Eight Points on How Children are Growing Up Later

That kids stay longer at home before stepping out in the world has prompted some sociologists to redefine the age of adolescence from 12 to 30. More children are staying home longer than they did after the war and more young adults still lay claim to their parent’s house as being theirs for a longer period of time a study on growing up has concluded.

Living costs might be the reason but that would be complicated with tradition and the dissolution of living together with another person and make a life independent of the family that nurtured the children. Here are some points that influence a later permanent departure form parental nests:

1. After the Second World War it was imperative that children contribute to the family welfare by paying into the family coffer especially if they had jobs. Plays of people trying to establish themselves in the new world came about at the time of reconstruction. Children felt the push to grow up by 18 if not earlier and look after themselves especially because the newly immigrated family had to integrate into the fabric of American society.
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   It was not uncommon for them to follow parental suggestion to enter business colleges especially if money was at a premium and the family had younger brothers and sisters. Today that may still be the case but by and large more children are still at home at 29 while they make an attempt to become independent. It appears that the growing up period that was experienced during the immigrant wave of the fifties, after the Korean War and even after the Vietnam fiasco, has been delayed.

2. Parents are more conscious of not wanting their children to be abducted which may put a damper on the their encouraging their kids to leave the nest. In Italy for example and perhaps other Mediterranean countries it still is not uncommon for children to leave their homes late. Southern Italy is more conservative than the north so more pressure is on the girl to marry when she leaves the home with the exception of some students that studied in universities outside and acquired a more middle European culture along the way.
3. Americans would make fun of many of the Italian acquaintances I had that their mothers would still make their sandwiches and do their laundry almost as if it was not expected for the young adult to leave the home and propose marriage to a girl. Today it all the more difficult because the cost of housing in that country.
4. In the same country violence has occurred several times on the campus of the main university of Rome and other cities like in Montreal in 1989 and again in 2006 that has probably influenced mothers to discourage an early exit from the home. Those acts involved jealousy and deeply troubled minds as students have difficulty accepting rejection and poor grades.
5. Another reason for holding back on development may be regression as children may be shocked by what the adult world has in store for them and turn to their childhood for comfort. Clearly if these children were to be growing up in war torn countries or countries facing ideological threats like Hungary before 1956 or the former Czechoslovakia, those children would have been pushed to adulthood earlier. Central Europe was a theater of political choices that often got the student involved in extra-curricular activities that weaned the student away from his parents. That might have meant joining a junior version of a political party and countering the Soviet threat became a popular catalyst.
6. What parents worry about in the delay process is the effect of the computer chat rooms on children who have a low level of getting involved in sports and activities that would take them away from their monitors. So parents have been putting into effect rules that limit computer use, which also encourages kids to develop social traits.
7. Psychologists have admitted that certain mental disorders tend to delay the maturation process. One is characterized by an attention deficit where the child has difficulty to complete tasks and this is much of what the child learns to accomplish as he moves through childhood to become an adult. The child may learn how to channel their energies so that they will eventually be able to focus and complete a task. If the parent interferes with the encouragement needed for the child to focus on completing a task, he will have difficulties that will affect how he feels about himself and how he is going to be independent.
8. Parents who do not encourage that children are part of the decision making process early on risk that the child will depend on parental decisions for a lot longer. That may also affect a adolescent’s ability to take matters in his own hands and turn to an adult figure for moral support in obtaining a goal when he would have been able to come to a decision on his own if he were to focus on his needs. Proper parenting means getting your kids to learn responsibility from early on.