What Is It About 20-Somethings? - NYTimes.com

Arrested development on a massive scale, otherwise known as “emerging adulthood”:

We’re in the thick of what one sociologist calls “the changing timetable for adulthood.” Sociologists traditionally define the “transition to adulthood” as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. In 1960, 77 percent of women and 65 percent of men had, by the time they reached 30, passed all five milestones. Among 30-year-olds in 2000, according to data from the United States Census Bureau, fewer than half of the women and one-third of the men had done so. A Canadian study reported that a typical 30-year-old in 2001 had completed the same number of milestones as a 25-year-old in the early ’70s.

Admission: I’m not in my twenties anymore. But I’m close enough to that “golden era” (snicker). I, too, am guilty of dragging my feet on the path to being a grown up.