"Few takers for true adulthood"

Hugh Mackay's article is a very silly middle-aged man's view of the situation - see below his article from the Sydney Morning Herald.

How can young people afford to buy a house, settle down and reproduce these days? They start life with a user pays education and many tens of thousands of dollars worth of debt.

Why would they bother being loyal to one job or one company when they have seen their parents retrenched time & again?

What is the point of getting a mortgage to buy a house in Sydney (assuming they can manage the deposit on a $500,000 - $1M house anyway) if they can live at home in a nice 5 bedroom house and get their washing done and meals prepared for free? It's not like they have the problems their predecessors had about having sex at home. Let's face it, the only reason the baby boomers had to move out of home was (a) smaller houses and (b) not allowed to have sex in them. I bet the baby boomers would all still be living at home if their conditions had been this good!

Besides it is always easy to imagine that there is plenty of time to do everything you want while young. It is only when 40 passes that it starts to appear that you might not get to do everything before your mortality impacts.

It is surprising how fast and how pleasantly time passes so that you hardly notice it, especially when you live with your parents who still pick up the bills, feed and clothe you. A few trips overseas, university education and then a higher degree, a few different jobs (because most jobs are inherently crap) and before you know it you've got a paunch and bald spot.

Anyway, back to my point - it is not necessarily about a slower pace through life cycles, the change is more driven by observation of their parent's experiences and by their own different economic and social experience.

Few takers for true adulthood

By Hugh Mackay April 14, 2006

"EVER wondered why so many young adults are still living at home with their parents? Puzzled by the plummeting birthrate among the under-30s? Impatient for your 29-year-old offspring to get around to marriage?

And why are they so willing to switch jobs, or courses of study, even when everything seems to be going well for them? Have they no interest in settling
down?

The answer is in their mantra: "Thirty is the new 20." Straight out of the mouths of today's twentysomethings comes a truth that not only helps to explain their behaviour, but also sheds some light on yet another trend reshaping our society: we seem intent on slowing down our rate of passage through the life cycle."