Reasons why "Adulting" is so difficult today
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This week, I share a piece from another newsletter I follow. In an earlier issue of Monday Musings, David Perell brainstorms several reasons why "adulting" has become a challenge today.
While these ideas are mostly in a US context, I think they are relevant to Singapore too. Rather than attempt to summarise his well written piece, I got his permission to share the full text below.
"Adulting
Okay, it's time to have some fun!
We're going to try a new experiment. Receving responses from Monday Musings readers is one of my favorite parts about the newsletter. They are exceptional, and it's time to share the best ones with all of you.
In the next few weeks, I'll ask a question in every Monday Musings newsletter. Then, I'll aggregate the best responses and share them the following week. Unless otherwise stated, I'll assume the responses are anonymous. Your name will stay confidential. That way, you can speak honestly.
The focus of today's newsletter is the "adulting meme." I can't figure out why adulting is so hard now. You’d think it'd be easier now. The answer to almost any question is a handful of thumb taps away. Thus, we can assume information isn’t the problem. The people you love can be reached with a text message, so we can asssume that contacting people isn't the problem either. I suspect that the challenges of “adulting” stem from soaring costs, the unintended consequences of liberalism, and overall lack of community.
During dinner on Friday, a friend and I brainstormed reasons for why "adulting" is increasingly a challege. Here's what we came up with:
The infantilization of children: Parents plan everything for their children. They drive us to school, schedule our play dates, and do our homework for us. They call us to check-in whenever we’re out. If we don’t respond, they act like the world is ending. Children don’t start working until college. Since they aren’t expected to work, they don’t take on responsibility until they’re much older.
The professionalization of childhood: On the flip side, childhood has become professionalized. The goal is to build a resume. Soccer practice and SAT prep is mandatory. The path to college begins in elementary school. In major American cities, parents apply to elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools. All them are designed to help their students attend an Ivy League university.
Delayed children and marriage: Well-educated, urban living adults don’t expect to get married until their early 30s or have kids until their late 30s. As a result, the time between adolescence and parenthood is more than a decade long. Young adults please themselves instead of preparing to raise children.
Hyper-individualism: In a world where everybody has to take care of themselves, it’s hard to ask for help. Time feels so scarce. Asking a friend for an hour of their time feels like a burden. Communities that once provided a strong social fabric and committed to helping its members are disappearing. In this world without community, where we can’t ask others for help, people can’t make the transition to adulthood.
Accelerationism: I’ve argued before that productivity growth has stagnated. We’re not innovating as fast as we once were. Nevertheless, the psychological experience of being alive has transformed in the past decade. The internet and smartphones transformed the experience of daily life. Workplace tools are churning. We don’t have rules or rituals for interacting with technology. Young people feel like their parents can’t sympathize with their problems, so they swim blind and long for wisdom.
Age segregation: If somebody from the 1700s time-traveled to 2019, they’d be surprised by two things. First, they’d be shocked by digital technology. Once the shock of the new faded, they’d scratch their heads at age segregation. Young people don’t spend enough time with old people, and vice versa. We lack age diversity in schools and the workplace. Young people help old people by injecting them with energy and creativity. Meanwhile, old people provide wisdom and mentorship.
Changes in Media: Human consciousness is influenced by the media we consume. We’ve shifted from rationality to emotions. And we exchange images, not ideas. In The Vanishing American Adult, U.S Senator Ben Sasse writes that television adultifies children and infantilizes adults. For children, TV is a disclosure medium. In the past, sex and violence were kept in books. But on TV, children confront these taboo ideas early in life. At the same time, television inhibits deep thought and careful analysis. Compared to text, images aren’t suited for logic and rational thinking. That’s why shows that turn news into comedy like The Colbert Report and The Daily show are so popular on TV. Tribalism is a direct result of this shift from text to the image. By moving from a book-centric culture to an image-centric one, we’ve created a Peter Pan Generation.
Economic specialization: College was built to help prepare people to be an adult. Now it prepares them to get a job. The shift away from the liberal arts and towards a vocational education is a direct result of the modern economy and rising debt levels. Instead of praising the University of Chicago’s Great Books program, we applaud Stanford’s computer science curriculum. I can’t criticize the impetus to make money. With that said, increasing specialization blinds us to the world we live in. I don’t want to romanticize how smart people used to be, but universities don’t promote holistic knowledge like they once did. We’re hyper-competent in our domain of expertise, but incompetent outside of it.
Workaholism: Careers are the excuse for every problem on this list. We’ve built a society where being career-focused is rewarded and encouraged. As long as you’re focused on work, it’s okay if you don’t know how to clean your clothes, cook your own food, take care of family, catch up with friends, build relationships, explore the local neighborhood, or help your community. Workaholism is an accepted excuse for all of your life’s problems, including the need to “adult.”
Student debt: By the time students leave school, they’re saddled with student debt. I’ve met people who have six figures worth of debt. They’re in their 20s and they know that a wide range of career options won’t be available to them. Credential inflation doesn’t help. For many prestigious careers, a bachelor degree is no longer enough. Money has to be the first priority in their life. Otherwise, they won’t be able to pay their bills. They feel so screwed by the system that they respond with sarcasm and escape from the pain of reality by acting like children. Fueled by the rise of urban real estate prices, they can’t even think about buying real estate or investing for the long term. Daily survival is too much of a struggle. The dirty secret of life in big cities is that a large percentage of people in their 20s are financially supported by their parents. If they weren’t rich, they’d be stuck at home or a smaller city.
As I write this final sentence, the lyrics to the song I’m listening to are: “I feel like I’m underwater more and more each day. I feel like I’m trying harder, but still can’t find the way.” Oh... the twisted irony of beautiful music.
Some questions for you:
Which of the factors above account for most of the rise of the accounting meme?
Did I miss any important factors?
What came to mind as you read the section above?
I can't wait to read your responses."
Having moved out, and now becoming a parent, I supposed I could say I do a fair share of "adulting". I have two more things I would add to Dave's list:
First, the expectation of success. We are taught to do perfectly well at school and at work. Acceptable is often not acceptable enough, more can always be done. This carries into our attempts to "adult". Everything must be optimised and done perfectly. We worry about maximising interest rates and credit card privileges, whether we are on track for maximum career growth, building a network we can tap on, having a beautiful home, experiencing the best holidays, or even monetising our hobbies. Doing this takes significant time and energy. It does not feel fine to be minimally getting by, or accepting that some value is lost along the way. It often feels like we could and should do more, and this pressure is contributed both by the abundance of information of the perfect way to do everything, and false impressions that everyone else is getting it "right".
Second, the abundance of fun. There are more ways to enjoy life than before, and to share this enjoyment on social media. Constant desire is also created through social media and marketing. With all these things we want to do, spending time to "adult'" feels like a chore, especially when it is so hard to get it done perfectly right. We end up torn between competing desires to simply enjoy life, and guilt that our lives are not in order.
What then should we do about it? I have no concrete solutions on hand now. However, I think part of the solution is to have clear, critical thought about our lives, society, technology, and work. We need to analyse and question every aspect of life, asking what are the costs or hidden agendas of everything that seems normal or even good. Likely that these are only good in the short term, and there are long term consequences. Dave mentions the problem of economic specialisation and workaholism, and I find it common to see people who are able to think critically and deeply in their field of expertise or in performing their job, but become oblivious once outside of it.
Let me know whether you agree that there is an "adulting" problem today? Or is this merely confined to a minority? If you have some solution to handle all your adult responsibilities well, I would want to hear about it too!
About Ideothetic Flow
Ideothetic Flow is a small passion project that reflects my journey in thinking about how to live a better life. Every 2 weeks I share either something I found, or my own thoughts, about how we can rethink the usual expectations or discourse in society today.