Parenting a teen on the march to maturity

To a teenager approaching adulthood, independence looms as a heady prospect, a long-awaited goal. The ability to stand on one's own two feet - at last! - ranks among the most victorious of youthful achievements.

But independence can be an elusive dream. Prolonged education and job training, together with the spiraling cost of housing, conspire to keep a growing number of young people dependent on their parents longer than either generation imagined.

The result, says author Terri Apter, requires a reordering of expectations, as well as a continuing need for parental love and understanding during the transition from adolescence to adulthood.

"Young people today have a very sharp awareness of just how difficult growing up is," says Ms. Apter, the mother of two daughters and a researcher in social psychology at Cambridge University in England. "They have to make lots and lots of choices. They don't see a clear path ahead."

She finds that many parents are slow to realize how daunting it is for young people today to see their way through the "enormous number of patterns to a viable life for them." An outward air of sophistication easily masks an adolescent's continuing need for moral support and compassion.

Helping teens and parents chart these new paths is the subject of Apter's latest book, "The Myth of Maturity: What Teenagers Need From Parents to Become Adults" (Norton, $24.95).

In a telephone interview from her home in Cambridge, Apter defines 18-to-24-year-olds as "thresholders," because they stand on the threshold of adulthood.

She sees this as an important but neglected period that deserves careful attention. Between the ages of 19 and 21, she notes, eating disorders peak for young women, while suicides peak for young men.

Today's prolonged adolescence stands in marked contrast to patterns a generation or two ago, when young people typically married soon after college and often had their first child by the age of 25. For them, delayed maturity and independence were not an option.

Similarly, when previous generations headed off to college, societal institutions saw them as still needing some kind of parental guidance. At that time, Apter says, students also often had a more stable community of friends, family, and church to help them when they left home.

She laments the decline of "social capital," the networks and traditional forms of support a society offers. Colleges no longer act in loco parentis. When students go away now, they are totally on their own, Apter observes. They feel they are independent and grown up.

The sexual revolution sends confusing signals by giving young people the illusion of maturity. "The early age at which young people become sexually aware makes people think that kids grow up quickly, which in some ways they do," Apter says. "But that isn't the same as being grown up and being able to function independent of your family."

Finances pose another challenge. For young adults growing up in a consumer society, the constant temptation to spend can have perilous results.

"They're faced with messages that they should be able to buy what they want, without having the money first," Apter says. "It can be too much for a young person, especially if he feels needy by virtue of being alone and confused and on his own for the first time."

Apter cautions that it tends to be highly counterproductive for parents to give young people financial support for needless debts that they have incurred themselves.

Instead, she suggests that parents help them plan a "rational rescheduling" of their debts by saying, "Look, this is what you owe, this is how you can pay it back one day, or gradually."

Apter considers the empty nest something of a myth. To their surprise, parents may find that instead of an empty nest, they have a revolving door. "Some even have a cluttered nest," Apter notes, if they have moved to a smaller home, thinking they no longer needed to accommodate children. Or adult children may return with offspring of their own.

Sometimes, parents feel there is something wrong when their children come back home, or do not leave. Parents tell Apter, "He's a grown man. He should be independent. He should be mature."

Those concerns might tempt some parents to consider practicing tough love, which Apter warns against. Instead, she suggests that families take a constructive approach in which parents say, "I know they continue to need support. I will offer what support I can."

In the absence of community support, she reminds parents, the family is a network already in place: "You love your kids, you care about them. Acknowledge what they need, and give them what you can."

Apter envisions the ideal of a community of care, in which older generations would feel a general concern and willingness to help young people.

"It would also be wonderful if young people could sustain respect and trust in older generations, so they would be more ready to ask for help," she says.

In offering moral support, parents can draw on their own experience and wisdom. Rather than telling children what to do or what major to select, she suggests holding conversations to help adolescents realize what it is they want to do. That eases youthful anxiety about the choices available.

Above all, she urges adults to avoid making sons or daughters ashamed of their continued need for their parents.

Apter's own daughters are now both thresholders themselves. The younger one will begin college in the fall. And her older daughter, who just graduated from college? Apter laughs and says, "Of course, she has come home again."