The Art of Manliness - #609： The 3 Tasks of Moving From Adolescence to Adulthood

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast now a lot of

00:00:11.500 ink has been spilled about how young people today are struggling to transition from adolescence to

00:00:15.920 adulthood but these think pieces are often heavy on blame and light on solutions my guest today

00:00:20.720 takes an understanding approach to the difficulties of growing up as well as offers practical

00:00:24.680 strategies for facilitating the process his name is mark mcconville he's a family clinical

00:00:28.760 psychologist who spent decades working with young clients and he's written a book on what he's found

00:00:32.980 does and doesn't work and getting them become more independent it's called failure to launch while

00:00:37.880 your 20 something hasn't grown up what to do about it we begin our conversation with how mark defines a

00:00:42.600 failure to launch when in his career he started to notice the issue in his young clients and what

00:00:47.060 factors are behind its prevalence today he then explains the idea of emerging adulthood and how

00:00:51.660 it's normal for it to take some time for a 20 something to start feeling like a grown-up mark

00:00:55.700 and i then unpack the three tasks a young person must master to transition to adulthood which

00:01:00.420 includes the discussions of what prevents 20 somethings from taking on grown-up responsibilities

00:01:04.480 how parents need to shift from a supervisory role to a consultant role the importance of getting going

00:01:09.440 in the right direction and why young adults should treat life like climbing a wall we end our

00:01:14.320 conversation with advice to parents on the best way to motivate their kids to tackle the task of growing

00:01:18.480 up there's plenty of insights for both young adults and their parents in this episode after it's over

00:01:22.900 check out our show notes at aom.is slash launch all right mark mcconoville welcome to the show

00:01:35.480 well thank you it's great to be here so you are a clinical psychologist you got a new book out

00:01:40.800 failure to launch while you're 20 something hasn't grown up and what to do about it this is a book

00:01:45.920 geared towards parents who have young adults who are having that hard time transitioning from

00:01:49.820 adolescence to adulthood but i think i mean it could be read by a young person who recognizes that

00:01:56.080 they're having a problem before we get into the the content of your book let's talk about let's do

00:02:00.500 definitions first how do you define in your practice and in the book failure to launch well there's a

00:02:07.140 stage of emerging adulthood as defined by the primary researchers in the field between ages between

00:02:14.680 say 18 and 23 or 24 when your your real task is to move beyond the structured adult oversight of the

00:02:24.900 world of high school where where parents and adults kind of set the agenda they they created the curriculum

00:02:32.380 not only academically but developmentally and you're stepping out beyond that and so now it falls on

00:02:39.260 your shoulders to figure out where am i headed and you know i'm not an adult yet but i i need to be

00:02:44.680 doing something to launch myself in that direction and the kids that that i'm talking about we sometimes

00:02:51.020 think of them as 22 or 23 going on 16 because the the kind of behavior patterns that they're exhibiting

00:02:58.880 would be normative for say a 16 year old who's maybe wrestling a little bit with growing up but at age

00:03:06.080 20 22 23 24 they're really starting to appear as problematic and the failure to launch doesn't

00:03:12.080 necessarily mean like i mean you could still be living with your parents and you're making that

00:03:15.880 transition it just basically means it's sort of like it's an attitude you're taking towards your

00:03:19.600 life you're taking responsibility for your own life yeah absolutely you hit the nail on the head

00:03:24.660 it has really while a lot of these kids are living with parents because they're not making any headway

00:03:31.120 in self-support or certainly they're not ready for financial support but the fact that you're living

00:03:36.180 with your parents doesn't in itself mean anything you could be you know my son was living with us when

00:03:41.320 he was in law school and and and that certainly meant launching so it's more about what the kid is

00:03:47.260 doing or not doing relative to kind of preparing a trajectory for themselves and if mom and dad's

00:03:54.420 support can be a positive part of that then that's great and when did you start noticing your

00:03:59.540 practice an uptick and the number of young adults having this failure to launch i don't have perfect

00:04:04.700 hindsight i'm i'm guessing it was around uh i look back at my journals because i've i've kept a

00:04:09.860 professional journal for decades and it was around the end of the 1990s that i began to get a lot of these

00:04:18.760 referrals kids who were in their 20s and where the therapy work with them just felt so much more like

00:04:26.040 working with an adolescent and adolescence had been a specialty of mine since the beginning of my

00:04:30.880 career and and um the what i learned is that you can do have terrific interesting insightful

00:04:40.320 intriguing conversations with a 22 year old who's kind of stuck and if you don't get their parents

00:04:47.360 involved in the process and start recruiting them as co-therapists the therapy really goes nowhere

00:04:53.420 so i would say it was you know around 2000 would be where i would peg it and what do you think is

00:04:59.480 going on there like what what's going on to increase the number of young people having that

00:05:03.040 hard time transitioning from adolescence to adulthood well there's you know we could probably

00:05:07.600 write a sociological treatise on this some of the more obvious things are that the job market

00:05:13.120 has changed dramatically in the last 50 years the amount of education it takes for you to be

00:05:18.900 a viable candidate for employment that could sustain you and has a future to it is so much different

00:05:26.780 when when i graduated from high school i could have taken a bus cross town applied to kodak for a job

00:05:34.520 and as a an 18 year old i could have you know within six months saved enough money to put a down payment

00:05:41.480 on a car and move out and get in you know those kinds of opportunities when we had a manufacturing

00:05:48.120 culture they existed you could be independent and financially viable by the time i mean kids would

00:05:55.420 they would put down payments on houses in their early 20s but today that's just it just we're in a

00:06:01.700 an economy that's service oriented that's a tech technology oriented and so the preparation you need is so

00:06:10.000 much greater and that means tuition dollars and that usually means mom and dad so and then when

00:06:16.920 we just look at things like the cost of housing and the growth of real wages those have been

00:06:22.260 disappointing trends for anyone that's at that point in life of trying to step toward the adult world

00:06:28.940 and and also you talk about you know parenting has changed as a consequence because parents realize

00:06:33.800 that it's going to take a lot more to get their kids into adulthood so parents are kind of stressing out

00:06:39.880 about parenting more than they did in the past right the idea that you're done when they're 18

00:06:45.200 which which was a just a kind of understood truth back in the day it is just not the case

00:06:52.460 anymore if you're the parent of a someone who's graduating from high school there are lots of ways

00:06:58.640 that you remain involved at the very least as a financial support and as a consultant as a sounding

00:07:05.720 board so yeah parenting it's not over when they turn 18 and these you know we talk about we talk

00:07:12.400 about how parents can be a consultant but some parents they do more than be a consultant they

00:07:15.840 actually just try to like make their kid like just do the stuff for their kid that they should

00:07:19.880 probably be doing themselves yeah you know parents today i i hear this a lot that it's a it's a very

00:07:26.240 standard criticism of contemporary parenting all these helicopter parents and we hear nightmare

00:07:31.640 stories of how college professors get emails from the parents of students and i heard one story of

00:07:38.380 the hr director of a large corporation hearing from a parent about why didn't my daughter get promoted

00:07:45.140 and and those those kinds of anecdotes really make parents look look bad but if you look at the bigger

00:07:52.600 picture there's something very different happening this this generation of parents and i'm going to say

00:07:59.180 broadly from the last 20 years to now it's the most it's this this is the most supported generation

00:08:06.480 of young people if for example brett let's say you're a you're a 14 year old with a learning disability

00:08:13.200 and so you don't find school very appealing and you find it kind of cumbersome and and the year

00:08:20.080 happens to be 1975 or 1980 you are just generally regarded by everyone as kind of a pain in the neck

00:08:28.000 and you're going to quarrel with your teachers your parents are going to fight with you

00:08:31.920 you may be thinking about dropping out of school but if you're that 14 year old today

00:08:37.080 you're going to be looked at much more sympathetically you're going to be evaluated

00:08:42.140 people are going to identify that you've got a learning issue they're going to set up a

00:08:46.740 a very special and supportive academic path for you forward your parents are going to be much more

00:08:53.060 sympathetic so i could go on and on whether you're a poor student or whether you're a student athlete

00:08:59.280 the amount of support that issues from the adult world today is overwhelming so there's a positive

00:09:07.360 side to this phenomenon we are producing better athletes we are we're producing i think academically

00:09:14.580 the kids who come out of high school today maybe they don't have the feet on the ground maturity for

00:09:20.860 running their life but but they are academically in in many cases very well prepared so there's a plus

00:09:28.700 side as well as a minus side something you highlight in the book is about the the recent developments in

00:09:34.700 developmental psychology that kind of gives us some insights about what's going on in a person as

00:09:39.300 they transition from adolescence to adulthood because i think for most people they think okay you're a

00:09:42.980 teenager and then after you're a teenager you're an adult and you're an adult the rest of your life but

00:09:47.780 there's actually something in between that talk about that yeah you're absolutely right i know when

00:09:52.640 i turned 21 i was naive enough to believe that i was supposed to be an adult i internally certainly

00:09:59.980 knew that i wasn't but i never would have admitted that to anyone there's a psychologist named jeffrey

00:10:05.060 arnett and in 1999 he published really a landmark paper where he made the case kind of for the the

00:10:12.400 the jury of established developmental psychology professionals he said you know there's a stage

00:10:19.060 here that we haven't really identified and it's called emerging adulthood and it starts at 18 and

00:10:24.580 it ends at 30 so the notion we had before was that when you turn 21 and and the benchmarks you you were

00:10:33.560 defined an adult by certain benchmarks by getting married by getting a full-time job by having a child

00:10:40.460 and those are things certainly in my era and i'm probably older than you are in my era i had

00:10:46.300 accomplished all those things by the time i was 23 years old and so like it or not i was forced to

00:10:52.520 do my best to behave like an adult what arnett did is is he looked at today's 20-somethings

00:11:00.980 he has he has given literally tens of thousands of questionnaires to kids from countries all over the

00:11:09.060 world and among the the questions he puts to them is do you feel like an adult and he uses a five-point

00:11:16.760 likert scale uh no hardly at all well some of the time well about half of the time much of the time

00:11:23.600 most of the time and what he found i and this is my favorite statistic really in all of behavioral

00:11:30.900 science it is not until 26 and a half years old that half of the people feel like an adult half of

00:11:39.480 the time and so he's made the case that it's no longer a question of hitting these benchmarks

00:11:46.120 marriage uh childbirth it's much more a subjective process a beginning of identity i feel like an

00:11:54.220 adult internally and you adults out there in the world you begin to regard me as an adult

00:11:59.040 and and so that the whole understanding of what it means to grow up has evolved pretty dramatically

00:12:05.160 yeah i thought that was interesting because i mean i i kind of experienced i experienced that too

00:12:09.360 i wasn't until yeah i think yeah about 25 26 that i finally felt like i'm an adult i'm doing adult

00:12:15.260 things and actually feeling that's sort of the interesting thing that you could be doing adult

00:12:18.820 things but not feel like an adult subjectively there could be a gap there right or you're feeling

00:12:23.260 like it in certain circumstances in in the last chapter of my book i write a letter to the 20

00:12:29.480 something and so if you're the parent reader you can print out that letter or contact me for a pdf

00:12:34.960 version and put it in the hands of your 23 year old and one of the things i say is look don't think

00:12:39.880 you're going to feel like an adult all the time that just doesn't happen and we don't want it to

00:12:43.940 happen you know a a truly when i think of my my closest friends the people i really regard as

00:12:51.380 grown-ups they all have a kind of playful childlike adolescent dimension to their personality that they

00:12:58.420 can call on when they need to every grown man is also still a 14 year old boy well in some way

00:13:05.140 every time i do counseling with a distraught wife i will say you know we're all really 14

00:13:12.060 and um which you know as long as you're not 14 all the time you can get away with it right oh so

00:13:19.800 i love about your book you know you i think a lot of these books that are articles that talk about

00:13:23.960 failure to launch they typically talk about the problem but they never offer you know a you know

00:13:28.080 suggestion of how you can you know sort of make that transition and i love it because i think i mean

00:13:33.320 as i was reading your your book i was like man this guy i think he got it because i mean you've had

00:13:36.760 been dealing with you know thousands hundreds of patients that have been going through this or clients

00:13:40.360 so you make the case that there are basically three tasks that an emerging adult has to six to

00:13:46.240 master successfully transition into adulthood yes and the first one is becoming responsible

00:13:51.420 um and i think people think okay responsibility means like showing up on time doing you know going

00:13:57.000 getting a job being financially independent but is there more to responsibility than that

00:14:00.940 oh way more and let me tell you how i how i came up with these three tasks because i'm a i'm not a

00:14:08.580 researcher i'm a psychotherapist i'm a i'm a country doctor so to speak and after and i have my entire

00:14:15.860 career i have kept this this journal of where i would just try to describe the perplexing things that

00:14:23.900 i encounter every day with my clients with myself trying to find language and understanding and

00:14:30.600 explanation and and the question i began to ask myself is what are the psychotherapy themes

00:14:36.700 that keep coming up with these struggling 20 somethings and one of them is there's this

00:14:43.620 what seems on the surface a very peculiar avoidance sometimes almost a phobic avoidance

00:14:50.160 of doing very simple administrative tasks like um i had a a mom and a 19 year old in my office about this is

00:15:00.200 about two years ago and she is their their quarrel is she has said to him you have to call the dentist's

00:15:07.180 office to reschedule your appointment because it conflicts with your work schedule and this kid

00:15:13.760 digs it he will not do it now and i have run into that kind of curious resistance over and over and over

00:15:21.720 again and when as a therapist i succeed in peeling back the layers of the onion and we get to talking

00:15:28.620 about what is that doctor's appointment what's that phone call all about what comes out is i'm i'm

00:15:36.760 afraid they're not going to take me seriously that i'm afraid the receptionist is going to yell at me

00:15:42.680 if i that's the 14 year old boy right there i'm afraid and it says so i avoid doing these simple

00:15:50.400 mechanical administrative responsibilities that adults have always managed my whole life they've my mom has 1.00

00:15:57.520 made all my doctor's appointments they've reminded me when i had to be here i had to be there and now

00:16:03.700 all of a sudden i have to take that on myself and it's not as i as i point out to to the the mom it's

00:16:10.360 not that your son doesn't know how to make a phone call he knows how to make a phone call what he doesn't

00:16:15.640 know how to do is to make one as an adult and so what's underlying in that whole responsibility issue

00:16:21.720 is i'm passing myself off as an adult and you know i don't really feel like an adult i'm a i'm i'm

00:16:30.100 faking it and i'm afraid i'm going to be found out all right so so i mean that's kind of so the first

00:16:35.160 one's responsibility the second task is relational and it sounds like that relational responsibility

00:16:40.100 you're kind of working together like young people have a hard time relating to other adults as adults

00:16:45.840 and so consequently they fail to do things like call the receptionist at the dentist's office right

00:16:51.040 yeah and the the thing about relational i i know a lot of having studied adolescence i've written

00:16:58.180 published a lot about adolescent development the social task of adolescence is to fit in it's to kind

00:17:04.500 of find my place am i one of the cool kids am i one of the nerds am i one of the jocks but i need to

00:17:09.960 find a place that feels relatively secure and and the thing is when you leave high school that's not

00:17:17.220 enough that kind of knowing my place is insufficient and i have had conversations literally hundreds of

00:17:24.660 times with kids who are getting to the end of high school and they're saying i can't find anyone in my

00:17:30.580 school to have a real conversation with meaning conversations that have more of a relational intimacy

00:17:36.580 quality so when when you get when you get into that next stage you need help you you need friends

00:17:43.740 that are going through the same thing someone that can say oh my god yes that sucks i didn't i had 0.64

00:17:48.700 trouble with that too i hate it when my mother asked me to call the dentist's office right and you also

00:17:54.940 need you need to find people that know more stuff than you do and so that they can kind of coach you

00:18:01.540 when you're a freshman in college and some upperclassman says don't take that professor

00:18:07.780 you'll regret it or you know think twice before you sign up for 8 a.m classes then you've got

00:18:14.020 someone that's doing just this little bit of mentoring that helps you to find your way in the

00:18:17.800 world and helps you to build confidence so you know that's when i say becoming more relational

00:18:22.900 it's developing relationships that in some way are instrumental to my my own personal process of

00:18:30.560 growing up let's go back a little bit to the responsibility issue because so okay so it's

00:18:35.580 these kids the reason why they don't take responsibility is because they they question

00:18:40.300 whether they're capable of doing it and like you said sometimes they're capable of doing they can

00:18:44.080 make a phone call but the thing that holds them back is will i be taken seriously so how do you

00:18:49.180 close that gap like how do you help your clients overcome the sense of i don't know embarrassment

00:18:54.580 that you know someone's not going to take them yeah shame that they're not going to be taken

00:18:57.860 seriously as an adult right well the first thing i did because they almost always singularly think

00:19:03.520 that this is something wrong with them and so it's a secret they won't acknowledge it i'm thinking of a

00:19:09.480 kid who um his dad took his car away because their their deal was you can have a car as long as you're at

00:19:16.900 college because he lived about 30 miles from the school he could drive back and forth and the dad said

00:19:22.780 look you flunked out you know the car's gone he had an apartment here in cleveland on cedar road

00:19:28.240 right down there about two miles from a brand new massive shopping center and the dad said you they're

00:19:36.060 hiring they're just opening up you'll take the bus back and forth to work well this kid you'd think

00:19:41.560 that the father asked him to jump off a cliff you know into a raging sea and i watched them go

00:19:47.840 back and forth in the office and i finally excused the dad i said would you wait in the waiting room

00:19:54.580 for us and i sat with the kid one-on-one i looked at him i gave him kind of this uh this little twinkle

00:20:00.640 in my eye smile and i said you don't know how to take a bus do you and he just had one of these like

00:20:07.180 like he'd been caught you know and i said no really do you pay when you get on or do you pay when

00:20:12.960 you get off he had no idea i said how about this next saturday your dad's going to drive in to your

00:20:22.060 apartment the two of you are going to take take the bus go have breakfast at one of the new restaurants

00:20:27.340 and take the bus back it's the first thing i have to do as a therapist is de-shame the whole issue

00:20:33.940 because i want to tell him i don't know whether i have to pay when i get on or i have to pay when i get

00:20:41.440 off and anytime i have to take the rapid train into downtown cleveland i stop and ask my wife

00:20:47.420 how much is the fare when do i have to do it if you can if you understand that other people share

00:20:53.880 the same uncertainty you begin to feel less freakish about it so that's i try to normalize it

00:21:00.340 and i try to get someone to instruct them the kid with the um who wouldn't call the dentist office

00:21:06.320 i had the mom i just said mom would you call the dentist office right here on speakerphone and 1.00

00:21:12.260 just reschedule the appointment which she did and the kid just kind of listened and said oh

00:21:17.700 yeah okay i could do that so de-shaming it giving some modeling showing how it's done

00:21:24.700 that that usually helps kids to move forward and what any insights or advice on parents who you know

00:21:31.280 maybe they don't have a 20 something yet but maybe they don't want to have a 20 something that has

00:21:35.240 that sort of issue like what can what can parents do sort of proactively when they're teenagers to

00:21:40.500 prevent that well and on one um radio show when i was being interviewed and they had call in

00:21:45.400 a dad called in and said you know i'm finding this all very interesting what can i do with my three-year-old

00:21:51.640 and i kind of scratched my head and i thought well what can you do with a three-year-old i said well you

00:21:58.200 can you can go into the playroom and you can sit down on the floor and say come on honey we are going

00:22:02.980 to pick up these toys together you can create this this these little loops of accountability

00:22:08.560 that that you you are um you have a job you're part of this family and kids who have that and some

00:22:16.940 parents do it so skillfully they're not just hounding their kids about chores they're presenting

00:22:22.980 it more as like we we need your help around here we're all part of this the model i use is kids that

00:22:30.600 grow up in farming communities because those parents are never quarreling with their kids

00:22:36.120 about responsibilities because the kid views responsibility as essential to the family

00:22:42.940 functioning to the community functioning and so it's a little hard to harder to do that if you live

00:22:48.600 in suburbia and you don't have a chicken coop in the backyard where the eggs have to be collected

00:22:53.540 but it is a kind of attitude that parents can have about recruiting their kids for being

00:22:59.420 responsible for themselves so that's a big part of it and you certainly you know i i see it in fact

00:23:06.780 as i have this book has gotten out and i've heard from parents i'm i'm hearing them say oh my god i'm

00:23:12.680 working on that issue with my 12 year old you know how how do we get her to clean up after herself 1.00

00:23:17.360 how do we get her to monitor her own homework we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our 1.00

00:23:21.760 sponsors and now back to the show so yeah it's thinking about it so going back to that idea of

00:23:29.360 the task of becoming more relational as you said adolescence you're basically focused on your peers

00:23:34.620 whether you fit in whether they're fun to hang out with but as kids get older at the end of

00:23:39.720 adolescence they're looking for more meaningful relationships and this requires and it's fairly 0.97

00:23:44.940 like i think i remember growing when i was in that age like 18 you know early 20s i thought it was

00:23:50.680 really weird that transition to like working with adults as other adults that that's really hard

00:23:57.540 because like you know at one point you're always like okay they're the authority figure if you're

00:24:01.020 you know if they're above 18 i got to listen to this person once you're 18 they start treating you

00:24:05.960 completely different they treat you like another adult and that's it can be weird it can be weird but

00:24:10.760 it's also very affirming i'm like you i remember the jobs that i had during my college years i sort of

00:24:18.600 hard labor jobs and i had a year a summer working at a one of the old style state mental hospitals

00:24:25.600 and i was doing something that mattered to the organization and and sometimes when you're young

00:24:31.620 you have to prove yourself a little bit you know are you just a a college you know punk or no i'm not

00:24:38.680 i'm actually a hard worker but getting being treated that way as somehow um you're doing making an

00:24:46.480 important contribution to the labor site or or the kid who's working in a grocery store and and realizes

00:24:53.100 they're really counting on him to keep the fruits and vegetables restocked that's a transformative

00:24:58.760 kind of experience and it's not unusual for a parent you know a parent will run into say a parent of a

00:25:06.060 high school student runs into their kid's boss and let's say the kid works at a grocery store and

00:25:12.200 and the boss says oh my god we love having your son he is he's so helpful and he's so and the parent just

00:25:18.740 kind of cocks their head and says what wait are you are you sure i mean my son is johnny jones yeah

00:25:24.640 johnny jones he's terrific and the kid is literally has a different experience of self when he finds

00:25:31.700 himself taken seriously and providing an essential function in the adult world whereas at home it all

00:25:38.580 feels more aggressive you know you're making me do these chores you know it's not my turn my my brother

00:25:46.180 should have been emptying the dishwasher why are you making me do it and part of the relational

00:25:50.960 development that needs to happen to enter adulthood seems to be shifting from having your parents and

00:25:55.960 other adults solve your problems and tell you what to do to seeing them more as consultants who you can

00:26:01.520 still look to for advice if you need it but the relationship becomes less vertical and more horizontal

00:26:07.680 yes yeah yeah i have a young guy that he's just just graduating now from from high school got admitted

00:26:16.180 to i think four or five really wonderful universities and the parents who were sort of extraordinarily

00:26:23.700 successful business people they announced to him now not recently we have we've solved this problem but

00:26:30.480 but they announced to him back in september you are going to a business school and if you're not going to

00:26:36.600 a business school we're not paying for it now that is that's the kind of parenting that is appropriate

00:26:44.560 up to about age 12 right i'm not going to let you make a decision that i perceive to be

00:26:52.120 the wrong decision or a destructive decision but at age 18 that's preposterous to be i am going to be

00:27:01.360 your supervisor and make decisions for you as if you were a child and so what that i worked with the

00:27:08.060 parents and what we got them to do was to shift from from operating as supervisors to operating as

00:27:14.920 consultants and in the consultant mode they were able to say things like well you might want to think

00:27:20.940 about business school because you know you're awfully bright you really have a mind for it and you did

00:27:26.820 really well in your high school economics class and we just think we just think you'd have a very bright future

00:27:32.580 in it but you know which school you decide and what major you decide is really up to you so in that sense

00:27:41.440 they acted as they gave an opinion but they conceded that the decision-making power lay on the side of their

00:27:49.020 kid and that's what i mean by being a consultant i i consult at several schools i have lots to say

00:27:55.100 i'm full of opinions but i have zero power and i don't volunteer those opinions unless somebody

00:28:01.680 asks them ask me for them that's what a consultant is right and i imagine i mean part of that being a

00:28:06.820 consultant the parent has to realize they might their kid might make a decision they think is wrong or

00:28:12.100 just dumb or it is a dumb decision and they have to be okay with that yes they really have to and in 0.55

00:28:17.660 fact it paradoxically it increases their influence over their their child i give a just a classic 0.98

00:28:25.960 textbook example i had a family with a 24 year old who lived at home now he really didn't present

00:28:32.460 problems he wasn't very ambitious this was a parents were educated and successful he had a blue

00:28:38.460 collar job but he handled it faithfully he went to work he got his paycheck he didn't cause anyone any

00:28:44.560 trouble but he was a marijuana smoker not that unusual for a 24 year old in today's day and age

00:28:53.020 and the dad was was um he was like a dad out of the 1950s over my dead body will you be a marijuana 0.54

00:29:02.060 smoker and they had gone round and round and round and that's what brought them in to see me was the

00:29:08.240 conflict over the pot smoking and what this kid it was uh it was a tug of war they'd come home and

00:29:15.260 walk up the steps and they would smell the pot wafting down from the third floor and i finally it

00:29:22.220 took me a long time to persuade the dad i said look i have some very scientifically based concerns and

00:29:29.640 reservations about young people smoking marijuana the research actually is much more concerned about

00:29:36.060 pre-18 year olds not so much about post-18 year olds but i said you know at 24 like it or not

00:29:42.660 he really that's his business whether he chooses to smoke pot and and dad didn't like hearing that

00:29:50.040 but eventually conceded that that made sense i said on the other hand whether someone smokes pot in

00:29:58.580 your house that's completely your business so the dad kind of re-changed his approach he went to the

00:30:05.740 kid and said look you know how i feel about pot i think it's a terrible decision blah blah blah i gave

00:30:13.440 his whole kind of you know reefer madness kind of uh commentary on it but then ended with but it's your

00:30:22.340 decision to make and i am going to stop fighting with you about it and stop hounding you about it

00:30:27.820 however under no circumstances do i want you smoking pot under my roof and that kid's behavior changed

00:30:37.060 instantaneously because he was being approached now as an adult rather than as a junior as a

00:30:44.900 a teenager or a child and and and the kid who was i would see him individually he didn't like it but

00:30:52.140 he saw it as a reasonable set of conditions so that's the that's what shifting into a consultant

00:30:59.100 mode is you may make decisions i don't really think are good but i'm gonna recognize your right to make

00:31:06.520 them so the final task is becoming relevant what do you mean by that well that's that's the hardest one

00:31:12.340 to define but as a therapist in a in a way it was the easiest one to register when i would be talking

00:31:20.040 with a young person i had a sense of they're moving towards something they are interested in having a

00:31:28.600 future they weren't they didn't have their head in the sand they weren't you know i can think of the

00:31:33.620 kid who's living in an apartment with four other guys who are high school graduates and they are all

00:31:40.320 playing xbox about 12 hours a day and living off the family dole now those young folks are not heading

00:31:47.560 anywhere and their notion of future is you know what are we going to do tomorrow call of duty or

00:31:53.760 fortnight that's their idea of preparing for the future but when you're talking with someone who is

00:31:58.940 they really they're engaged in some kind of activity school is the most obvious one the kid who is

00:32:05.740 who's been out of high school for a year and is saying i really want to look at what what they

00:32:10.760 got have up at community college you know i've been thinking about this or that or the other thing

00:32:15.480 that's that you know that kid has a sense of the future he doesn't know exactly where he's going to end

00:32:20.260 up the difference between a 19 year old that tells me he and his band are going to make it big

00:32:26.540 and that's the extent of his future planning versus the 19 year old who tells me the same thing

00:32:32.320 but he's also enrolled in a program at the community college for learning sound technology

00:32:40.080 for the recording business now that's a kid that's you know i hope his band makes it but he's also

00:32:46.540 doing something that says i know there's a wider future and i've got to do something to prepare for

00:32:52.180 it that's that you know my word of relevance is i i get that i that there is a space for me somewhere

00:32:59.400 in the there's a parking space in the adult world i don't know what it is i don't know exactly where

00:33:04.980 i'm headed but i'm working in that direction and when when i have a kid in my office who doesn't have

00:33:11.460 that where there is this kind of sometimes very explicit sometimes implicit sense of despair

00:33:17.580 like like i want time to stop i'm just i'm just doing the thing i'm doing to bide time

00:33:25.080 and to avoid having to do anything that's you know that's really challenging or that carries

00:33:30.440 me into the future it's having a sense of direction right that's that's really what relevance is i have

00:33:37.200 a sense of a direction forward i may not know where i'm going to end up but i have a direction

00:33:42.500 yeah and i mean over the years we've gotten a lot of i've gotten a lot of letters from young men who

00:33:46.520 are like 18 in their early 20s and they say like i don't know what i'm supposed to do with my life

00:33:51.120 and as a consequence they like don't do anything because they think they have to have like this

00:33:55.260 perfect plan yeah you got it you don't need that my typical advice is like man just get started with

00:34:00.120 something and as you get going you'll notice things you know opportunities start opening up

00:34:04.740 yeah you're that you're talking about what i call a sense of direction and that of the i talked about

00:34:11.600 how kids think they have to do it on their own the other theme that comes up probably 75 percent of

00:34:17.860 the time is just what you said i'm 19 i'm 20 i'm 21 years old and i don't know what i'm going to do

00:34:24.960 for my life and the interpretation that kid makes is i'm somehow behind the pack and i'm screwed and i

00:34:32.980 point out to them there there's a wonderful piece of research where where someone asked people who were

00:34:40.760 in their 40s and 50s about their work life and one of the questions was it's a sort of true agree or

00:34:48.700 disagree and the question was i love what i do i can't imagine doing anything else for a living and

00:34:55.920 it turns out only about 15 percent of the adult population will endorse that item so it's it's a

00:35:02.700 small group and what the researcher did was singled out those people and then interviewed them to kind

00:35:09.420 of backtrack so how did you find this thing this niche that feels so perfect for you turns out

00:35:16.000 that the the center of the bell curve for when people found that path is between ages 28 and 30

00:35:23.660 and and most so these kids who are thinking i'm 22 and i don't know what i'm going to do for a

00:35:28.700 lifelong career they're just laboring under a a very common misunderstanding of how a life career

00:35:37.920 emerges the researcher who's done all this jeffrey arnett he breaks up the 20s into three stages

00:35:45.160 the first is launching which we talked a little bit about then the middle one which was you know

00:35:50.160 it's sort of like if you go to college when you get out of college into your late 20s he called

00:35:54.780 exploring and he points out that you're going to have something like 3.1 romantic

00:36:00.720 relationships in that time you're going to have close to seven jobs actually in that time but in

00:36:08.420 every one of those engagements you're going to learn something about who you are about what turns

00:36:13.860 you off about what turns you on it so often happens that someone takes that that beginning level

00:36:19.640 boring job like you point out i'm doing something but it just it doesn't intrigue me but i do it really

00:36:27.240 well and then someone at the next level up retires and they pull me you know and it's that kind of

00:36:33.260 unpredictable path so i often say to these kids look and this is an image i use in the book it is

00:36:39.340 not a highway into your future it's a climbing wall and on a climbing wall you don't plot your course

00:36:44.900 you get one handhold and one foothold and then you look for the next and you don't know what the

00:36:51.300 second one is until you've established the first one and then you take the next one you move your

00:36:56.620 foot you move your hand then you figure out where do i go from here and that when you look at real

00:37:01.180 people with satisfying careers almost always that's the kind of path they describe and i think one of

00:37:09.240 the big reasons why kids you know transitioners have that hard time because when they're in high

00:37:13.700 school there's always these like steps you take like i do this i take this ap class then i go this

00:37:18.900 and i do this once you reach adulthood it's not like that anymore so it's it's a big shock to

00:37:23.940 finally realize oh things just aren't set out for me there isn't a you know 12-step program i got to

00:37:29.840 follow to become an adult exactly i just got to get moving exactly developmentalists have this concept

00:37:36.040 that they call the life structure and it's it's it's in your life or my life it's what we do

00:37:42.680 where we go the people places and things that we interact with on a regular basis our primary

00:37:49.700 relationships our purposes our obligations well in high school your life structure that is designed

00:37:56.880 by the adult world even if you're the kid that cuts class there's a place you're supposed to be

00:38:02.640 and that's class even if you don't do any work there's stuff you should be doing so there is a

00:38:08.240 there is a defined structure a path forward and and you can you know if you just can you know

00:38:15.040 abide by it more or less it will carry you forward and you you will have opportunities available

00:38:21.120 when you're 18 that you didn't have at 14 now you graduate from high school and it's open range

00:38:28.100 you know do you do you go to school what about the armed services you'd rather work well what kind

00:38:35.380 of a job there's so many possibilities and there's no one that can tell you look this is this is the one

00:38:40.640 that was made for you you all of a sudden become the decision maker and that's where that that's

00:38:47.380 significant rise in the the kind of anxiety water table occurs when you move on from high school

00:38:55.220 you're now the you're the architect and i and i think the thing that helps a lot of young people

00:39:00.120 is like them listening to adults who'd say i felt the same way too like this is normal because i think a

00:39:06.380 lot of young people like think that there's something wrong with them if they feel like that

00:39:09.800 and the reality is no that's completely you're supposed to feel like that and you'll be fine

00:39:14.280 that's right you're absolutely right and that's when i get those kids like i really think there's

00:39:19.840 something freakishly wrong with me because i don't know i say tell me about your aunts and uncles

00:39:24.380 give me give me a little the family tree i say okay look i want you to promise me you will call your

00:39:31.380 uncle harry tonight and ask him if he would be willing to tell you what it was like for him at age 20

00:39:37.540 would you sit down with your mom and dad and ask them i mean getting you're right if they can get

00:39:43.720 that that realistic sense of perspective from adults and often you know dad doesn't want to say

00:39:51.600 yeah i flunked out of college after a semester and a half because i was partying too much and then i

00:40:00.160 worked for a year and then i went back to school and then i went on to get my mba and then i went on to

00:40:06.560 start my corporate you know whatever the kid has no idea that there was some significant stumbles

00:40:12.160 early in the path and i really think it helps kids it it humanizes the whole business of growing up

00:40:19.280 when adults are willing to share that stuff with them so these are the three big tasks and you know

00:40:24.340 because a parent who's listening to this thinks okay this is great now i gotta motivate my kid

00:40:28.900 to do these things but you're talking about the book like

00:40:31.980 no trying to thinking that you can motivate your kid to do this stuff probably it's going to backfire

00:40:36.920 on you well it's very interesting brett there there are if we really did a random sample of 100

00:40:42.720 parents of of 22 year olds some of them use the old-fashioned methods you know get out of bed and

00:40:49.120 go apply for a job and with a certain percent of kids they they they move forward because they don't

00:40:55.260 want their parents nagging at them i went off to college and i signed up because i don't know my dad

00:41:00.380 would have been furious if i didn't so there is a percentage of the population for whom the parents

00:41:06.140 don't really have to do anything elegantly but the kids who make their way into my office and who made

00:41:12.580 their way into my book those parents have tried all that stuff and it not only doesn't work it's just

00:41:18.640 making the relationship more and more conflicted and and those parents really have to adopt a different

00:41:26.860 perspective on motivation they have to create necessity there's a story i tell in the book that

00:41:33.140 i think captures the entire outlook on motivation this was a dad whose 19 year old son was a terrific

00:41:43.320 kid by all description he tried culinary school just didn't like it and now he was home he wasn't a

00:41:50.620 drug user he was a nice kid he had a girlfriend and dad got him a car because he knew that without

00:41:58.020 a car he wasn't very likely going to be able to find work and then get himself back and forth to work

00:42:03.440 but this kid's effort at job search was really it was a textbook yeah i filled out an application

00:42:11.360 yesterday right one one or two a week was enough and the dad was after him and after him and after him

00:42:18.480 and i he he came to me and said what can i do to to motivate him and i said does he have any bills

00:42:26.540 and the dad said bills he doesn't have any income how could he have bills i said no no no it works the

00:42:33.200 opposite the opposite way and then the dad stopped and said well he sort of does and that is when i got

00:42:41.020 him the car it's a used car we got it six months ago and he we agreed to go habsies the payment was i

00:42:47.720 think six hundred dollars a month i'll i'll pay three hundred he'll pay three hundred i said how's

00:42:54.740 that gone he said well the first month he gave me 150 bucks i haven't seen a penny since then

00:42:59.880 and i'm after him to do it but he doesn't have any money so i thought for a bit and i said how's this

00:43:06.540 is this paid up this is the old how's it set up and it's the old uh payment coupon kind of arrangement

00:43:13.400 you send your payment in with the coupon and i said why don't you try this next month next month

00:43:20.400 you give him the coupon book and a check for three hundred dollars he looked at me like oh it never

00:43:30.160 occurred to him and all we did was we took the the dilemma which is how are we going to pay for this

00:43:36.720 car and keep it from being repossessed the dilemma was on the dad's side of the boundary it was it had

00:43:42.300 become his business somehow he wasn't willing to let the car become repossessed because my god he'll

00:43:47.900 never get a job if i let that happen well let's put that dilemma on the other side of the boundary

00:43:54.120 so now it becomes the kid's dilemma how do i keep this car from being repossessed and that's the the

00:44:01.720 in a nutshell it's how do we create necessity that the kid will then respond to by by adjusting by

00:44:10.500 adapting by creatively solving a problem that's the the the mystery of motivation is has to do with

00:44:18.280 the parent thinking how do i create that system of necessity most obvious thing is is going to your

00:44:25.400 kid and saying oh here's your portion of the family cell phone bill it has to be paid by such and such a

00:44:33.380 time most kids are on their parents plan the parent you know it takes a simple visit to the website

00:44:40.820 and uh inactivate click on the inactivate button for the service to be talked up that kid will find a

00:44:46.460 way to pay for that cell phone bill pronto because of course it's the center of his social life no that

00:44:52.280 makes that makes progress that's creative adjustment is what what that's called that yeah that's the term

00:44:57.460 for it is um i'm i'm confronted with something that perplexes me it's a challenge but it's necessary i

00:45:05.900 can't just sidestep it and i i push myself to do or learn something i didn't know how to do before i i

00:45:13.120 love the example of if you know how to change a flat tire you you experience creative adjustment because

00:45:19.880 you didn't take the manual one day go out into the garage and say you know i'm going to teach

00:45:25.420 myself how to change a tire i mean a few people have done that but most of us we found ourself at

00:45:31.920 the side of a road like oh my god now what get out the manual find out where the jack is find out

00:45:38.900 where the spare is and you know half an hour later you have a new skill changing flat tires that's

00:45:45.680 creative adjustment and in all this you know as you're as a young adults making that transition

00:45:50.440 adulthood parents can still be there to support but again that the idea is you want them

00:45:55.140 the parents to be more of a consultant instead of uh an enabler like they want that relationship to

00:45:59.700 change from like when they had it with the 12 year old to compare they have with an 18 year old

00:46:05.000 absolutely i i am a huge opponent to what's called tough love i think if you've got a struggling 20

00:46:10.480 something i i want it if i'm the therapist of that struggling 20 something i want him or her to have

00:46:17.660 parents who are available who are emotionally empathetic who are open to conversations i don't

00:46:25.320 want them bailing them out and paying all their bills and you know keeping them on the family dole

00:46:30.320 but i want them to be available you know son if i can help you i've done a lot of job searches in my

00:46:37.340 life i know a lot about how that works just ask and i'd be happy to to help you out i'm not going to

00:46:43.520 impose what i know on you but it's available and i then as a therapist i try to get kids to see your

00:46:51.980 parents not trying to control you this is not you don't have to prove your independence your parent is

00:46:57.100 is a wealth of information and wisdom and you got to tap into it and if the parent is managing

00:47:05.100 themselves as a consultant the kid is much more likely to turn to them with that with that

00:47:11.720 significant question dad how what do i how should i approach a job do i wear a tie to a job interview

00:47:18.640 you know simple questions that dad probably knows the answer to and and you're the 19 or 20 or 21

00:47:24.680 year old may not and i think the thing that kind of keeps parents up at night is think about how much

00:47:30.080 financial support they should give their kid when they're making this transition of adulthood and it

00:47:35.140 sounds like you know as long as your kid's making those moves towards adulthood like they're going to

00:47:39.360 school they've got a job you know it's okay if a parent gives a bit of financial support because

00:47:43.860 as you said earlier the economy is different now it's hard to make that transition to adulthood with

00:47:49.540 without a you know without a about a significant amount of income i completely agree with that brett

00:47:55.140 the the the phrase i use for that is i call it the 49 rule i am going to help my kid out up to 49

00:48:04.600 of what it takes to get a life moving to get a life going there is nothing i mean if you're sending

00:48:10.940 your kid to college there's chances that you are putting tremendous financial strain on yourself

00:48:15.960 if your kid is doing the work of college taking the classes getting the credits moving toward a

00:48:21.280 future amen god bless you that's there's nothing wrong with that at all well mark this has been a

00:48:27.080 great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book and your work well i i have a

00:48:31.600 modest website mark mcconville phd.com it's got some information about the book tells a little bit

00:48:37.540 about me it's got information on all the other things that i've published if people were interested

00:48:43.320 and that would be my and it also has links to um i've had it in our articles published in the new

00:48:50.160 york times and the wall street journal and it has links to those two articles fantastic with mark

00:48:55.460 mcconville thanks so much for your time it's been a pleasure it has certainly been a pleasure for me

00:48:59.220 thanks so much my guest is mark mcconville he is the author of the book failure to launch it's

00:49:04.040 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find out more information about his work

00:49:07.820 at his website mark mcconville phd.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash launch where you

00:49:14.200 find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:49:16.600 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at art of manliness.com

00:49:29.080 where you find our podcast archives well as thousands of articles we've written over the

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00:49:59.860 and until next time this is brett mckay remind you not only to listen to the aom podcast but put

00:50:03.680 what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - May 11, 2020

#609： The 3 Tasks of Moving From Adolescence to Adulthood

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