Question 1

Neuroscience research has shown that the adolescent brain continues to mature up until age 30. Have we been expecting young adults to leave home too early?

Randy Paterson · Accepted Answer

In culture after culture throughout history, young people have reached a point where adult expectations are placed on them much earlier than 30. Ceremonies and privileges marking the end of childhood and the commencement of adulthood vary, but generally range from 13 (think Bar/Bat Mitzvahs) to 16 (driving a vehicle) to 18 (voting in many jurisdictions) to 21 (full adult status). Although we continue to mature (ideally) throughout life, the expectations and responsibilities of adulthood are not beyond the range of most pre-30s humans. Indeed, if a person waits until his or her 30s to take on adult independence, the task appears to be much more difficult than for those who began the process earlier.

Question 2

Is hikikomori related to untreated social anxiety?

Randy Paterson · Accepted Answer

It is quite rare to meet an individual whose adulthood has not yet taken flight who does not also have fairly strong social anxiety. Indeed, some have suggested that the hikikomori phenomenon (or the slightly broader "failure to launch") is really just an intense case of social anxiety.

But this view places the social anxiety as the core and driver of the problem. Sometimes this is the case. But the avoidance and corresponding lack of life experience can also produce the social anxiety, so the direction of causality can - and usually does - go both ways.

For example, the person whose life development has stalled will usually notice that most of their peers have moved onward in life, leading to a fear of being "discovered" as someone not as far along. The fact that this problem appears at a specific life stage suggests unique elements in addition to social anxiety, which can affect life at any age.

Here is a video going into  the idea of "hikikomori" in a bit more detail:

Question 3

Does the greater male variability hypothesis explain the gender difference here and higher rate of males living at home with parents?

Randy Paterson · Accepted Answer

I doubt it. I think that more of the answer (though surely not all of it) lies in the different ways that we raise boys and girls. In many families boys are more likely to be indulged, whether in their transgressions or in their avoidance. In some cases this can set them up for a magnification of their least-helpful tendencies.

I have come to believe that for some boys part of the problem arises from sexism, but in quite an unexpected way. Despite the vast changes in western culture, girls still seem to be trained disproportionately in home-making skills such as cooking, cleaning, and household management, and in supportive behaviours such as punctuality, cooperation, and accepting feedback. Paradoxically, these are the exact skills required to become LESS dependent rather than more. Young women are more prepared to cope with the challenges of managing their own homes and lives than the young men, who have often been "protected" from the need to learn how to make meals, work a washing machine, or get themselves out of bed, and so continue to need help with basic tasks of daily living.

Another factor is the tendency for many young males to be seduced by images of power, wealth, and success, and consequently to focus on high levels of achievement that are simply out of reach early on. They may want to be at the helm of a tech startup, but would be better advised to take an "Introduction to Programming" course at community college. Ambition is to be applauded, but without the tempering element of practicality it is unlikely to be achieved. Focussed on the distant and grandiose peaks of success, they often find themselves marooned on the couch. More young women seem willing to labour in the foothills for a time, which is usually the path upward.

Question 4

I see this problem frequently as an adolescent psychologist. Are there treatment guidelines or evidence-based interventions that you can recommend for families in this situation?

Randy Paterson · Accepted Answer

One of the difficulties with this area is the lack of good research on the elements of treatment that are most potent. As a consequence, there are no empirically-based treatment guidelines specifically for delayed transition to adulthood.

All is not lost, however. If we go beyond the overall label and identify the elements of the problem with a particular individual, we find components that do have well-established treatment approaches. I'll list just a few of the elements here.

Most such individuals exhibit depressed mood and marked inactivity (to the degree that clinicians are often surprised they don't feel even worse than they do). Behavioural activation is usually an effective strategy that I use with virtually every client in this situation. Common targets include exercise, information-gathering, taking short courses, investigating volunteer work, creating a resume, and taking transit.

Social anxiety and avoidance are usually present, so exposure therapy becomes very useful. Walking in public, visiting coffee shops, interacting with retail staff, and joining social groups are all examples. Included with this is an investigation of the cognitions underlying the fear: What will happen? What might others think? There is usually a terror of making minor social errors, so doing this in a planned and deliberate way (dropping coins when paying, confessing anxiety, pretending to have gotten on the wrong bus) can help the client realize that such things are survivable.

Family dynamics are typically difficult, so an investigation of the family system is often a critical element. For example, a parent may complain that her son never does anything around the home, but does the chores for him when he forgets. Often the parent's anxiety about their child's incompetence causes them to undermine any efforts at independence he or she makes.

In my courses for mental health providers on this subject I also place a strong emphasis on motivational interviewing and on getting the client's own vision of what a better life might look like, no matter how obvious the answer might appear to us. The client is almost always in an oppositional relationship with authority figures (typically the parents, who have been pressuring him to change). If the clinician responds to passivity by taking over, progress is virtually guaranteed to cease.

Here's a brief video discussing one concept that normally comes up during my work with young adults who are feeling stalled: the temptation to wait for confidence to arrive before doing things. I think it gives a hint of what I do (maybe a tad more gently) in the therapy room.

Question 5

What can parents do to prevent failure to launch in their kids?

Randy Paterson · Accepted Answer

Parenting involves two essential tasks: nurturance and development. Keep the kid alive and prepare them so they can survive on their own. We have become very good at the first of these tasks, but perhaps have given ground on the second. The result is that children enter young adulthood without the skills, experience, or resources to deal with a world that is less nurturing than their home.

I encourage parents to imagine playing in the NBA Final. They wouldn't expect to perform well if their first practice on the basketball court was the night before. Instead, they would start young, learning skills one by one and playing in steadily more challenging circumstances. This seems so obvious that it hardly merits saying. Why then, would we anticipate that a child raised without responsibilities, protected from confronting their fears, and untrained in self-care skills would suddenly develop these at the stroke of their 18th birthday?

Parents can break down the skills of adulthood into tiny chunks and gently confer these upon the child one by one starting at an early age, working upward from, perhaps, making their own bed to cooking dinners every Thursday, from putting away their own Lego to managing the household painting, from working with a small allowance to saving for a car, from sharing crayons to leading a team. For an unprepared person, every aspect of adulthood is cliff face; the task for parents is to carve these into staircases and then support their offspring in climbing on their own - rather than stepping in and undermining their children's learning where it is most needed.

There's much more to it than that, of course, but this is a Q and A, not a weeklong seminar! Here's a brief video on the twin tasks of childraising and attachment:

Question 6

Should we look at more formal initiation processes into adulthood in Western society?

Randy Paterson · Accepted Answer

I think it would be terrific if a ceremony would solve this problem, but I doubt that it would. Also, although we might lament the demise of such markers I don't think that we can simply create them and have them adopted widely, so the point is moot.

The solution is likely to lie elsewhere. I would advocate an increased emphasis on identifying and providing the skills necessary for adult life to our offspring. I would encourage a stronger emphasis on the idea of confronting our fears and anxieties rather than avoiding them.

And I would like to see deeper thought about some of the ideas we are providing youth that may not serve them - many of which are well-intended but inadvertently create psychological barriers to growth. These include the idea that confidence is a prerequisite to action, that impulse is a good guide to behaviour, that the self needs expression but not construction, that passion is discovered rather than cultivated, and others.

In other words, I think that the task is somewhat larger and more encompassing than the adoption of a ceremonial rite.

Question 7

Why do males struggle with this more?

Randy Paterson · Accepted Answer

In culture after culture, more males than females seem to have difficulty with the transition to adult independence. The reason has been debated in the literature with few clear conclusions. Some hypotheses that have been advanced:

Young males may for some reason be more satisfied with solitary activity, technological toys, or purely-online socializing than young women, who may be more drawn to in-person activity.

Due to ongoing sexism in childraising, young women are more likely to be trained in cooking, cleaning, and household maintenance - precisely the type of skills required to live independently - whereas young men often lag behind in these areas.

Males may be more easily seduced by grandiose or narcissistic fantasies of great success, the path to which is difficult to find, whereas young women may tend to see progress in more incremental, achievable steps.

Young males may be somewhat more prone to addictive self-soothing behaviour such as excessive marijuana or alcohol use, Internet use, online pornography, gaming, and related activities, all of which absorb time that might otherwise be spent on personal development.

Males, more than their sisters, may be more indulged in a tendency to avoid uncomfortable emotions such as anxiety, resulting in a spiral of withdrawal that becomes self-perpetuating.

So which is it? Each of these ideas likely contains a grain of truth, and different factors are likely to be operating for different individuals. It appears that there are many paths to a launchpad delay.

Question 8

Haven't adolescents always struggled with the transition to adulthood or is this a problem that is getting worse due to economic and social factors?

Randy Paterson · Accepted Answer

Life transitions are inherently challenging, I think - else we wouldn't see them as transitions. The shift from dependent adolescence to independent adulthood has always been a rocky road and young people have always varied in their abilities to walk it.

That said, there do seem to be factors that have made the path more difficult for many in recent decades. Some of these are economic. In many cities it is quite simply impossible to afford a home of one's own on most entry-level salaries, which have stagnated or declined in purchasing power for thirty years in North America. In addition, the Internet and social media have made it easier to create a life that is just-barely-tolerable without employment or face-to-face socializing.

Thinking-related factors seem to be even more telling, however. The subtle training of culture has provided many beliefs that run the risk of derailing early adulthood, including: failure is dangerous and to be avoided; work should be exciting and linked to one's passion; passion itself is something to be discovered, not cultivated; success means reaching the pinnacle of achievement and all else is failure; the disapproval or disdain of others is lethal.

When I am working with young clients on this issue it is more often the thinking-related challenges than the external practical ones that make the difference.

Here's a brief video based on reactions that viewers made to a bit YouTuber CGP Grey posted on how young people could be more miserable (he'd based it on my book):

Question 9

Do you think that cultural messages such as "follow your passion" "chase your dreams" are unhelpful for kids? What is a better message that we could be giving them about life/work? Would better career counselling help?

Randy Paterson · Accepted Answer

In short, yes. If we look at the actual history of individuals who lead deeply fulfilling lives, we see that they arrived at this enviable destination not by doing what was most fascinating in the moment, but by putting in hard and often unfulfilling work.

We speak of passions and dreams as though they are solid entities, but they are not. My passion for the environment may fade into nothingness while taking a calculus prerequisite for an environmental sciences program; my dream of acting may dissolve with long stretches of failed auditions.

We love to think in binary terms: Either "Follow your passions" or "Forget passion and chase the money." But the best path forward is usually to think in a more complicated way. We do want to encourage youth to identify their interests (which usually start out too weak and tentative to be called passions) and use these as part of the consideration in creating their life and developing their skills.

But we want to include other factors as well. I often say to young adults that early jobs are almost never about passion, nor should they be. They are about paying rent, enabling life's beginning, discovering what you hate, building useful skills and habits, and giving hints about where the next step might lie.  Chasing passion directly is usually futile or misdirected.

In any case, telling adolescents that they should "Let passion be your guide" is paralyzing for the majority who do not have a fully developed passion to chase. Many launchpad delays come from waiting at home for a full-fledged passion to appear - which it never does.

Here's a short video that goes into the idea of chasing passion - and how it's often more of a path to misery than to happiness:

Question 10

What age is too old to live with your parents?

Randy Paterson · Accepted Answer

I don't believe that any age is too old to live in a multigenerational household. Although we think of setting up independent housekeeping as a handy marker of "launching," many who live with family can be truly considered to have matured. It's more a matter of whether their role in the home is that of an adult - bearing at least some of the responsibility for the home and family - or of a dependent child or adolescent. Some who move out are fully supported financially by family and really can't be said to have begun their adult life, while many who live with parents are equals to or caregivers for those parents. Questions that I consider when evaluating a young adult living at home include: Who cooks, cleans, and maintains the home? Who pays the bills? Does the young person have tasks and responsibilities within the home? And is their life beyond the home taking some shape in terms of self-support and relationships?

Question 11

Why do my parents nag me to get a job?

Randy Paterson · Accepted Answer

Not knowing your parents or your situation, that's hard for me to say. But when we are children our home, food, possessions, and privileges have usually always been with us. This can make them seem like part of the natural order - like gravity. The reality, of course, is that rent is paid by someone, meals are prepared by someone, and laundry is done by someone - usually someone ELSE during our childhood, as we do not have the skills or resources to care for ourselves. As we reach adulthood, the usual expectation is that we will take on something approaching an equal share of that responsibility - or perhaps all of it if we move away and become independent. Employment is usually one aspect of that. It can begin the process of enabling us to sustain ourselves, and usually provides much more than just money. The abilities to get ourselves moving, contribute, receive feedback, deal with difficult people, and be someplace on time are all invaluable skills that can be applied in very different settings - even if we never again want to flip burgers, file papers, or ship marine toilets (my first job). It's atop these basic work skills that we can stack higher-level tasks and abilities that might have a closer relationship to our real interests. Waiting until the perfect job opportunity comes along generally means that we are ill-prepared to succeed at it. This does not mean that early adulthood should be drudgery - mine certainly wasn't and I strongly advise against the "I'll wait and have fun in my 40s" approach.

Question 12

Why do some adult children never leave home?

Randy Paterson · Accepted Answer

Adult children remain in the family home for a wide variety of reasons. Some of these are cultural. In Italian families, for example, the majority of young men remain at home for much of their twenties. Their sisters, interestingly, are much more likely to leave - and this is true in country after country all over the world.

Sometimes this is purely a practical matter. Rent can be expensive. Housing availability is sometimes an issue. Parents may need care or assistance. Multigenerational households have a variety of attractions. I would not want to call everyone who stays home a case of "delayed transition to adulthood" - this is certainly not the case. Often staying home and taking on some of the tasks that aging parents can no longer manage is a supreme act of adulthood and responsibility.

But some young people, particularly young men, remain not just in the family home, but stuck in an unfulfilling lifestyle that resembles a prolonged adolescence. They are usually unemployed or underemployed, are not pursuing education, have very restricted social lives, and take on few responsibilities around the home. In some cases they are virtually housebound. Anxiety and depression are common, though whether these cause or are the result of the restricted life is often difficult to determine.

The Japanese term for it (keeping in mind that some of the particulars vary by culture) is hikikomori, which means "pulling inward" or "being confined." It is a pattern of acute social withdrawal. This is the problem my work has emphasized in recent years. In my answers to other questions on this page I provide indications of some of the factors that seem to contribute.

Here's a brief video looking at the number of people living with parents around the world:

Question 13

Is this problem linked to parenting style?

Randy Paterson · Accepted Answer

Most individuals with a delayed start to adult life have siblings who have moved forward at a faster pace. Consequently, it is difficult to point to parenting exclusively as the cause of this problem. In most cases, however, it does appear that the parents and young adult become caught in an unproductive spiral of interactions.

One pattern is a tendency to safeguard an anxious child from challenges, with the result that they remain unable to cope with adversity and begin falling behind their peers and siblings. As they appear more and more vulnerable, the parents become more protective, inadvertently perpetuating the problem.

Another pattern involves the parents eagerly pushing their young person toward independent life and adult responsibility. Unfortunately this makes taking the path of independence an act of obedience to parental authority. By getting a job, going to school, and taking on responsibilities around the home, the adult child would be acting like a "good little boy," which is not the central task of adulthood. In some cases the only way to preserve a sense of independence is to resist moving in the direction the parents desire. Paradoxically, the young person asserts their freedom by remaining stuck in a childhood dependent role.

Part of the task of therapy is to identify whether patterns such as these are maintaining the problem and, if so, to help all parties to shift the interaction. With parents the core of this is often to recognize that their young person is no longer a child and to ramp down their parental caregiving and direction. The goal for the adult child is to envision the adulthood they desire, apart from the one that parents are trying to enforce.

Question 14

How are you helping those who had launched or had great plans to launch - but found themselves in their parent's basement during the quarantine and now can't find jobs.

Randy Paterson · Accepted Answer

This is a very real challenge. It is easier to work on this problem when all doors are open: the young person can identify all the areas that need to change and base their decisions on personal preference.

During Covid-19, however, some of those doors have narrowed or shut entirely. Many social opportunities (e.g., sports groups) are not operating and the economy may make job-finding much more difficult.

The task, however, is similar to the one we often find ourselves in as therapists: Identify all the possible ways we could approach the problem, then winnow down based partly on what's practical given the client's situation. We can encourage outdoors excursions if not crowded parties; resume-building if not job-finding; skill-building if not experience-gathering; self-imposed life structure if not the regimented timeline of employment.

My own clients have been working on the doorways that remain open: personal exercise, taking online courses, learning to cook, creating a resume, identifying the adulthood they'd like to build, socially-distanced meetups with friends, taking on chores around home, exploring their outdoor community, and building their skills (e.g., learning to drive) - all of which remain possible. I often have clients imagine sitting in front of a line of doors - some ajar, some padlocked - and encourage them to explore the ones that are open rather than pounding on those that are, for now, inaccessible.

Question 15

Is this syndrome a quality of a son or girl that thinks she has been reared in an unjusticing way by his or her mother or father, and stays at home demanding good treatment from the unjusticing parent?

Randy Paterson · Accepted Answer

Not always. Indeed, many people in this situation have been treated very lovingly and fairly by parents, and have been protected from the inevitable injustices and disappointments of life. As a result, they haven't learned to cope with life not being fair, effort not always being rewarded, or people outside their nurturing home being critical, rejecting, or disinterested.

That said, a sense of being wronged by a parent is a common trap that prevents many people from fully embracing adult life. They become unwilling to move forward or take initiative until the parent apologizes or makes up for past failings. This places control over the person's life firmly in the hands of the one individual they trust least - and sometimes the one person least likely to behave in the manner required.

We don't always have to forgive the failings of an imperfect (or outright abusive) parent, but our life remains our own to live. The challenge is not to exert control over the person one believes to be the guilty party, which is almost always a recipe for failure. It is to exert control over ourselves instead.

Question 16

How to challenge " I've tried that and it didn't work"?

Randy Paterson · Accepted Answer

This comes up a lot. First, when you hear these words as a therapist it usually means that you have tried to take over the client's life and boss them around. Passive resistance is all but guaranteed in this case.

Sometimes, though, the client is simply providing you with information. Get more detail. What is it that they tried? What would success have looked like had it happened? What actually happened instead? Almost always it emerges that the goal was far too ambitious (giving up video games forever starting today, eating properly 'from now on,' making a circle of friends this week). Given the strategy attempted, the odds of success were minimal.

I work to reframe the goal the client selected as an entirely appropriate Ultimate Goal (something to work toward), but one that will take a number of intermediate steps to achieve. Working together, we try to scale back expectations sharply and identify smaller and less effortful steps to try instead. "Making friends is exactly right; let's work toward that. You mentioned the community centre. What would you think of dropping by this week just to see what programs they offer?"

The key is to avoid trying to "speed things up" by dictating goals to a lost and often aimless young person. It's typically faster and almost always more effective to work with them to identify their own ideas and then help them boil these down to concrete plans with very modest finish lines.

Understanding Failure to Launch Syndrome