repair-522
Meg Jay: Why 30 is not the new 20
When
I
was
in
my
twenties,
I
saw
my
very
first
psychotherapy
client.
I
was
a
Ph.D.
student
in
clinical psychology at Berkeley. She
was a 26-year-old woman named Alex. Now Alex
walked into
her
first
session
wearing
jeans
and
a
big
slouchy
top,
and
she
dropped
onto
the
couch
in
my
office and
kicked off her flats and told me she was there to
talk about guy problems. Now when I
heard
this,
I
was
so
relieved.
My
classmate
got
an
arsonist
for
her
first
client.
And
I
got
a
twentysomething
who
wanted
to
talk
about
boys.
This
I
thought
I
could
handle.
But
I
didn't
handle it.
With the funny stories that Alex would
bring to session, it was easy for me just to nod
my head
while we kicked the can down
the road.
tell,
she
was
right.
Work
happened
later,
marriage
happened
later,
kids
happened
later,
even
death happened later.
Twentysomethings like Alex and I had nothing but
time. But before long,
my
supervisor
pushed
me
to
push
Alex
about
her
love
life.
I
pushed
back.
I
said,
she's
dating down, she's sleeping with a
knucklehead, but it's not like she's gonna to
marry the guy.
And then my supervisor
said,
to work on Alex's marriage is
before she has one.
That's what psychologists call an
new 20. Yes, people settle down later
than they used to, but that didn't make Alex's
twenties a
developmental downtime. That
made Alex's twenties a developmental sweet spot,
and we were
sitting
there
blowing
it.
That
was
when
I
realized
that
this
sort
of
benign
neglect
was
a
real
problem, and it had real consequences,
not just for Alex and her love life, but for the
careers and
the families and the
futures of twentysomethings everywhere.
There
are 50
million
twentysomethings
in
the
United
States
right
now.
We're
talking
about
15
percent of the population, or 100
percent if you consider that no one's getting
through adulthood
without going through
their twenties first.
Raise your hand if you are in your
twenties. I really want to see some
twentysomethings here. Oh,
yay!
Y'all's
awesome.
If
you
work with
twentysomethings,
you
love
a
twentysomething,
you're
losing
sleep
over
twentysomethings,
I
want
to
see.
Okay.
Awesome.
Twentysomethings
really
matter.
So I specialize in twentysomethings
because I believe that every single one of those
50 million
twentysomethings
deserves
to
know
what
psychologists,
sociologists,
neurologists
and
fertility
specialists
already
know:
that
claiming
your
twenties
is
one
of
the
simplest,
yet
most
transformative things you can do for
work, for love, for your happiness, maybe even for
the world.
This
is
not
my
opinion.
These
are
the
facts.
We
know
the
80
percent
of
life's
most
defining
moments take place
by age 35. That means that eight out of 10 of the
decisions and experiences
and
moments
that
make
your
life
what
it
is
will
have
happened
by
your
mid-thirties.
People who are
over 40, don't panic. This crowd is gonna be fine,
I think. We know that the first
10
years of a career has an exponential impact on how
much money you are going to earn. We
know
that
more
than
half
of
Americans
are
married
or
are
living
with
or
dating
their
future
partner by 30. We
know that the brain caps off its second and last
growth spurt in your twenties,
as
it
rewires
itself
for
adulthood,
which
means
that
whatever
it
is
you
want
to
change
about
yourself, now is the time to change it.
We know that
personality changes more during your twenties than
at any other time in life, and
we know
that female fertility peaks at age 28, and things
get tricky after age 35. So your twenties
are the time to educate yourself about
your body and your options. So when we think about
child
development,
we
all
know
that
the
first
five
years
are
a
critical
period
for
language
and
attachment in the brain. It's a time
when your ordinary, day-to-day life has an
inordinate impact
on
who
you
will
become.
But
what
we
hear
less
about
is
that
there's
such
a
thing
as
adult
development, and our twenties are that
critical period of adult development.
But this isn't what
twentysomethings are hearing. Newspapers talk
about the changing timetable
of
adulthood.
Researchers
call
the
twenties
an
extended
adolescence.
Journalists
coin
silly
nicknames
for
twentysomethings
like
and
It's
true.
As
a
culture,
we
have
trivialized what is actually the
defining decade of adulthood.
Leonard Bernstein said that
to achieve great things, you need a plan and not
quite enough time.
Isn't that true? So
what do you think happens when you pat a
twentysomething on the head and
you
say,
have
10
extra
years
to
start
your
life?
Nothing
happens.
You
have
robbed
that
person of his urgency and ambition, and
absolutely nothing happens. And then, every day,
smart,
interesting twentysomethings
like you or like your sons and daughters come into
my office and
say things like this:
I'm just killing time.
I'm
30, I'll be fine.
nothing to show for
myself. I had a better resume the day after I
graduated from college.
then it starts
to sound like this:
running around and
having fun, but then something around 30 it was
like the music turned off
and
everybody
started
sitting
down.
I
didn't
want
to
be
the
only
one
left
standing
up,
so
sometimes
I think I married my husband because he was the
closest chair to me at 30.
Where are the twentysomethings here? Do
not do that. Okay, now that sounds a little flip,
but
make no mistake, the stakes are
very high. When a lot has been pushed to your
thirties, there is
enormous
thirtysomething pressure to jump-start a career,
pick a city, partner up, and have two
or three kids in a much shorter period
of time. Many of these things are incompatible,
and as
research is just starting to
show, simply harder and more stressful to do all
at once in our thirties.
The
post-millennial
midlife
crisis
isn't
buying
a
red
sports
car.
It's
realizing
you
can't
have
that
career
you
now
want,
or
you
can't
give
your
child
a
sibling.
Too
many
thirtysomethings
and
fortysomethings
look
at
themselves,
and
at
me,
sitting
across
the
room,
and
say
about
their
twenties,
I want
to change what twentysomethings are doing and
thinking. Here's a story about how that
can go. It's a story about a woman
named Emma. At 25, Emma came to my office because
she