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I struggle a lot with the question of whether there are more deadbeat teens/twenty-somethings today--really the question is, did adolescents get dealt with more harshly in the past, so that by the time they were 23 they had their shit together by necessity, or is it that the 23-year-olds were dealt with more harshly back then? Or is it really that it's always been exactly the way it is now, and we just can't see it?
My brother's a total deadbeat. My mother just recently paid for an audio engineering program in New York for him, and I really thought that might be enough to inspire him--not to work hard or anything, but just the experience of living on his own (up until now he has spent almost all of his 32 years living with my mom) might convince him that that much, at least, was worth it. But I've heard that when the classes finish up in April, he's coming back into my mom's house. And in fact he suggested to my mom that the best way to get his stuff back to Texas was that she could rent a moving truck and drive it up there for him, and then the two of them could drive back together.
My stepdaughter is 99% of the way to being a total deadbeat. It seems that she's so determined not to grow up that she is actively choosing to fail high school now, rather than face the choice of what to do afterwards. Just like my dad, who is unable to kick my brother out of my mother's house, we are unable to kick her out of her mother's house. It's looking more and more like she's not going anywhere, maybe ever.
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