#609： The 3 Tasks of Moving From Adolescence to Adulthood
Episode Stats
Summary
Mark McConoville is a family clinical psychologist who has spent decades working with young clients, and he s written a new book geared toward parents who have young adults who are having a hard time transitioning from adolescence to adulthood. In this episode, we discuss why it s normal for it to take some time for a 20-something to start feeling like a grown-up, and what to do about it.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast now a lot of
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ink has been spilled about how young people today are struggling to transition from adolescence to
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adulthood but these think pieces are often heavy on blame and light on solutions my guest today
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takes an understanding approach to the difficulties of growing up as well as offers practical
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strategies for facilitating the process his name is mark mcconville he's a family clinical
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psychologist who spent decades working with young clients and he's written a book on what he's found
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does and doesn't work and getting them become more independent it's called failure to launch while
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your 20 something hasn't grown up what to do about it we begin our conversation with how mark defines a
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failure to launch when in his career he started to notice the issue in his young clients and what
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factors are behind its prevalence today he then explains the idea of emerging adulthood and how
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it's normal for it to take some time for a 20 something to start feeling like a grown-up mark
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and i then unpack the three tasks a young person must master to transition to adulthood which
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includes the discussions of what prevents 20 somethings from taking on grown-up responsibilities
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how parents need to shift from a supervisory role to a consultant role the importance of getting going
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in the right direction and why young adults should treat life like climbing a wall we end our
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conversation with advice to parents on the best way to motivate their kids to tackle the task of growing
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up there's plenty of insights for both young adults and their parents in this episode after it's over
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check out our show notes at aom.is slash launch all right mark mcconoville welcome to the show
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well thank you it's great to be here so you are a clinical psychologist you got a new book out
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failure to launch while you're 20 something hasn't grown up and what to do about it this is a book
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geared towards parents who have young adults who are having that hard time transitioning from
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adolescence to adulthood but i think i mean it could be read by a young person who recognizes that
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they're having a problem before we get into the the content of your book let's talk about let's do
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definitions first how do you define in your practice and in the book failure to launch well there's a
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stage of emerging adulthood as defined by the primary researchers in the field between ages between
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say 18 and 23 or 24 when your your real task is to move beyond the structured adult oversight of the
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world of high school where where parents and adults kind of set the agenda they they created the curriculum
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not only academically but developmentally and you're stepping out beyond that and so now it falls on
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your shoulders to figure out where am i headed and you know i'm not an adult yet but i i need to be
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doing something to launch myself in that direction and the kids that that i'm talking about we sometimes
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think of them as 22 or 23 going on 16 because the the kind of behavior patterns that they're exhibiting
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would be normative for say a 16 year old who's maybe wrestling a little bit with growing up but at age
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20 22 23 24 they're really starting to appear as problematic and the failure to launch doesn't
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necessarily mean like i mean you could still be living with your parents and you're making that
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transition it just basically means it's sort of like it's an attitude you're taking towards your
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life you're taking responsibility for your own life yeah absolutely you hit the nail on the head
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it has really while a lot of these kids are living with parents because they're not making any headway
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in self-support or certainly they're not ready for financial support but the fact that you're living
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with your parents doesn't in itself mean anything you could be you know my son was living with us when
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he was in law school and and and that certainly meant launching so it's more about what the kid is
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doing or not doing relative to kind of preparing a trajectory for themselves and if mom and dad's
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support can be a positive part of that then that's great and when did you start noticing your
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practice an uptick and the number of young adults having this failure to launch i don't have perfect
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hindsight i'm i'm guessing it was around uh i look back at my journals because i've i've kept a
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professional journal for decades and it was around the end of the 1990s that i began to get a lot of these
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referrals kids who were in their 20s and where the therapy work with them just felt so much more like
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working with an adolescent and adolescence had been a specialty of mine since the beginning of my
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career and and um the what i learned is that you can do have terrific interesting insightful
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intriguing conversations with a 22 year old who's kind of stuck and if you don't get their parents
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involved in the process and start recruiting them as co-therapists the therapy really goes nowhere
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so i would say it was you know around 2000 would be where i would peg it and what do you think is
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going on there like what what's going on to increase the number of young people having that
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hard time transitioning from adolescence to adulthood well there's you know we could probably
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write a sociological treatise on this some of the more obvious things are that the job market
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has changed dramatically in the last 50 years the amount of education it takes for you to be
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a viable candidate for employment that could sustain you and has a future to it is so much different
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when when i graduated from high school i could have taken a bus cross town applied to kodak for a job
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and as a an 18 year old i could have you know within six months saved enough money to put a down payment
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on a car and move out and get in you know those kinds of opportunities when we had a manufacturing
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culture they existed you could be independent and financially viable by the time i mean kids would
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they would put down payments on houses in their early 20s but today that's just it just we're in a
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an economy that's service oriented that's a tech technology oriented and so the preparation you need is so
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much greater and that means tuition dollars and that usually means mom and dad so and then when
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we just look at things like the cost of housing and the growth of real wages those have been
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disappointing trends for anyone that's at that point in life of trying to step toward the adult world
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and and also you talk about you know parenting has changed as a consequence because parents realize
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that it's going to take a lot more to get their kids into adulthood so parents are kind of stressing out
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about parenting more than they did in the past right the idea that you're done when they're 18
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which which was a just a kind of understood truth back in the day it is just not the case
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anymore if you're the parent of a someone who's graduating from high school there are lots of ways
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that you remain involved at the very least as a financial support and as a consultant as a sounding
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board so yeah parenting it's not over when they turn 18 and these you know we talk about we talk
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about how parents can be a consultant but some parents they do more than be a consultant they
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actually just try to like make their kid like just do the stuff for their kid that they should
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probably be doing themselves yeah you know parents today i i hear this a lot that it's a it's a very
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standard criticism of contemporary parenting all these helicopter parents and we hear nightmare
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stories of how college professors get emails from the parents of students and i heard one story of
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the hr director of a large corporation hearing from a parent about why didn't my daughter get promoted
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and and those those kinds of anecdotes really make parents look look bad but if you look at the bigger
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picture there's something very different happening this this generation of parents and i'm going to say
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broadly from the last 20 years to now it's the most it's this this is the most supported generation
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of young people if for example brett let's say you're a you're a 14 year old with a learning disability
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and so you don't find school very appealing and you find it kind of cumbersome and and the year
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happens to be 1975 or 1980 you are just generally regarded by everyone as kind of a pain in the neck
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and you're going to quarrel with your teachers your parents are going to fight with you
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you may be thinking about dropping out of school but if you're that 14 year old today
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you're going to be looked at much more sympathetically you're going to be evaluated
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people are going to identify that you've got a learning issue they're going to set up a
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a very special and supportive academic path for you forward your parents are going to be much more
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sympathetic so i could go on and on whether you're a poor student or whether you're a student athlete
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the amount of support that issues from the adult world today is overwhelming so there's a positive
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side to this phenomenon we are producing better athletes we are we're producing i think academically
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the kids who come out of high school today maybe they don't have the feet on the ground maturity for
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running their life but but they are academically in in many cases very well prepared so there's a plus
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side as well as a minus side something you highlight in the book is about the the recent developments in
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developmental psychology that kind of gives us some insights about what's going on in a person as
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they transition from adolescence to adulthood because i think for most people they think okay you're a
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teenager and then after you're a teenager you're an adult and you're an adult the rest of your life but
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there's actually something in between that talk about that yeah you're absolutely right i know when
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i turned 21 i was naive enough to believe that i was supposed to be an adult i internally certainly
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knew that i wasn't but i never would have admitted that to anyone there's a psychologist named jeffrey
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arnett and in 1999 he published really a landmark paper where he made the case kind of for the the
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the jury of established developmental psychology professionals he said you know there's a stage
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here that we haven't really identified and it's called emerging adulthood and it starts at 18 and
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it ends at 30 so the notion we had before was that when you turn 21 and and the benchmarks you you were
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defined an adult by certain benchmarks by getting married by getting a full-time job by having a child
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and those are things certainly in my era and i'm probably older than you are in my era i had
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accomplished all those things by the time i was 23 years old and so like it or not i was forced to
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do my best to behave like an adult what arnett did is is he looked at today's 20-somethings
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he has he has given literally tens of thousands of questionnaires to kids from countries all over the
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world and among the the questions he puts to them is do you feel like an adult and he uses a five-point
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likert scale uh no hardly at all well some of the time well about half of the time much of the time
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most of the time and what he found i and this is my favorite statistic really in all of behavioral
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science it is not until 26 and a half years old that half of the people feel like an adult half of
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the time and so he's made the case that it's no longer a question of hitting these benchmarks
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marriage uh childbirth it's much more a subjective process a beginning of identity i feel like an
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adult internally and you adults out there in the world you begin to regard me as an adult
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and and so that the whole understanding of what it means to grow up has evolved pretty dramatically
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yeah i thought that was interesting because i mean i i kind of experienced i experienced that too
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i wasn't until yeah i think yeah about 25 26 that i finally felt like i'm an adult i'm doing adult
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things and actually feeling that's sort of the interesting thing that you could be doing adult
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things but not feel like an adult subjectively there could be a gap there right or you're feeling
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like it in certain circumstances in in the last chapter of my book i write a letter to the 20
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something and so if you're the parent reader you can print out that letter or contact me for a pdf
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version and put it in the hands of your 23 year old and one of the things i say is look don't think
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you're going to feel like an adult all the time that just doesn't happen and we don't want it to
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happen you know a a truly when i think of my my closest friends the people i really regard as
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grown-ups they all have a kind of playful childlike adolescent dimension to their personality that they
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can call on when they need to every grown man is also still a 14 year old boy well in some way
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every time i do counseling with a distraught wife i will say you know we're all really 14
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and um which you know as long as you're not 14 all the time you can get away with it right oh so
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i love about your book you know you i think a lot of these books that are articles that talk about
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failure to launch they typically talk about the problem but they never offer you know a you know
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suggestion of how you can you know sort of make that transition and i love it because i think i mean
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as i was reading your your book i was like man this guy i think he got it because i mean you've had
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been dealing with you know thousands hundreds of patients that have been going through this or clients
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so you make the case that there are basically three tasks that an emerging adult has to six to
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master successfully transition into adulthood yes and the first one is becoming responsible
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um and i think people think okay responsibility means like showing up on time doing you know going
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getting a job being financially independent but is there more to responsibility than that
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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
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researcher i'm a psychotherapist i'm a i'm a country doctor so to speak and after and i have my entire
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career i have kept this this journal of where i would just try to describe the perplexing things that
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i encounter every day with my clients with myself trying to find language and understanding and
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explanation and and the question i began to ask myself is what are the psychotherapy themes
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that keep coming up with these struggling 20 somethings and one of them is there's this
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what seems on the surface a very peculiar avoidance sometimes almost a phobic avoidance
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of doing very simple administrative tasks like um i had a a mom and a 19 year old in my office about this is
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about two years ago and she is their their quarrel is she has said to him you have to call the dentist's
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office to reschedule your appointment because it conflicts with your work schedule and this kid
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digs it he will not do it now and i have run into that kind of curious resistance over and over and over
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again and when as a therapist i succeed in peeling back the layers of the onion and we get to talking
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about what is that doctor's appointment what's that phone call all about what comes out is i'm i'm
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afraid they're not going to take me seriously that i'm afraid the receptionist is going to yell at me
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if i that's the 14 year old boy right there i'm afraid and it says so i avoid doing these simple
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mechanical administrative responsibilities that adults have always managed my whole life they've my mom has
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made all my doctor's appointments they've reminded me when i had to be here i had to be there and now
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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
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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
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know how to do is to make one as an adult and so what's underlying in that whole responsibility issue
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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
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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
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one's responsibility the second task is relational and it sounds like that relational responsibility
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you're kind of working together like young people have a hard time relating to other adults as adults
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and so consequently they fail to do things like call the receptionist at the dentist's office right
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yeah and the the thing about relational i i know a lot of having studied adolescence i've written
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published a lot about adolescent development the social task of adolescence is to fit in it's to kind
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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
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find a place that feels relatively secure and and the thing is when you leave high school that's not
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enough that kind of knowing my place is insufficient and i have had conversations literally hundreds of
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times with kids who are getting to the end of high school and they're saying i can't find anyone in my
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school to have a real conversation with meaning conversations that have more of a relational intimacy
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quality so when when you get when you get into that next stage you need help you you need friends
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that are going through the same thing someone that can say oh my god yes that sucks i didn't i had
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trouble with that too i hate it when my mother asked me to call the dentist's office right and you also
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need you need to find people that know more stuff than you do and so that they can kind of coach you
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when you're a freshman in college and some upperclassman says don't take that professor
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you'll regret it or you know think twice before you sign up for 8 a.m classes then you've got
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someone that's doing just this little bit of mentoring that helps you to find your way in the
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world and helps you to build confidence so you know that's when i say becoming more relational
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it's developing relationships that in some way are instrumental to my my own personal process of
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growing up let's go back a little bit to the responsibility issue because so okay so it's
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these kids the reason why they don't take responsibility is because they they question
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whether they're capable of doing it and like you said sometimes they're capable of doing they can
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make a phone call but the thing that holds them back is will i be taken seriously so how do you
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close that gap like how do you help your clients overcome the sense of i don't know embarrassment
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that you know someone's not going to take them yeah shame that they're not going to be taken
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seriously as an adult right well the first thing i did because they almost always singularly think
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that this is something wrong with them and so it's a secret they won't acknowledge it i'm thinking of a
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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
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college because he lived about 30 miles from the school he could drive back and forth and the dad said
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look you flunked out you know the car's gone he had an apartment here in cleveland on cedar road
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right down there about two miles from a brand new massive shopping center and the dad said you they're
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hiring they're just opening up you'll take the bus back and forth to work well this kid you'd think
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that the father asked him to jump off a cliff you know into a raging sea and i watched them go
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back and forth in the office and i finally excused the dad i said would you wait in the waiting room
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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
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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
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like he'd been caught you know and i said no really do you pay when you get on or do you pay when
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you get off he had no idea i said how about this next saturday your dad's going to drive in to your
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apartment the two of you are going to take take the bus go have breakfast at one of the new restaurants
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and take the bus back it's the first thing i have to do as a therapist is de-shame the whole issue
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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
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off and anytime i have to take the rapid train into downtown cleveland i stop and ask my wife
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how much is the fare when do i have to do it if you can if you understand that other people share
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the same uncertainty you begin to feel less freakish about it so that's i try to normalize it
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and i try to get someone to instruct them the kid with the um who wouldn't call the dentist office
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i had the mom i just said mom would you call the dentist office right here on speakerphone and
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just reschedule the appointment which she did and the kid just kind of listened and said oh
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yeah okay i could do that so de-shaming it giving some modeling showing how it's done
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that that usually helps kids to move forward and what any insights or advice on parents who you know
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maybe they don't have a 20 something yet but maybe they don't want to have a 20 something that has
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that sort of issue like what can what can parents do sort of proactively when they're teenagers to
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prevent that well and on one um radio show when i was being interviewed and they had call in
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a dad called in and said you know i'm finding this all very interesting what can i do with my three-year-old
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and i kind of scratched my head and i thought well what can you do with a three-year-old i said well you
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can you can go into the playroom and you can sit down on the floor and say come on honey we are going
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to pick up these toys together you can create this this these little loops of accountability
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that that you you are um you have a job you're part of this family and kids who have that and some
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parents do it so skillfully they're not just hounding their kids about chores they're presenting
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it more as like we we need your help around here we're all part of this the model i use is kids that
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grow up in farming communities because those parents are never quarreling with their kids
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about responsibilities because the kid views responsibility as essential to the family
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functioning to the community functioning and so it's a little hard to harder to do that if you live
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in suburbia and you don't have a chicken coop in the backyard where the eggs have to be collected
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but it is a kind of attitude that parents can have about recruiting their kids for being
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responsible for themselves so that's a big part of it and you certainly you know i i see it in fact
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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
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working on that issue with my 12 year old you know how how do we get her to clean up after herself
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how do we get her to monitor her own homework we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our
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sponsors and now back to the show so yeah it's thinking about it so going back to that idea of
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the task of becoming more relational as you said adolescence you're basically focused on your peers
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whether you fit in whether they're fun to hang out with but as kids get older at the end of
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adolescence they're looking for more meaningful relationships and this requires and it's fairly
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like i think i remember growing when i was in that age like 18 you know early 20s i thought it was
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really weird that transition to like working with adults as other adults that that's really hard
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because like you know at one point you're always like okay they're the authority figure if you're
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you know if they're above 18 i got to listen to this person once you're 18 they start treating you
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completely different they treat you like another adult and that's it can be weird it can be weird but
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it's also very affirming i'm like you i remember the jobs that i had during my college years i sort of
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hard labor jobs and i had a year a summer working at a one of the old style state mental hospitals
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and i was doing something that mattered to the organization and and sometimes when you're young
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you have to prove yourself a little bit you know are you just a a college you know punk or no i'm not
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i'm actually a hard worker but getting being treated that way as somehow um you're doing making an
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important contribution to the labor site or or the kid who's working in a grocery store and and realizes
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they're really counting on him to keep the fruits and vegetables restocked that's a transformative
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kind of experience and it's not unusual for a parent you know a parent will run into say a parent of a
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high school student runs into their kid's boss and let's say the kid works at a grocery store and
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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
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kind of cocks their head and says what wait are you are you sure i mean my son is johnny jones yeah
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johnny jones he's terrific and the kid is literally has a different experience of self when he finds
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himself taken seriously and providing an essential function in the adult world whereas at home it all
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feels more aggressive you know you're making me do these chores you know it's not my turn my my brother
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should have been emptying the dishwasher why are you making me do it and part of the relational
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development that needs to happen to enter adulthood seems to be shifting from having your parents and
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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
00:28:17.660
fact it paradoxically it increases their influence over their their child i give a just a classic
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
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
00:49:32.320
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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