Postponing Adulthood

Don't get me wrong. I'm on board with the ideal that in a nation as wealthy as the United States, everyone should have access to adequate health care. That's not my concern. But, perhaps inspired by the folks at Freakonomics Radio, I'm looking at unintended consequences.

The most recent iteration of health care law made it necessary for insurance companies to allow parents to carry their children on a family plan until the child reaches age 26. In theory, therefore--and I posit that it will be quite likely in practice--a significant chunk of us won't be seeing the real cost of our own health care until age 27.

Just before I had the coordination to operate a stick shift, my home state raised the age for an unrestricted driver's license to 18. Sometime before I knew how to say "beer" in Australian, most states raised their drinking ages to 21. I don't know when Atlantic City will allow you onto the floor, but the Dow Jones and NASDAQ won't let you gamble on their screens until 21. And in university my friends and I, as we planned a road trip, discovered that certain rental car companies wouldn't give us a vehicle until we were 25.

Risk, along with the necessary opportunity and responsibility, is being pushed out of our hands until a later and later age.

In the 1930s and '40s a new phase of human development was discovered in Europe and North America: adolescence. Folks who paid attention to this kind of thing noticed that, socially and behaviorally, individuals did not develop stability, responsibility, and maturity as early as once expected. Children took until age 17, 18, or even later to become "adults." This was a shift from the generations that told of having to take on a job at age 13. My own experience of working with college students at the turn of the millennium shows that children were not becoming responsible adults--capable of weighing risk and enduring negative outcomes from conscious choices--until age 21 or 22. As college staff, we had frequent discussions about how to "teach responsibility" or "encourage accountability," precisely because the students under our care didn't have those adult attributes.

Of course, they drove after midnight for the first time just before they came to college. They weren't allowed to drink before they showed up on campus--and we know how that works out! They'd never handled significant amounts of money on their own, or been responsible for paying bills. All the things that teach us about risk, responsibility, great failure and great success had been pushed off for them.

It's been postponed for a good cause: education. A child who must work full time at 13 can't get a full-time education. The collegiate expectations in our nation prohibit starting a career until the Bachelor's (or even Master's) is complete. But there has been a trade-off. And our nation has just instituted another trade-off: access to health care for un- or under-employed youth (under age 26) in a job market that's weak at best. Health care is good. Let's pay attention to the unintended consequences.

Now our "children" may not see the true weight of their financial responsibility for health care until after 26. I predict that this move will push development of financial responsibility and fiscal adulthood further into the future. The next generation will become adults not between 13 and 16, not between 18 and 21, not even between 23 and 25, but between 27 and 30. They won't think as wisely about their saving habits, about health care decisions, or about voting for their leaders until their fourth decade of life. Unless . . .

If we are parents who are blessed enough to have the wherewithal to provide health insurance for our adult (I use the term hopefully) children, we ought to make our children pay for it. Show them the bill, have them pay their share of the premiums (let alone the co-pays!), and let them understand that living with the perks of a developed nation comes with responsibility.

They'll be getting health care on the cheap, it's true; paying for one's own plan rather than being a member of a family plan is significantly more expensive. But just because their names are under ours on the benefits card, let's not deprive them of the chance to learn how to live on their own. After all, they're going to be the parents of our grand-children some day. Before that happens, I want them to be responsible adults.

~emrys