"The Lost Transition to Adulthood"
by Martin Armstrong
"The latest data confirms what has quietly been building for years, and now it is no longer anecdotal but systemic, as roughly 64% of parents with Gen Z children aged 18 to 28 say their adult kids still rely on them financially for housing, money, or basic support, while 56% of those parents admit that this arrangement is putting strain on their own finances, which means we are looking at a generational shift where adulthood itself is being delayed on a scale not seen in modern times.
This is being explained away as an economic problem, with references to high costs of living, weak entry-level wages, and housing affordability, and while those factors are real, they are not the full story because previous generations faced economic hardship as well, yet they still transitioned into independence, and what we are seeing now is not just economic pressure but a breakdown in the cultural expectation of self-sufficiency.
There is a dangerous normalization taking place where parents are no longer helping temporarily but are effectively subsidizing adult lifestyles, and in many cases this support is not minor, with studies showing parents spending well over $1,000 per month on adult children while simultaneously neglecting their own retirement savings, which is creating a cascading financial problem where one generation is undermining its own future to sustain another."
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