“Sleeping in a twin bed under some old Avril Lavigne posters is not a sign of giving up; it’s an economic plan. ‘Stop dumping on them because they need parental support,’ Arnett cautioned. ‘It doesn’t mean they’re lazy. It’s just harder to make your way now than it was in an older and simpler economy.'” —Adam Davidson

Johnson, Crosnoe and Elder identify what they see as the key intersections of adolescence as “the complex mutual selection of person and context — that which occurs through the interplay of environment and biology and also through the agentic strivings of adolescence.” In using this definition, they outline more than the commonly identified “nature v nurture” debate as critical to the identify formation  of a person. The authors go one step farther to give voice to the “agentic strivings of adolescence” namely those features which empower the individual. One might imagine that the use of agency might separate adolescents from their parents. One would be mistaken. As Patricia Cohen points out, the “Long road to adulthood is growing even longer” today.  Cohen highlights the trend of delayed adulthood in today’s 20-somethings and connects this upswing to lower economic possibilities, among other factors. The pitiful possibilities for folks graduating college today cripples an individual’s agency and highlights the important crossing of agency and economy as a barrier between adulthood and adolescence. If this barrier continues to grow larger, leaving more 20-somethings financially reliant on their parents, I wonder how the definition of adolescence and adulthood might morph into a more representative one. I also wonder how financial reliance may hold other forms of development in place as well.