Kayleen Schaefer - But Youre Still So Young: How Thirtysomethings Are Redefining Adulthood

Text Me When You Get Home

You turn thirty, and you do the inventory. You go over the arbitrary list that we impose upon ourselves and panic about not completing.

MARCUS

It was the end of the workday for Marcus, whos thirty-six and lives in Austin. Hes an auditor for the state of Texas. He was supposed to meet his parents, who had come to town from Houston to attend a pecan festival the next day. He was going to pick them up at their hotel; they were heading to dinner from there.

Hed had a bad day at work, just another one of many recently. Hed been in meeting after meeting where he and his team had been berated about projects they were supposedly screwing up. If his parents hadnt been there, I would have drank and gone to bed, he says.

Marcus is lighthearted and makes jokes often. Hes the kind of person who always sounds like hes smiling when hes talking, even if he isnt, so its jarring to hear him be so despondent. Hes been looking for new jobs, increasingly desperately. His eye has started to twitch, his sleep is inconsistent, and, at work, hes gone from thinking I dont want to work here anymore to knowing I cant work here anymore.

In the mornings, he often wakes up in a good mood, then lies in bed for an hour.

I could go to work, he thinks.

Then he thinks, Why?

I physically feel myself getting sick at the idea, he says. I can feel it kicking in.

He thought he was close to getting a new job. He got to the second round of interviews for an auditor position with the city of San Antonio, which is about an hour and a half from Austin. He was poisedand excitedto move, even with the $10,000 pay cut, but found out a few days before his parents visit that he didnt get it.

When he got to their hotel room, he was reeling about not getting the job and, in general, feeling like he had no control over his own life.

Six years ago, on his thirtieth birthday, hed panicked about his life not looking anything like he imagined it would after college.

He made a mental list.

Job? Check.

Wife? No.

House? No.

Kids? No.

He started worrying about what he didnt have and comparing himself to other people, who he assumed had the spouse, two-story house, and small dog he thought hed find for himself. He fretted: Was his life enough?

I thought my life would follow a certain order too. I would check off one thing before moving on to the next. The broad outline went like this: complete school, establish a career, save money, get married, have children. I didnt think I had to do all these things before I turned thirty, but I assumed Id do them in my thirties. The promise of this timeline comforted me. It offered me order within what often felt like a frenetic, rootless existence in which I spent half my nights watching reruns of 30 Rock on my computer in bed and the other half going out until well after midnight. Even if the friends I hung out with all the time werent following that linear path, I assumed most of my peers did, at least according to what I saw on my social media scroll and what I heard from my mom about acquaintances back home.

When I turned thirty, I was still languishing, with almost nothing checked off my life list. I had barely established a career, and yet, still, I felt like any minute Id be rushing through these milestones, hurling toward a place where I could stop, where Id feel like Id arrived.

But youre still so young.

Anyone in the struggle of trying to figure out why certain parts of your life arent anchored the way you thought theyd be has heard this, usually from a well-meaning older person trying to convince you your life is not as big a mess as youre sure it is (no one younger than you would say this). Sometimes you might even hear it in your own head as a pep talk, when youre looking in the mirror, wondering who the reflection in front of you is going to become, or while youre lying in bed, finding it hard to get up.

Butyoure still so young.

You have time.

Keep going.

In the 1950s, sociologists identified five milestones that, when completed, mean a person has fully transitioned into adulthood. Much like what I had instinctively defined for myself, they are (1) completing school, (2) leaving home, (3) becoming financially independent, (4) marrying, and (5) having a child. In general, in the 1950s and for decades afterward, these milestones were completed by the early thirties at the latest. They were often achieved even sooner, in the late teens or early twenties. In 1975, US Census data shows that 45 percent of women and men had attained the traditional markers of adulthood by the time they reached thirty-four.

But today, cultural shifts and economic turmoil have changed both whether these milestones feel necessary and if they are attainable. Many [young people] have not become fully adult yettraditionally defined as completing school, landing a job with benefits, marrying, and parentingbecause they are not ready, or perhaps not permitted, to do so, sociologist and University of Pennsylvania professor Frank F. Furstenberg Jr. wrote in a 2004 report examining what it means to become an adult in America today, research funded by the MacArthur Foundation. In 2016, according to census data, just 24 percent of women and men had completed these milestones by the time they reached thirty-four.