The Many Thoughts of Wanda Kidd

While most people only confer with their own offspring about their adulting options,  I have had years of conversations with teenagers and young adults about the issues shaping their past, present, and future.  My life’s calling centered on ministry with teens and young adults as a youth and campus minister. What I have heard and still hear from young people differs significantly from the scenarios I have heard attributed to them. Those conversations make me challenge the highly critical discussion on social media about their lack of ambition, bad financial choices, self-centeredness, and inability to form lasting relationships

The complaints being leveled at young adults for decisions they made or are making as eighteen to twenty-year-olds feel like revisionist expectations and cultural amnesia. It is almost a case of “blame them if they do and blame them if they don’t.”  If they don’t have a plan after they graduate, they are lazy; if they choose to go to college, the cost sets them up for financial failure, and if they decide to work in a trade, there is a reluctant, “good for you,” which sounds similar to “Bless your heart.”  Thankfully, trends about post-graduate options are changing. Still, it has been slow, and those caught in the evolving cultural expectations seem to be the disproportionate recipients of blame and derision.

I have read several posts recently about how students should have enrolled in community colleges rather than expensive four-year institutions, how they needed to train to do trade jobs, or how they should have been better money managers if they racked up debt to get their college degrees. However, those options were not the mantras and rhetoric that the media, parents, and educators preached to them while planning their lives as adolescence. 

Fifty years ago, we had the privilege of attending college when we could still make enough money to pay our tuition for the year during one summer’s employment. We told our children how amazing our time in college was, and that was our hope for them. That concept shaped entire generations.  A high school’s success was determined by the number of students they had going off to college; a parent’s bragging rights were expressed through the prestige of the college their daughters and sons attended, and the pressure to succeed too often took the joy out of many teenager’s life.

To muddy the waters further, those same groups told children they could do and be anything they wanted to be. We told them if they could imagine it was possible. While financially, things were changing in higher education; we did not change the trajectory and assumptions about what needed to be done for them to succeed.  Tuition has accelerated by 180% over the last 40 years, but loans over scholarships are the most common financial aid offered to a student today.  This reality demands that students make complex decisions with long-term consequences while their life-long plans hang in the balance. Without purposeful guidance, why would the magical thinking they were raised to believe not work there? Were they supposed to think like an adult without intentional preparation for adulthood?  Criticism, chastisement, and belittling are ineffective methods of instruction at any age.  They know something is wrong but have very few coping skills presented to help them make different choices.

In light of these realities, many conversations with youth centered around the pressure they felt to please the adults in their life, particularly their parents.  Most parents would be surprised, confused, and maybe hurt to discover that their need to keep their children safe and happy was a profound weight for those they strove to protect. Youth and young adults want tools, larger perimeters, and places to reflect on life choices, not fear, exaggeration, and hysteria.

Conversely, that overprotectiveness has made many young people intensely protective of their parent’s feelings and desires. Young people often believe they need to be on call 24/7. They try to live out their lives in such a way that their parents will not worry and are assured of their safety. They will sometimes ask their parents to solve problems they could easily solve to ensure their parents feel valued.  While most of this enmeshed behavior is born out of profound love, they still feel tethered to their parent’s anxiety when they should be encouraged to separate and develop a sense of independence. The parents who need to be “all things” to their children impact their evolving self-image and long-term ability to make healthy decisions. For many young people, it is a residual burden that lingers long after adolescence. Choosing a college and career is just one part of their journey to adulthood. Still, it takes a disproportionate amount of their childhood, steeped in parental expectations for success rather than being rooted in the child’s giftedness or calling.

I remember preaching a baccalaureate sermon 30 years ago and speaking about how wonderful it would be to allow our children to live into their gifts rather than be pre-programmed for one path.  “Wouldn’t it be great,” I said, “if we could bless those who wanted to work with their hands rather than go to college.” I did not make it out of the pulpit before I was surrounded by parents chastising me for undermining the plans they had for their children. Who was I to permit them not to pursue the goal of a college education?

As a campus minister, I sat with many disillusioned students who discovered the bill of goods they were sold throughout their lives was not reality. They then questioned everything from their faith to ill-informed career choices. Often too late, they discover the amount of money they had committed to was made to fulfill someone else’s dream. The dismantling of the myth that they could be whomever they chose to be or have anything they wanted was devastating for many.  The reality was that college could not be paid for with a summer job; institutions often changed graduation expectations where four-year degrees morphed into five to graduate, and the salary structure for the jobs they were preparing for would never be enough to pay off their accumulated expenses. For some, the weight of it all felt relentless.

There was and is a great sense of betrayal for young adults when they believed they were doing what was asked of them and now are being harshly judged on decisions outlined by a lifetime of expectations. Often, teens and young adults perceive that our culture sees them as commodities. What do they provide that would be useful to someone else? How do they meet everyone’s expectations when the finish line keeps moving? We would all be better served to partner in helping them create a place where they can use their God-given talents to guide them into trustworthy and compassionate adults.

While the culture is slowly transitioning, those who have already had to make choices languish in fear of everything, including success and life-enhancing relationships, and they end up satisfying no one, not themselves or those they have strived so long to please. We have confused their questions for arrogance, exposure for transparency, and self-determination for rejection. So if we cannot find it in our hearts to accept some of the responsibility for choices young adults were and are encouraged to make, at least help them find people, resources, and answers to the things that weigh them down. Please give them the space to rise without fear and reframe their future. If there is a young adult in your life who is asking life-affirming questions, please take the time to invest in their desire to live a fuller and freer life. Don’t just be kind; even though that would be an excellent place to start, be empowering, creative, and compassionate, and quit taking the easy swipes at them.  It is not helpful for anyone.

PS I have said these things often enough to know that many of you will think I am delusional or critical of all parents.  That is not true. I have two grown children with whom I have lost the Mother of the Year award more times than I have won. What I have said here comes from years of listening, and I have had to take many of these issues to heart. We can continue to draw smaller and smaller circles and make assumptions without context, but if we do, everyone loses. Remember, these young people will look after us in the retirement home, serve us food and diagnose our diseases.  It is worth our time to open doors of understanding and listen to their stories. Do not let fear-mongering paralyze us and hold us hostage. It’s the waste of a good story created in the life of each of us.