Why young adults are waiting to grow up

Some terms to describe "young adults who are waiting to grow up"

• Waithood - No longer children, but not yet regarded as adults, they are stuck in a period of "waithood".
• "Bamboccioni" (big dummy boys) - describes Italian men in their 20s and 30s who still live with their parents.
• "yo-yo generation" - of young people in the UK that move back home after university.
• "youthmen" - In West Africa, "youthmen" are young men who haven't yet attained adulthood in society's eyes. 
• "freeters" - in Japan describe a legion of young people unable or unwilling to get a "proper" job.
• "slackers" - in the US describe a legion of young people unable or unwilling to get a "proper" job.

How to define someone as adults?

• - age - 18, perhaps, or 21
• - In the Middle East it's marriage
• - In Southern Europe, it's becoming a parent. 
• - In northern Europe it's leaving the parental home.

Why waithood takes place?
- Financial security
- High rates of youth unemployment
- the economic crisis that began in 2008
- the restructuring of economies in the developing world.
- failed economic policies and corrupt governments.
- "Economics is important, but culture plays a crucial role too," says Steven Mintz, a historian at the University of Texas at Austin. "In the past, people aspired to be older. The dominant culture was an adult culture, which was associated with sophistication, worldliness and experience. Today, that has been inverted. Youth culture is the ideal - most people aspire to be younger, not older, and it is youth culture that is seen as more thrilling than anything that adulthood has to offer.

Consequences of waithood?
- young people's willingness to find work in the informal economy
- to migrate
- to affiliate themselves to revolutionary/radical causes as responses to a situation
- a factor in the growth of the so-called Islamic State
- more and more young women remaining at school, finishing their degrees and also becoming more and more independent and not relying on marriage
- young people choose to scope out their options on the job market rather than start on a career
- save up for travel instead of a house
- take a series of sexual partners instead of settling down
- Instead of figuring out how they fit in, they are working out their own identity

Example
- Many of the activists that took part in the 2011 string of protests
- that came to be known as the Arab Spring were
- young, educated but socially excluded, with plenty of spare time on their hands.
- The past decade has seen a rise in the number of protests in which young people feature prominently,
- from Mozambique to Greece, to the UK.

Source: Why young adults are waiting to grow up, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34679621