Originally appeared in The Hartford Courant on 5/5/2019
Can we please reserve the word “launch” for things like missiles, spaceships and campaigns – and not for young adults who are struggling to become increasingly independent and responsible as they navigate the transition to adulthood?
With the arrival of spring comes the countdown to graduation – and with that come distressed emerging adults and parents to my therapy office. They are worried about “next steps,” “the plan for moving forward” and the possibility of a failed launch.
Who hasn’t struggled in this unique and very personal journey, right? Why then are we using language that suggests a person either succeeds or fails in her attempt to reach adulthood?
Inherent in the term “failure to launch” are our unconscious attitudes and expectations that feed the conversation about emerging adulthood.
Launches have a beginning, middle and end. They ideally follow a straight and predictable course and arrive at the predetermined destination. Becoming more independent, leaving home, working, earning a college degree, building healthy relationships, acquiring skills, having money in the bank, etc. does not work like that, but we are setting kids up to believe that it does. Very often the unspoken benchmark of success is full time attendance at college shortly after high school graduation (reinforced by the college path culture of our high schools) and completion of a bachelors degree in four years at one university. Deviations from this predetermined launch course at best feel like being behind and at worse feel like failure.
According to the Washington Post, less than forty percent of students graduate in four years and more than half of students who start college drop out within six years. Additionally, many of the “successful” forty percent are struggling during and after college in ways that are largely invisible. They are anxious, depressed, abusing substances, socially isolated, suicidal. This is not a dramatic exaggeration. This is the reality in my office day after day, year after year. More importantly, these internal struggles are also seen as failure.
Then of course there are the one third of young adults not included in the aforementioned statistics. On the one hand they are glad to escape the attention because they worry that not being in college means others see them as losers. On the other hand, feeling invisible reinforces the fear that they are getting it all wrong.
The idea of “launching” into adulthood is not only a set up for emerging adults; it is also a set up for their parents. A “failure to launch” suggests either a missile problem or a launch pad problem. This is a recipe for guilt, anger, blame, conflict, disappointment, shame and isolation as both young adult and parent try to avoid feeling at fault.
As metaphors go, we have chosen poorly. (You can stop trying to come up with a better metaphor; we do not need one.) What we do need is to begin thinking and talking about the process differently.
- Are the people you know who do not have a college degree losers?
- Are the people you know who graduated with fancy degrees in four years from elite universities living their best life?
- What would it be like to approach interactions with authentic curiosity and acceptance, rather than competition and judgment?
- Could you say to graduating high school seniors, “What are some things you plan to do?” or “What are you looking forward to?” instead of “Where you are going to school next year?” or “Was that your first choice?”
- Could you reassure the emerging adults you know that, regardless of what they are doing, they are not behind?
Becoming an adult is not an event with a clear course marked by either success or failure. It is a deeply personal process with no clear path and predetermined arrival point. Why on Earth would we judge the process of becoming one’s best self in the same way we judge a missile launch?