Let’s not sugarcoat it:

Our young adults are stunted—arrested in their development—not because they lack potential, but because the people raising them often lack the psychological and emotional range to guide them through the friction of becoming. Put simply: the kids are stunted because the parents are.

There’s an old dog training saying: “If the dog doesn’t learn, it’s the trainer who failed.” The same, with nuance, applies here. When our young people avoid discomfort, disengage from challenge, or retreat into distractions, we have to ask—where did they learn to do that?

Discomfort as the Enemy

Many modern parents—especially in affluent communities—are caught in a bind. On one hand, they want to raise sensitive, conscious, emotionally attuned children. On the other, they’re deeply allergic to conflict, discomfort, and the authority they associate with outdated, authoritarian parenting models.

So what happens?

Children who aren’t developmentally capable of seeing how challenge can help them grow are gently allowed to opt out of the very experiences that build resilience. Not because their parents are lazy or malicious, but because many parents themselves never learned how to hold firm, loving boundaries in the face of discomfort. They weren’t parented that way, and they haven’t cultivated that skill since.

So challenge becomes something to be avoided—not transformed. And the child, like the parent, adopts an avoidant stance toward life.

From Obedience to Preference

Go back a generation. Many of today’s parents were raised in rigid households, where compliance was king. They were told to suck it up, fit in, meet expectations. The discomfort they were forced into wasn’t always for their growth—it was often for social conformity, status maintenance, or just to make adults feel in control.

So they grew up and said, “Fuck that.”

They rejected obedience and authority.

They learned to worship authenticity and preference—noble values, but easily distorted when not rooted in maturity.

As a result, many parents today don’t know how to invite their kids into necessary struggle. They know how to support. They know how to accommodate. They know how to outsource. But they don’t know how to stand, lovingly, for the transformation that discomfort can bring—especially when their own unprocessed guilt, regret, or unresolved trauma is in the room.

This creates a pattern:

Children who aren’t guided through developmentally appropriate challenge become young adults who shrink from the very tensions that form character. They avoid growth because the people they love modeled avoidance.

Cultural Currents: Affluenza, Helicopters & Snowplows

Enter the late 20th century. The Baby Boomers embrace “doing your own thing.” The ’70s and ’80s usher in the therapeutic era. By the time we reach the 2000s, we’ve got new archetypes:

• Helicopter parents—hovering to solve every problem.

• Snowplow parents—clearing every obstacle before their child arrives.

• Affluenza—the disorienting effects of privilege, excess, and purchased caregiving.

As one observer put it:

“Think of all the child-rearing labor affluent parents now buy that used to be done by extended kin: babysitting, professional childcare, tutoring, coaching, therapy, expensive after-school programs. (For that matter, think of how the affluent can hire therapists and life coaches for themselves, as replacement for kin or close friends.)”

And still—the kids are lost. Despite the security, the resources, the interventions—they’re anxious, depressed, detached, and despairing.

You Shouldn’t Be Like This

Layered over all of this is a constant pressure to be different, to not feel what you feel. “You shouldn’t be like this” is the unspoken mantra.

Parents try to fix the child they see as broken, but without owning their role in the rupture. This generates hostile dependency—the parent resents the child’s stuckness; the child resents the parent’s powerlessness. Nobody trusts anybody, but they’re enmeshed, emotionally entangled.

Meanwhile, kids are rarely left to explore, roam, or fail freely.

There’s no wilderness, no unsupervised time, no open space where the self is forged. Two working parents, worn thin by life, default to TV and video games as co-parents. Add to that a “sibling society,” as some sociologists call it—where kids are raised more by their peers and TikTok than by elders or mentors—and it’s no wonder Travis can’t find his way.

He’s not just resisting adulthood. He’s never actually been initiated into it.

In the next installment, we’ll explore what rites of passage look like in modern life—and how places like Antedote can become crucibles for transformation rather than echo chambers of avoidance. Because launching isn’t just about independence. It’s about becoming someone who can carry the weight of their own life.