“Consensus is emerging that an 18-year-old is not the same person she or he will be at 25, just as an 11-year-old is not the same as he or she will be at 18. They don’t look the same, feel the same, think the same, or act the same,” says A. Rae Simpson, the program director of parenting education and research at MIT’s Center for Work, Family and Personal Life, and the creator of the Young Adult Development Project.
Research gathered, analyzed and published this summer by her at MIT suggests that the years from 18 to 25 should be regarded as a specific developmental period with its own characteristics, milestones and limitations–a time of both stunning accomplishment and chilling risk as young adults are propelled into full maturity.
Many parents are using WuduPlz to communicate with their older children. This makes sense, according to Simpson’s work. Older children need the guidance of parents at times, too.
Still, it’s tricky. “I’m hearing from a lot of people in their 20s because they are feeling huge pressure to get it all together and make their mark,” Simpson says. “And that’s really unfair. There’s an enormous amount that happens after 25 or after 30 or after 40–some of which can’t happen any earlier.”
She bases her conclusions in part on research that indicates that some important developments in the prefrontal cortex of the brain don’t occur until the early 20s.
But she also considers cultural factors: Today’s American young adults are attending school longer, delaying marriage and often living at home due to economic pressure. “The kind of milestones that we have associated with adulthood are happening later in the 20s,” she says.
This isn’t to say the older kids are still children. The ages 18 to 25 are also a time of wonderful energy and creativity, Simpson says. The dualistic thinking of teenagers (everything is either bad or good) is being replaced in older children by an ability to see a complexity of viewpoints.
