection itself can be traumatic or at least difficult. Even when it isn’t traumatic, young people have to figure out how much of their parents’ lives they want to continue and how much they want to break away. For example, do they want to stay in their parents’ denomination? The good news is that this is a normal and healthy part of growing up. The hard news is that for some people, this experience is harder than for others.

Lack of Formation in Fortitude

The better part of courage (or fortitude) is endurance, says Aquinas, because endurance requires you to stand and accept blows over time, where as the other part of courage, attack, only requires that you charge into battle. A number of commentators, notably Jonathan Haidt, have already made the case that there is a lack of resilience in young people because parents have not allowed children to struggle and face hardship. Of course this is a generalization, and many children have faced hardship. But on the whole, I think the idea that contemporary children are sheltered from danger is mostly accurate. Haidt’s saying is that we’ve been too protective in the real world and not protective enough in the online world. There’s something to that. I believe I’ve told this story before, but when my son was younger, my wife sent him to walk from the college gym to our home a few blocks away. Before he got there he was stopped by campus police who brought him back to my wife. My son was more than capable of walking home by himself. But our safety-centric society was hostile toward it. The natural consequence of a safety-centric society is that young people grow up not facing risks. Whether those are the risks of failing a test, being rejected for a date, getting lost on a drive, or getting hurt. The difficulty is that adulthood requires you to take risks. And that can create anxiety and a lack of flourishing.

Response

Mentors

I know I’ve beat this drum over and over again, but young people need safe, loving, kind, godly mentors. They need people around them who will invite them into healthy risks, who will help them discern what’s a healthy risk and what’s an unhealthy risk. They need safe adults who will tell them that it’s okay to reassess their youth. They need someone who can point them to a good therapist and who will pray for them. They need someone who can teach them that they don’t need to choose The One Right Career. They just need to make a wise choice that glorifies God and move on with life. A healthy church and a good Christian liberal arts college should provide space for these kinds of relationships.

Community

But a mentor can’t do everything. There needs to be a community of people supporting the young person. This is where the local church can be so valuable. Notably, in

Ryan Burge

’s analysis, young people who are spiritual and religious score much better on flourishing markers. The reality is that no young person should ever launch out into adulthood “on their own.” We live and move in community. And a community should help us mature. A healthy church community should help contest the constant shifting social, ethical, and political norms of our society, giving the young person stability—not a self-generated stability, but a stability grounded in a community that is grounded in the truth of the gospel.

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Young people will always struggle to become adults. It’s just awkward. It is what it is. But I think we can do more to aid young people in making this transition. What I worry about is who will guide young people. Someone will guide them. The question is, who? Will they be guided by voices on the Internet? YouTube and social media? Or by people who care for them as individuals? Growing up is hard. I tried it once, I know. Look out for people entering the shock of adulthood. See how you can help them. They need all the help they can get.