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Comment by throwaway613834 | Hacker News Reader

> We treat them as adults in school (by making them responsible for their own performance through grading and measuring) from a very young age

Really? I feel like even in college students don't always feel like they are responsible for their own performance & grades (and an honest one at that). Look at all the cheating and grade inflation and grading complaints (even by parents!!) that have gone towards becoming the norm over the last decade or two in college. In the adult world it's not like your mom can call your boss and complain about the fact that you got a bad review or something (at least not successfully...). It's not like it always used to be like this in school either. Kids are honestly just not maturing into adults as they used to, whether it their own fault, or their parents', or social media's, or the government's, or anyone else's.

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Julie Lythcott-Haims was a former Stanford Dean responsible for incoming freshmen students. From that position she likely collected many more data points than any of us on this topic, which led her to write a book called How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kids for Success [0]. I have not read the book but heard her on a podcast a few years back.

This article has some key points in it that address the comments in this thread [1].

Excerpt:

"Working with the quote-unquote best and brightest, I was seeing more and more [students] who seemed less and less capable of doing the stuff of life. They were incredibly accomplished in the transcript and GPA sense but less with their own selves, evidenced by how frequently they communicated with a parent, texting multiple times a day, needing a parent to tell them what to do."

[0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OO2LJS2/ref=as_li_tl?ie...

[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-murphy-jr/want-to-raise-...?

I'll have to read this too, but I often think that the trend for society to push all kids into long studies delayed some internal adulthood passage. We're somehow kids up until 23 now, where as our parents were ready to roll around 16. And I think it has consequences for your development, your friendships, your potential family and also your actual one (people had kids a bit younger, meaning grand parents would be younger to take care of grand kids, a different family tissue)

You forgot the part of the quote that agrees with what you're talking about:

> yet we don't really cut the umbelical cord (grant them autonomy) until they're in their twenties

The problem pointed by GP is that kids are expected to behave responsibly at school (as if it were work), but parents are not giving them enough autonomy in life. Most of them never "become responsible", because they're taught from early age that they shouldn't (and that feeling is reinforced later, when parents call colleges, and the things you talk about). There's a lot of cognitive dissonance there.

> In the adult world it's not like your mom can call your boss and complain about the fact that you got a bad review or something (at least not successfully...).

Don't be so sure about that. Parents are starting to talk to university professors on behalf of their adult children.

That was the point they were making

Yeah. At universities the parents are the customers so of course they're going to be the ones complaining. There's no risk of this happening at work because nobody is paying to be there.

If your parent calls your boss they can threaten to fire you and there's nothing mom or dad can do about it.

I've heard a few stories of parents taking the same behavior to the workplace, but so far I've chosen to believe they're urban legend as I don't want to live in a world where those stories are true.

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