Long Road to Adulthood Is Growing Even Longer - NYTimes.com

Confusing moneymaking with maturity:

People between 20 and 34 are taking longer to finish their educations, establish themselves in careers, marry, have children and become financially independent, said Frank F. Furstenberg, who leads the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood, a team of scholars who have been studying this transformation.

“A new period of life is emerging in which young people are no longer adolescents but not yet adults,” Mr. Furstenberg said.

Which is a stupid way of saying that it takes much longer to gain an economic foothold in a downwardly-mobile economy. In lieu of any other social structures, those who have the support of family are the lucky ones.