Maybe age 23 *used *to be an age when people settle into adult life and begin becoming financially independent, but that’s far from the truth now.
Graduating from college and becoming financially independent are nearly mutually exclusive at this point. I’d go further to say that most 23 year olds I’ve met are hardly “adults” in the same sense that a 29 year old is. When I was in graduate school in the very early 1990s, the difference in maturity between a new college grad and someone who was only three or four years older was remarkable.
On The Hill:
I agree. My parents are nearing 80 and in their generation, a 23 year old back then was like a 30 or 32 year old today. I’m in my late 40’s now, and at 23 I was working two jobs and going to night school, that I didn’t have time for much else. In fact, some older adults thought I was strange because I wasn’t interested in hitting the bars on Friday and Saturday night.
I did go back to school full-time at 25,(graduated at 28) and while I was an engineering major, there were quite a few of us in engineering in our early to mid-20s as juniors. Some of us came from the Armed Forces, others came from the school of hard knocks, and some of us were retreads who at 18 went to college and majored in frat house, and after experiencing some extended adolescence, dead end jobs, got our act together and returned to college. Many of us were more serious the second time around, and watched our grades, mostly so we could get a good job and we paid our own tuition.
One problem with cohabitation is it delays making a commitment. Playing house one party can walk away at any time. It’s like a “trial marriage”. I had friends who played house and regretted it later on.
Another thing that is sad today is many young couples are expected to cohabitate before marriage. That was not the case forty years ago. The average age today for a first time marriage is 30 for men and 27 for a woman, and part of that has to do with college debt and career preparation time. It’s also due to the fact that many people today are not meeting their spouse in college anymore, which is also depressing.
I have several buddies that didn’t get married until they were in their mid-30’s, and I even have some good friends who didn’t marry until they were in their early 40’s (one of my buddies became a first time dad at 46, marrying a nice 38 year old woman when he was 45). Part of this has to do with the time it takes to build a career and financial independence (my older friends tell me it was much easier in the 70s to build financial independence), and most of the attorneys that I know - male and female - didn’t marry until they were 35, 38, 40, or older, mostly because of student loan debt and 70 hour work weeks. The corporate world in general is not “family friendly”, but some professions and some employers are more understanding than others. I spent about six years working 60-80 hour work weeks myself in my early to mid 30s, and while it helped me professionally, it took a toll on my personal life.
