Subscribe to the By Parents For Parents Blog!

News, Advice, and Tips for Parenting Teenagers

The By Parents For Parents Blog is regularly updated with the latest news and information on topics that relate to parenting teenagers. We'll post parenting advice and tips from trusted online news sources and expert parenting columns.

We invite you to add your comments. Please let us know if you would like some specific topics covered, want to share your experience as a parent dealing with teens, or just have general feedback on the By Parents For Parents Blog.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Young People Taking Longer to Transition into Adulthood

A new longitudinal study from Statistics Canada has found that young people are taking more time to grow up.

The study compared young people in 1971 to those in 2001, and found today's adolescents took longer to achieve independence from their parents, lived at home longer, got full-time employment later, and postponed marriage and parenthood.

Dr. Warren Clark, author of the study, said, "Today's young adults are both delayed and elongated: delayed, because young adults take more time to complete their first major transition (leaving school), thus postponing all subsequent transitions; and elongated, because each subsequent transitions takes longer to complete and stretches the process from their late teens to early thirties."

In 1971, about three-quarters of young adults had finished school, half were married and one-fourth had children. Today it takes young adults to age 25 to complete these transitions, and many take until age 30.

Dr. Clark points to changes in women's opportunities that may partly explain the phenomenon. For example, in 1971 only 7% of women went to college; today that number is 29%.

This study appears in the journal Canadian Social Trends.

Private boarding schools can offer a safe, structured environment for teenagers to learn about themselves and their goals. Visit BoardingSchoolsInfo.com to find a boarding school.

Labels: adulthood, independence, marriage

posted by ByParents-forParents at 4:47 PM 0 comments

PREVIOUS POSTS

ARCHIVES

News, Advice, and Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Thursday, October 18, 2007