The Panic of the 30-Somethings, and More
By Jordan Kisner
How Thirtysomethings Are Redefining Adulthood
By Kayleen Schaefer
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In the 1950s, sociologists came up with a checklist for entering adulthood: finish school, leave home, make your own money, marry and become a parent. Only once a person had managed all five, the thinking went, were they finally an adult. “These markers are supposed to be some sort of an end,” Schaefer writes. “When we arrive at them, we will know what we’re doing and who we are.”
Are you laughing or crying yet? In her thoughtful and well-paced evaluation of “adulthood,” Schaefer explores the struggle today’s ascendant adults face in getting anywhere near these goals “on time.” Her tone is both skeptical of these 70-year-old benchmarks and sympathetic to the many people, like herself, who feel anxious and ashamed for failing to meet them. It’s not that 30-somethings are ditching school, independence and traditional family
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BuzzFeed News; Joel Barhamand, Dutton
Sally never expected to find herself back in her parents’ house. But at 30 years old, she was living with them, in the bedroom her sisters shared growing up, in Queens, New York, trying to figure out what to do next and why her plan had fallen apart. Sally was born in the Dominican Republic and immigrated to the United States with her parents and two younger sisters when she was three. Her parents married in their midtwenties, and Sally thought she would get married around the same age. She’d fallen in love with her college boyfriend, at Stony Brook University on Long Island, and they had gotten engaged. At the time, Sally wanted to live in Paris. She had dreamed of doing so since her first trip there as a teenager, when she’d been immediately entranced by the city. She learned French and had traveled there two more times, once with her fiancé. But her fiancé never wanted to live anywhere other than New York. Sally thought he might cha
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