The odyssey years

So sorry for the ultralight blogging today. I've been way, way busy at work, and I'm preparing for presentations at two conferences next week. I'll be in Washington, DC, at a Hudson Institute conference about the Muslim Brotherhood, and later at an ISI symposium on Wendell Berry in Louisville, KY. Basically, it's big casino for me next week.

I didn't want the day to pass without blogging on David Brooks's column about how longer life spans and social changes are adding a new phase to life: what he terms the Odyssey, "the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood." Excerpt:

During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another.

Their parents grow increasingly anxious. These parents understand that there’s bound to be a transition phase between student life and adult life. But when they look at their own grown children, they see the transition stretching five years, seven and beyond. The parents don’t even detect a clear sense of direction in their children’s lives. They look at them and see the things that are being delayed.

They see that people in this age bracket are delaying marriage. They’re delaying having children. They’re delaying permanent employment. People who were born before 1964 tend to define adulthood by certain accomplishments — moving away from home, becoming financially independent, getting married and starting a family.

In 1960, roughly 70 percent of 30-year-olds had achieved these things. By 2000, fewer than 40 percent of 30-year-olds had done the same.

Yet with a little imagination it’s possible even for baby boomers to understand what it’s like to be in the middle of the odyssey years. It’s possible to see that this period of improvisation is a sensible response to modern conditions.

Well, I guess. My odyssey years didn't end until I married at 30, and started a family at 32. I would have gladly done it sooner, but like Miss Ross says, you can't hurry love. Then again, looked at from a purely sociological (versus romantic) point of view, it could well be that I delayed marriage until I was well and truly in love because I felt no social pressure to marry in my twenties -- a situation that my parents' generation simply did not have. My dad married at 30, and was a freak in his generation because of it; Julie married me at 22, and was thought weird by many in her generation for marrying so young.

I'm glad I had the freedom to do the things I did before settling down, but the downside is that it becomes possible to delay full adulthood indefinitely. Except in one way: parenthood. Women are not forever fertile, and though men are, let me tell you that it's exhausting to raise children. I'm 40, and am surprised how tired I get with my kids. In a perfect world, we'd have started all this at least five years earlier.

I hope my own children find their vocations and their spouses in their 20s, and can get on with it, not spending time wandering in the woods looking for themselves. It does appear that the odyssey is going to be the norm for some time, though. The trick is to make sure you're seeking to find something, not just ambling through life avoiding commitment.