There Is No Road Map for the Longest Phase of Parenthood

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Benjamin Spock’s The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, which was published in 1946 and sold nearly 50 million copies in the author’s lifetime, sparked the formation of the currently enormous industry advising parents of little ones. There’s now no shortage of guidance for raising children through early developmental milestones, from toilet training and getting your kid to sleep through the night to steering them through the turbulence of adolescence. Yet, once children reach adulthood, the instruction abruptly stops—even though, for many families, that period is the longest, and in some ways the most anxious and uncertain, stage of parenthood.

[Read: ‘Intensive’ parenting is now the norm in America]

It also might be the most overlooked. “There’s a perception, one of the few advice books I could find for parents of young adults. But Arnett contends that many people actually build the foundation for their adult life during a phase he calls “emerging adulthood,” which occurs from 18 to 29 years old. During this period, parents and children also set new norms in their relationship that continue as the children grow into older adults running their own households and who ultimately may end up caring for their parents, according to Karen Fingerman, a human-development and family-sciences professor at the University of Texas at Austin. And although many factors—such as income and education level—influence how this transition plays out, navigating this changing parent-child dynamic seems to be universally confusing.