Venue/Location: Mission Theater, 1624 N.W. Glisan St., Phone: (503) 224-0166
Date: Tuesday, May 10, 2011 - 7:00 PM
Not Quite Adults
Speaker: Rick Settersten, PhD, endowed director of the Hallie Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families at Oregon State University.
5 p.m. doors; 7 p.m. event
$3 per person suggested
We’ve been flooded with negative headlines about 20-somethings—from their sense of entitlement, to their unwillingness to grow up, to their attachment to their parents’ purse strings. The resulting message is that these young people need to shape up and grow up—and take the same fast track to adulthood that their parents did.
This generation of young people is facing a very different world than their parents did and for them, growing up too fast can be damaging. Not Quite Adults: Why 20-Somethings Are Choosing a Slower Path to Adulthood, and Why It’s Good for Everyone, (Random House) by Rick Settersten and co-author Barbara Ray, shows that adult children who return home after college and delay marriage and child rearing get a much better start in life than those who leave the nest too early, settling for low-paying jobs and having children too soon.
In fact, unequal access to the resources that make this slower transition possible—including financial assistance, educational guidance, and social support networks—is deepening a class divide that will affect everyone.
According to the new book, “The great shake-ups that are going on in the transition to adulthood are transforming American life and the reverberations will be felt by everyone. These changes will demand new responses from governments, families, and society.” At this Science Pub, come find out about these profound societal changes and what they mean to all of us.