Too many adults are absolutely clueless

THE TEACHER starts with the basics: how to thread a needle. Then, over the course of the next 30 minutes, she shows the students a few different stitches, along with how to mend a torn shirt and beautify a frayed hem. This is not a lesson at some fusty finishing school. The sewing class is part of a free, one-day course at Austin Community College (ACC) called “Adulting 101”. The students range in age from their late teens to mid-40s.

ACC has been running such programmes for six years. The workshops are designed to help people “successfully navigate adulthood”, even those who, legally and practically, have been navigating it for quite some time. The topics run the gamut from basic—how to dress appropriately for a job interview—to advanced, such as how file income taxes. (That subject will surely be top of mind for Americans as their tax filings are due on April 15th.)

In this way, institutions are helping people grow up. Across the country community colleges, public libraries and civic centres are offering adulting classes; those who want to learn how to manage their home from the privacy of their own can stream a class on YouTube. Adulting courses are not yet standard university fare, though perhaps in time they will be. Financial-literacy classes were once considered too basic to offer, especially at elite colleges, but they are spreading.

Adulting courses are not a uniquely American phenomenon—in Britain they are labelled “life skills” classes—but they do tackle three areas in which Americans, in particular, seem to be falling short: the home, relationships and money. Compared with other countries, adults in America spend less time doing household chores such as mopping and ironing; they also get divorced more frequently than their counterparts in Britain, Canada or Germany. Less than half of Americans understand basic financial principles. The courses are often set up by individuals taken aback by the “unexpected trials of early adulthood”, as Traci Bakenhaster has put it. She runs Adulting University, which teaches teenagers how to write CVs and manage their time, among other things.

Raffi Grinberg, an author, created and taught “Adulting 101” for two years at Boston College. The inspiration for his class came from his first day working at Bain & Company, a management consultancy, soon after leaving university. He and his cohort had to decide which health-insurance plan to choose, how much of his salary to devote to saving for retirement and other financial details. “Every one of us went out into the hallway and called our parents,” he admits. “We were graduates of really elite schools, and we still didn’t know what to do.”

He has distilled his 14-week course into a new book called “How to Be a Grown Up: The 14 Essential Skills You Didn’t Know You Needed (Until Just Now)”. It imparts wisdom on matters practical (budgeting) and philosophical (how to think about rejection). Mr Grinberg writes with a positive, technocratic tone that will be familiar to anyone who has gone to business school, but his book is genuinely informative. A financial naif will grasp the basics of investing. A mansplainer will come away reminded of the rewards of listening.

Rachel Weinstein, a psychotherapist, ran the Adulting School in Maine for several years. She found that her patients in their 20s were looking at “other people’s Instagram accounts and feeling like everyone else just has it together and they’re lagging behind”. She set up informal classes over beers at happy hour; students decided what they wanted to learn. One session would cover money management, the next how to sharpen your knives.

Why are such books and courses needed? To many, these skills will sound like basic common sense. Yet, as the aphorism goes, common sense is not so common.

The rise in need for adulting classes reflects, in part, the changing nature of childhood and adolescence, which have grown more digital and less physical. American teens spend up to nine hours each day on screens. TikTok and YouTube do offer handy tutorials on all manner of household chores. But most young users of these platforms are more interested in dancing than dishwashers.

In “Infantilised: How Our Culture Killed Adulthood”, Keith Hayward of the University of Copenhagen argued that there has been a generational shift and that young people are less mature than their forebears were at the same age. They are shrinking from responsibilities such as marriage, homeowning and child-rearing because “adulting is hard”, as one of his students put it. Western culture, Mr Hayward wrote, indulges childish fancies.

He adds that young people today are also less interested in what their elders have to offer: “Parents and grandparents are seen as morons who can’t work the Wi-Fi.” If parents are not providing advice on life’s many essential tasks, “You’re left with these classes picking up the slack.”

Such sentiments may ring true. But young people are remaining in education for longer, meaning that financial independence, partners and children necessarily come later. And parents have always had gaps in their knowledge. Some know their way around an investment portfolio but not a car engine; others are the opposite.

And adulting is, in fact, hard. The world is more complex than it was a couple of generations ago. Take financial decisions. People opening their first bank account have to choose between a convenient main-street branch and an array of online banks and bank-like institutions, all offering different yields and fee structures. What makes one better than another, and why? At a time when the financial landscape is already volatile, trial and error is not an ideal strategy.

Romance has also grown more complicated. Less than 15 years ago, American couples usually met through friends, but today most meet through dating apps. Old singletons may not know where to start; young ones may find the shift from online banter to the real kind daunting. The prospect of having any mishaps blasted out on social media is nerve-racking.

Many will see adulting classes as proof of youngsters’ stunted development. But coddled children do not acknowledge the gaps in their knowledge and try to fill them. Only a grown-up would willingly spend precious free time doing something as dull as learning how to mend a shirt. ■

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