To think the encouragement to delay real life is a big cause in the explosion of mental health issues in under 35's ?

[rudolphrainbownose]

Okay, so there is a well documented mental health crisis amongst young people , particularly university students, needing mental health support.

Is it just me or is the current culture of delaying "real adulthood" ( staying at school longer, young marriage/ pregnancy actively discouraged and frowned upon, uni unofficially taking the school leaving age to 23 for middle class young people, staying living at their parents well into their late 20's/ early 30's....)

To me it seems discouraging starting real adult life is fuelling this.

1. Young women are told not to expect "security" in relationships, they are almost told to expect being ghosted by a series of men "not wanting to put a label on it," and going on a series of disastrous online dates is better than settling down young. Look how much marriage amongst under 25's is frowned upon on Mumsnet.

But I don't see many aspects of the dating scene today, ("friends with benefits" being cool, sex often expected without commitment before or afterwards on the first couple of dates, having to actually spell out you don't want the guy you are dating online to continue dating others online, being ghosted and blocked for no reason, being particularly healthy for the mental health of young people). Yet this is sold to them as more empowering than settling down into a steady relationship at a relatively young age....

2. I'll expect to be flamed for this, but the active discouragement of having children in your 20's , probably robs a lot of women of a focus, ( because having your own family is often a nice focus), than drifting around without a purpose gives them. This also leads to probably more people experiencing the panic of miscarriage and infertility , ( risks increasing with age), into their 30's.

3. Active encouragement into University without thinking often leads to a horrendously mentally unhealthy lifestyle.

For those with a passion for the subject, or doing a vocational course that leads to a career, of course university should be supported.

But that is not the case for your average student. Your average student goes to uni because, broadly speaking, it's what their college or sixth form expects of anyone vaguely academic. They pick a subject with no fixed career that they are at best, vaguely interested in, ( managed to scrape a B in business studies A Level, hated it the least, so I'll do it at uni to delay working for three years).

They head to uni to study a subject they are not particularly interested in, ith no idea what it will lead to afterwards. Most, have at most, six hours a week contact time, ( often less post covid). They sleep in late, browse the internet and get smashed a few times a week, ( the majority of students I know do not work in term time). Rinse and repeat. And they wonder why living this not very appealing lifestyle leaves students at poor risk of mental health ? And many are encouraged to take on a masters in a subject they are not interested in, with no direct career, to delay entering the real world for another year. They live in a bubble with people of the same age and inexperience as them. Compare that to a 19 year old office juniour being up and about, learning about the world of work, going for after work drinks with colleagues of a variety of ages ?

And the housing crisis means they are still likely to be living at home, ( especially if they are single), until 30. Often treated like overgrown teenagers, still in the habit of explaining to their parents where they are going of an evening. My friend , ( male), was explaining to me that at 28 he was working himself up to staying the night at his new girlfriends as he was so embarrassed to explain where he was to his parents, ( because if he told them he wouldn't be home for dinner as he was staying at his girlfriend's , they'd realise he was having sex).

In short, is delaying marriage, babies, work , moving out and leaving education actually causing everyone to be directionless and unhappy ?

I went to university 30 years ago in the hope that I would meet like minded intellectuals and more importantly get away from my shitty little town. I was largely disappointed but I am not sure getting the sort of job an 18 yo in a shitty little town could get would have been a great option so I have to disagree op.

I did have life experience, lived away from home, learned actions have consequences, learned to live with people not my family. All while studying a subject I enjoyed and a fantastic music based social life that has stayed with me. I also met the man who later became dh/ father to our 3 amazing kids all born when out of my feckless 20s.

I do not see uni as the be all and end all but it offers opportunities, as does working and for me after uni moving to London was the key to opening up more opportunities and I don't think I would have done as well without going to university. For uncertain, intelligent feckless young people (which I definitely was in 92) uni was the best option.

Mental health issues are complex and as I work in a role that puts me in contact with many people struggling with mental health, poverty, lack of opportunity, social exclusion and ill health is key to the majority of these issues, situation and pre disposition. Not going to uni when you didn't need to, or having children over 30. It is pointless looking back and saying things used to be better, as well as unhelpful. Our society is what we have made it, capitalistic, individualistic and inequitable. We need to address the real poverty and social divides that cause much of the unhappiness you witness

Going to university is the best thing that happened to me. I took a subject which has been the focus of my career, I met great friends who I still see regularly 30 years later and gave me the confidence to build a good life for myself. I had a child at 33, after travelling the world and buying a house. It was the right time for me and I didn't feel I was missing out by having a child. I would have not been ready for motherhood before that.

Years later, I became single again and my MH didn't suffer, because I had the security of having a good job, a career, the friends and education to help me through the tough times.

It might not be for everyone, but I have encouraged my DC to do the same: study, travel, work and DELAY getting settled. Life is long and there's no rush to settle down

It's really interesting to me, and a little sad too, that you see the period before settling down and having children as "waiting for life to start". I couldn't disagree more!

I regard the period between leaving school and having my dd at 32 as one of the richest and most interesting periods in my life. I travelled a lot, lived abroad in 2 different countries, made friends, and had so many amazing experiences as well as time to explore who I really was and what I wanted. I wasn't waiting for anything, I was living my life to the full, in the moment.

Having had that time for myself made it so much easier for me to enjoy being a parent when dd came along. I didn't feel like I had to make sacrifices because I had already has a chance to do lots of the things that I wanted to do. I felt ready for that next stage, and I relished it, but I certainly wouldn't have been ready for a family 10 years earlier.

Having a family and building a successful career for myself in my 30s and 40s has been immensely rewarding, but I am so, so glad that I had those carefree years first when I wasn't weighed down by all of the responsibilities that I have now, when I was free to just follow my own interests and try new things. Life would have been so much poorer without those opportunities and my mental health would have certainly suffered.

My mum, who married at 22 and suffered terrible mental health problems. She has always said that she regrets not having had the opportunity to do more for herself, to live her own life. I always knew that I didn't want to end up like that.

Maybe some people waste their youth to the extent that it feels like they're just waiting for real life to start, but the answer to that in my view isn't to encourage them to saddle themselves with responsibilities from an earlier age, but rather to encourage them to do more with that time while they have it.

I still get satisfaction even now from reflecting on all of the things that I did in my younger years, and I want that same breadth and richness of experience for dd. She is going to have decades of thinking about work and family. I sincerely hope that she makes time to live a little for herself first.

Also didn't previous generations tend to mask their mental ill more?

I think yes previous generations did do this and it wasn't always good but I also think the current generation is encouraged to wallow rather than seek tools to adapt and overcome their issues. We haven't got the balance right.

Women aren’t just walking wombs you know. I spent my 20s focusing on my career, I did extremely well and am now pregnant with my first child at 34 whilst being extremely financially and mentally stable. That simply wasn’t the case in my 20s. The same applies to most of my friends. Most of the people I know who got married and had children in their early 20s are now divorced, which doesn’t seem ideal either (being from a broken home myself). People now have choices in life which do not just involve popping out kids.

Why is not having dc delaying starting your life?

I met DH young, didn't have a dc till 10 years later. I wanted to build my career & enjoy the freedom of not having dc. @MrsBennetsPoorNerves I agree with you, I'm so grateful for that time because I will never get it back.

@MusicstillonMTV perhaps but I don't think that's to do with going to uni or delaying having dc.

Of all the things causing young women stress these days, you pick them getting an education and not having babies young? Gosh OP you have backwards and sexist thinking and could not be more wrong.

I think young people's mental health is more affected by the fact that there are no decent or realistic prospects of adequately paid and secure jobs which can afford them enough to live independently of their parents.

Wages are too low and the cost of living is too high. Young people are kept infantilised by this because they literally can't afford to live away from home. Often they're saddled with a ton of uni debt too.

At least luckily women have far more options these days than settle down with a man and have kids.

I think MH issues among the young, is due to a lack of hope in their future & the school ing system which is geared toward results and targets.

Low pay, poor working conditions, large amounts of debt & yes UNI or FE is required now for many many jobs from electrician to nurse.

Does the OP actually know that to get married and have kids requires a house and decent wages, which as i said needs qualifications, obtained at Uni FE.

As for the stereotyping of students? total BS.

And anecdotally, nobody in my social circle had kids before their thirties. All are in good jobs, no divorces and have teens and young adults who are now excited about their own futures. The kids are not pathetic entitled youngsters. They are ambitious, kind, very hard-working and probably more knowledgable about the word than my generation was. My kids and their friends don’t post photos on social media at all, see no point in ‘influencers’ and don’t have nail extensions, fake eyelashes etc. So many cliches about young adults here.

I cannot believe so many women here are advocating that women don’t get an education and start breeding in their early twenties. My kids are so lucky to have parents who do not want them to restrict their prospects and who believe in gender equality.

Completely disagree with 1 and 2 because we should be pushing young people to have careers, hobbies, explore the world and figure themselves out BEFORE they settle down. Dating and marriage and kids should not be the only thing young people have to look forward to. Adult life isn't just marriage and kids. It's learning responsibility for yourself, making a living, paying taxes and bills, learning emotional maturity and how to be a productive member of the society you are in. Far too many young people make rubbish parents and partners because they got socialised into doing these things when they weren't ready.

Doing this is young is exactly why so many middle aged people have crises and mental health breakdowns and divorces - because you get to your 50s, kids are older and moved away and you realise you don't even know who you are, you regret not having had any adventures and life seems to have passed by. The access of the internet, opportunities to do things via a phone, the world getting smaller only makes it more obvious how more there is to life.

I do agree kids should be encouraged to move away from home young and begin adult life asap.

Aren't men over 40s most at risk from suicide? what's impacting that?

fb.watch/hnXMMRKDOo/

Great video clip of exactly why people get to middle age and feel unhappy. Lots of the older women I work with who married young,mentor our young apprentices and grads to enjoy their lives and find career success and speak of how they wished they had.

It's not just as publicised because most are from a generation where mental health wasn't talked about as openly as we do with the youth today.

YABU, it’s extremely difficult for people in their 20’s to earn enough to buy a home and have the financial stability needed to raise children or get married.
I moved out into a rental when I was 20, by 22 I had my first child and I was married (a cheap registry wedding) and by 23 I had my second child.

We are now in our mid 30’s, still stuck in rentals, we’ve had two section 21’s, weve been homeless, we’ve had many job losses, there’s been so many ups and downs. I have chronic depression and anxiety I know I wouldn’t survive without my parents helping me all the time.
In hindsight myself and my husband should have got ourselves into a proper career before having our children so we could have given them more stability, I constantly feel like I’ve failed them due to be being so young and naive when we had them.

This is general not not aimed at any age group, although in the past there was less mental health support is the over anaylsing everything people do or think or say these days make mental health currently any better?

Why so aggro? I don’t struggle with English, thanks, and I took the op’s post - as well as many of the responses to it - as her views on what’s good for young people and how life ought to be lived. It’s not a nuanced piece of writing and certainly made me think of all the exceptions to the stereotypes presented.

I don't think I agree with the marriage/children part if I'm honest, but the uni part, definitely! They maybe should only be offering courses that require for a job (medicine mainly)

But I do 100% think that it should be easier for young people to get on the property ladder (or more accessible rental properties) because my biggest jolt into adulthood was living alone, and paying bills, budgeting, washing my own clothes, cooking my own meals. The longer young people stay at home and have all this done for them the bigger shock to the system it will be when they have to.

They maybe should only be offering courses that require for a job (medicine mainly)

But at a fundamental level, training people for jobs is not the purpose of universities. I hate how the culture in this country is seeming to place less and less value on academia. Not a good direction for a society to be heading in imo

This is one of those threads where people share their lived experiences and observations. Great. But then apply a universal maxim to them. It happened like this for me/x/y, therefore it's true.

I had my DD at 27 and it was the making of me after a turbulent home then university then city life. Her and DH grounded me and gave me purpose and routine to my life. That's my experience. Had some of my friends had that experience, it wouldn't have had the same effect because we're all so bloody different and need different things. My friends (all 35/36 now) are mostly starting to have kids, some still searching etc. Arguably they are more financially settled than we were and can offer more stability to their kids than us who lived in three rented properties (we moved cities) before buying!

I was mid-PhD when I had DD and I hated studying. It was a lonely, pointless existence for me. University was presented as the only option at college. Love that so many apprenticeships are available now. In hindsight I would get office experience earlier but if things hadn't happened this way, I wouldn't be on this path now (now that is true for all of us). Having DD motivated me to get real life work experience, working from low paid shitty jobs up to senior digital job now.

Everyone is different & motivated by different things. All we can hope for in life is we find the circumstances and people that are best for us to thrive.

OP you seem to have missed out a vital point, which is that most jobs now require a degree, and despite this, pay far less in real terms than they did in previous years. I'm sure there are some people who leave school at 18, get a reasonable job, get on the property ladder by their mid 20s and are "adulting" well enough to have had their kids by the time they're 30, but for most people, this simply isn't realistic. And in any case, even if it were, the country can't function just with people like that. We do actually need people with qualifications, which take time and money to obtain. I'm sure you'd be the first to complain if we no longer had any doctors, nurses, teachers, vets, dentists etc.

My SILs' friends mostly married by 22. The recent Sunday times ranking of comprehensives ranked their school as one of the top 10 in the country (orthodox Jewish school) in terms of results. They mostly went to university. But they also married though mostly to older men. And they do have careers and they do have kids. However I think they probably got more parental help than the average person. I actually do find in my social circle that it is the people who have parental help and good circumstances as well as a traditional upbringing that have children in mid 20s. Rather than who is building up their career etc. After all if you have parental help with childcare you would not have any impediment to continue working.

Well exactly, some people are quite happy to ignore this fact because then they get to moan about young people today doing it wrong 🙄

Suicide rates are decreasing for the younger age group not increasing. And whilst that is not the only marker of poor mental health it does point to better coping mechanisms around it (e.g. reaching out for professional help more readily, talking about it more). But that's just written off as introspective navel gazing.

This. Not having a baby doesn’t make you “directionless and unhappy”.

I thnk about 95% of that is utter shite.

Especially re: having kids, further education and leaving home.