They have been called "the postponed generation," "the revolving door generation," the "boomerang effect," "delayed adolescents." Who are these twenty-somethings who can be characterized so strongly by their extended presence in our homes, and almost as strongly by their extended absence from our churches? What psychic forces have created a generation that appears on the surface so unlike our own and a generation gap that has to be one of the widest chasms in history?
Sociology, in its attempt to understand them, has suggested that adolescence now extends to the age of thirty. Psychology refers to a "postponed adulthood," frequently picturing this group of young people with fingers permanently pressed on the snooze button of the alarm clock of life. Those of us who are their parents are clear on two points only: they are not yet adults, but they are not adolescents. They linger on the threshold of adulthood while myriad influences delay that first step beyond.
As adolescents, our young people were characterized by the need to break away from parents, family, the traditions that have shaped them, in order to begin to assert what they believed to be their own identity. In this endeavor, they were supported by peers who formed their own rules, traditions, and codes, and the approval of the group was essential to the sense of belonging.
Today, as twenty-somethings, they are no longer in the process of breaking away. Parents all of the country report young people attempting to reintegrate with their parents and siblings, to establish the kind of adult friendships with parents that many of their own parents did not experience until they had children. These young adults often view their parents with new respect as peers in the work force and recognize themselves as the guests of their parents' hospitality, shedding the sense of entitlement so common to teens and so annoying to parents. They have discarded much of their dependence on peers, but have not yet achieved the independence we recognize as adulthood.
I suspect what we are seeing is a whole new stage in psycho-social development. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the mandatory education act elongated childhood, producing a new stage of development we call adolescence. Today, social, economic and physical changes are combining to create yet another "phase" of development preceding adulthood, which I have chosen to call post adolescence.
It has become more difficult to grow up, choose a profession, develop a sense of security, and support yourself in today's world. As jobs have become more complex, higher education has become the norm. More than 67% of our young go on to college, insuring they will begin their adult lives later, most likely in more debt, and faced with more choices than any of us would have considered possible at their ages. When I was young, as a girl who was good in school, it was quite clear what I would become: a teacher or a nurse. Today, we offer our children thousands of opportunities, we tell them they can do almost anything, then we get annoyed when they are overwhelmed by the options and have difficulty choosing.
Along with the explosion in opportunities, names and varieties of employment, we have developed a sense of identity increasingly dependent on what we do. Consider the first question anyone asks at a cocktail party once the names have been exchanged: "What do you do?" Even though I chose to be a teacher, I never considered that as a source of my identity. My identity came from the town where I grew up, my family's rootedness, and from the family I chose to create. For young people in a mobile society who frequently do not have any place they "come from," in a world where the divorce rate makes marriage and family a very tenuous source of identity, "What do you do?" becomes even more critical. The choices take longer, are changed frequently, and each change causes a subsequent crisis in identity.
Identity as "Catholic" has become even more tenuous. We parents of today's post-adolescents were teens or young adults at the time of the Second Vatican Council. We had grown up with Latin, had rejoiced in the new liturgy, had filled out college religious studies programs, and fought for the reforms of the Council. Prayer in our childhoods had been limited to rote, memorized prayer, and we delighted in teaching our children to talk to God in their own words, to read Scripture, and to ask all the questions we had not been allowed to ask.
Religion is meant to be a bridge between the sacred and the secular. For centuries, the bridge was the focus, its rules, its laws, its control. Our generation did not change that; we simply worked on restructuring the bridge and fought to expand control. But we taught our children they could approach God directly, and when they grew impatient with us, they simply jumped in the river and swam.
It is not that they are not spiritual. They are seeking spiritual directors in larger numbers than any other group in history. They have made spiritual books such as The Celestine Prophecy best sellers. They are the only group other than seniors who have increased their volunteering in projects to assist the poor and the oppressed. They are living the gospel, but they are not reading it. They are spiritual, but they are not religious. Over 90% claim they believe in God, but less than 40% believe religion is relevant. They have adopted a faith that has lost its sense of community. They have chosen the actions of faith and discarded the rituals that support those actions.
The answer we seek is not to the question "How do we bring them back?" That question ignores the history, culture, and faith that has shaped and continues to shape them. That question ignores the possibility that God is speaking to us through them, offering us a deeper understanding, a broader vision. The question is "How do we listen and learn from one another so that we can move forward together?"
Dr. Kathleen Chesto has addressed this issue at length in Exploring the New Family: Parents and Young Adults in Transition from St. Mary's Press.