Still Launching?

Parents and pundits have lamented the so-called “failure to launch” of millennial young adults. Popular books like Failure to Launch and How to Raise an Adult provide advice for parents, while others argue that economic barriers are the real culprits. Yet, amid this debate, we’ve overlooked how parents and adult children actually navigate their evolving financial relationships and the moral meanings each generation attaches to financial (in)dependence.

My dissertation addresses these issues through more than 140 interviews with young U.S. college graduates (in their late 20s and early 30s) and their parents. I explore the conditions under which financial dependence is viewed as appropriate or necessary and examine when financial support is sought, offered, or refused. By identifying the tensions that emerge and how families respond, I uncover their implicit understandings of what it means to be a moral and successful adult—and what it means to raise one.

Read more about my dyadic interviewing methodology here.