Meet the Twixters!

There is a new stage of development that parents need to consider.

The developmental stages are roughly as follows: Children move from infancy to early childhood and then to middle childhood. These stages last approximately the first ten years of life. Our children then move on to a long stage known as adolescence (with three sub-stages) which is a phase of transition to adulthood. That’s it, right?

No, it seems that we have another phase that links adolescence with adulthood. The twenty-first birthday used to signify a step into adulthood and all the privileges and responsibilities that come with it. Now the years from 18 to 25 and beyond seem to have become a different stage of life, where young people seem to have stayed for a while, avoiding the responsibilities of full adulthood. This phase has been called the Twixter stage.

This group has been on the radar for a few years, but now it looks like they are reaching significant subculture status. They have been variously referred to as ‘permakids’, ‘boomerang kids’ and ‘adultescence’. Their baby boomer parents don’t want to get old, they don’t want to grow up.

Twixters have put many of the traditional markers of adulthood on hold: home ownership, marriage, and children, if they have any, have been delayed well into their 30s. Entering the workforce later than previous generations and knowing they will live to be eighty, this group has plenty of time to play.

This group can afford to take their time growing up, as they have the luxury of relatively wealthy parents who act as a safety net or financial back-up in times of need. Oh, and a large number of them still live at home.

It’s not like living at home presents any significant hardship for Twixters. Both parents and twixters hold each other in high esteem, and perhaps both groups will reap significant benefits from living together longer, rather than the young leaving the nest at the first opportunity.

A recent US Gallup poll found that 90 percent of young people report being very close to their parents, contrasting with 40 percent of baby boomers in 1974 who said they would be better off without their parents. Twixters and their parents get along.

If young people are delaying joining and starting their own families, then they are looking for and supporting networks elsewhere. This is where friends and family of origin play an important role.

Twixters have a special gift for friendships, and their culture revolves around strong friendship groups. American sitcom Friends and its Australian counterpart The Secret Life of Us! showed how friends are a kind of surrogate family for twenty-somethings, where one goes for emotional support and acceptance.

The point is that Twixters are not going away. Biologically, it appears that the human brain is still developing well into its 20s, so the neurological development of a young person at age 18 is still many years away from being complete.

There is little doubt that adulthood is delayed in a communal sense. A recent survey found that most people believe the transition to adulthood should be complete by age 26, on average, and the number is growing.

So if your oldest child is a toddler, you better make sure you move on because he or she will be around for a couple of decades yet. It can be a scary thought! It certainly challenges all of us to rethink the way we raise young people, to rethink the notion of adolescence itself and its transitions, and to rethink how we organize our personal lives to accommodate the demands of these Peter Pans.