Art of Manliness Podcast Episode #51: The Defining Decade With Dr. Meg Jay

• Why thirty isn’t the new twenty
• The consequences of not taking advantage of your twenties
• The biggest problem she sees with twenty-something males
• How the twenty-something brain is different from a thirty-something brain
• The myth of the slacker twenty-something male
• What “identity capital” is and why you need to develop it
• And much more!

If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend picking up a copy of the Defining Decade. It’s a truly excellent and worthwhile read, especially for our twenty-something readers and listeners. 

Listen to the Podcast! (And don’t forget to leave us a review!)

Listen to the episode on a separate page.

Download this episode.

Subscribe to the podcast in the media player of your choice.

Special thanks to Keelan O’Hara for editing the podcast!

Read the Transcript

Brett McKay: Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Well, I’m excited about today’s episode. If you’ve been following our website for a while now, you may have seen us reference of book called The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter–And How to Make the Most of Them Now. It was written by clinical psychologist named Dr. Meg Jay at University of Virginia. And, Dr. Jay specializes and working with 20-somethings, 20 years old. And, I know a lot of you who are listening to the podcast are in that age bracket.

And, the book is basically about the observations and research that has shown that 20-year-old these days have a lot of anxieties, concerns, worries, and those worries and concerns come from treating your 20s as an extended adolescence instead of treating them as the time to launch yourself into adulthood, and a lot of people these days say that, you know, 30 is the new 20 that, you know, when adulthood doesn’t begin until you are 30, the kind of not worried about your 20s.

But the research has shown that that’s not the case, there are a lot of advantages to your 20s and if you don’t take advantage of them now you can – there will be some consequences later on in life. So, in her book she talks about those issues and concerns, but also she talks about things that 20 years old can do now to ensure that they have a fulfilling and enriched career, relationships, and adult life. So, today I’m talking to Dr. Jay. And, we are going to be talking about her book, and we are going to talk about, why 30 isn’t the new 20 and what you can do now in your 20s to make the most of your adult life. So, listen in.

Hello, Dr. Jay. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. Okay. So, you’ve kind of caused the splash recently with your book and Ted Talk about 20-somethings, you wrote, your book called The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and what can you do to make the most of them now. Why are 20 so important, why are they, why do you call The Defining Decade?

Dr. Meg Jay: I mean it is the foundation for your adult life, which is why I like to work with that age group, because you can do a lot of good for people getting on the action early.

Brett McKay: Okay. Well, despite, you know, it sounds like, hey, the 20s are really important, its affirmative part of your life. But it seems like as a society at least, you know, in the last half century, we sort of treat our 20s as something disposable or, you know, we have this idea that you talk a lot about that 30 is the new 20 that life begins at 30 and what happens before then it’s like, uh, not that important.

Dr. Meg Jay: Yeah.

Brett McKay: Why do you think that is, why are we doing that?

Dr. Meg Jay: This is why we are doing that, its understandable how that came to be when you think about it, we just need to sort of rethink how we are going to adjust to those. But really the classical adult milestones if we think about, okay, what do adults do? Well, let’s see, they have jobs, they have houses, they have partners, they have children, and most people would agree, they are in charge of their lives, they get to choose where they live, what they do all that, and most people would agree that’s pretty much what an adult sounds like you are not to do all of those things or in any certain order or in any certain way, but roughly that’s what adulthood looks like.

But now a lot of these milestones in terms of having a clearly defined career or owning a home or apartment or partnering with someone or having kids, these things happened now later than they used to. And, that’s for a lot of good reasons, because we have birth control now, because women are working now unfortunately because the economy is not so great now.

And so, a lot of the kind of classical adult new don’t happen at 21 anymore they happen at 31, and that is okay, it’s actually potentially good, it just depends on what you make of 20s in terms of years leading up to that, but fortunately the downside of adult milestones happening a bit later is that people start to feel like their 20s don’t count and that they are not relevant to adulthood, when really they remain developmentally a sweet spot.

Brett McKay: Okay. So, what are the consequences, I mean, apart from being a researcher you are clinical psychologist, correct?

Dr. Meg Jay: That’s right. I’m actually primarily a clinical psychologist. I’m primarily in private practice, so most of my hours are spend behind closed doors with 20-somethings and 30-somethings hearing about how their lives are going and how they are not – so that’s primarily what I do. So, there are downsides too, not to the milestone thing first, but to how we interpreted that. And so, there’s a really great quote by Leonard Bernstein that I use a lot, and it goes “To achieve great things you need a plan and not quite enough time.”

So, what happens is, I mean, I don’t think there is anybody out there who thinks, you know, I don’t want a great life, I mean, people want great lives. But when they hear 30 is the new 20, everybody does all that later, adulthood is in your 30s now, then they lose that urgency, they lose the fire, they lose the relevance in your 20s. And so, they end up not making the most of that time, I mean, if you are going to partner later, you are going to define your career a bit later, you are going to buy a house a bit later then you have some years in there to do something with that.

But people are sure what to do with that or they are sure why they should bother doing anything with that if everybody says, oh, adulthood is for later. I mean, if you think about, think back to high school or college will say you had a paper due March 1st somewhere around mid February might start to get a little bit worried about and do some of the research, and then your professor walks in and says, oh, I push the date it’s now April 1st. So, how many people said, great, I have four extra weeks to work on my paper, I’m going to make it even better than before. I mean that’s just not how we operate, most people will say great, I will push this aside and think about in the month. And so, that is of course, you know, the tendency for 20-something, so they feel overwhelmed and anxious and not sure how to get started on life, and then culture says, oh, don’t worry, everything is for your 30s anyway.

Brett McKay: So, you sense a lot of anxiety, and I guess, yeah, a lot of anxiety most of your clients I imagine?

Dr. Meg Jay: A lot of anxiety, you know, the upside of the kind of do it yourself life now that, you know, when you have a lot more choices and you’re used to, you could live anywhere in the country or maybe even in the world, you can take up a lot of different careers have a, you know, adulthood can look a lot of different ways, it doesn’t have to be a cookie cutter experience anymore, and that’s wonderful. But the difficulty is that puts the burden on the individual to figure out, so what do I do now? And, that makes people feel overwhelmed and anxious. And, when people feel anxious, they like to avoid the things that make them feel anxious, so they go, I’m not going to think about that now I’m going to distract myself or kill time or, you know, whatever their habit maybe just to kick that can a little further down the road.

Brett McKay: And, I imagine there is also a feeling of, not only anxiety, and since you’ve been overwhelmed, but like I’m sure there’s like an immense amount of pressure to as you approach 30, yeah, you are like I’m about to turn 30, I don’t have a husband, I don’t have a wife, I don’t have a job, I mean, then you feel like do all these things in a short amount of time?

Dr. Meg Jay: Yes. And so, you know, necessity is the mother of invention. So, I mean, that’s kind of, I mean, I think the feeling of urgency is good. But many 20-somethings I’ve seen so many times that early 20-somethings in my office are stressed than anxious but avoidant. And then, by the time they are in their later 20s their stressed than anxious and panic, because they can’t avoid anymore. And so, what I try to do is to help 20-somethings of all ages just go ahead and engage with what’s making them anxious, it doesn’t mean you have to have a desktop or a briefcase tomorrow, but it just means to take up intentionally what you think you might like out of adulthood, you know, scary as that maybe you can do it one step at a time, but just to really start to look at it instead of just postpone and then later feel like you may not have the time to get the life you want.

Brett McKay: So, you’ve devoted an entire section which I thought was you are completely fascinating about sort of like the neuroscience behind the 20-something brain, this is actually a kind of new discovery, because we thought that there was like a child brain and an adult brain and that was it, so can you tell us a little bit more about that what’s difference between like 20-something brain and a 30-year-old brain or 15-year-old brain?

Dr. Meg Jay: Yeah, a lot actually. So, we used to think that the brain was mostly fully-baked by about 8 years or so years old and that’s because it reached most of its volume in terms of the brain size. But as science became more sophisticated and we weren’t just looking at brain volume, we were looking at connections in the brain, what actually happens in the brain.

Scientists have discovered, not me, I was not one of their researchers, but researchers discovered that the brain goes through two critical periods of growth, one is in the first five years of life, zero to five, and we hear about that a lot of that’s when kids, you’ve got to learn to talk zero to five or it’s going to be very difficult to do that after you’ve got to start learning to read that’s when a lot of early development is really is laid down in the surface first five years, and then people thought that just would mostly grew from there. But they found that the brain actually went through another critical period of growth, so another big explosion of neural connections and the chain and 20-something years. So, somewhere around ages 15 to 20, there is an explosion of connections in the brain which actually leads to a bit of temporarily tangled in that, but ultimately through burning, you have the kind of a new brain, your brain is wiring itself to be an adult, and a lot of the action shifts from the more emotion driven parts to the brain to the more reason driven part to the brain such as the frontal lobe.

So, this is still going on in your 20s, and this is new to 20-something that shift to frontal lobe thinking. So, what’s your frontal lobe does is that’s the part of your brain that thinks about time, and it thinks about probability, and it thinks about uncertainty. So, this is new for 20-somethings to not just think about now, but also think about the later, do not just think about black and white answers, but okay, what about all those questions that don’t have black and white answers like what I’m going to do with my life, where should I live, what kind of person is for me? I mean these are really questions that there are gray areas, they are based on probability it’s not on guarantee, so that’s all new thinking for 20-somethings.

Now some people hear that science, and they think, oh, I’ll wait until I’m 30 to do something because my brain will be fully clicked on then, but that’s actually not how it works that you get better at thinking in gray areas and thinking about the future, and planning for the future, if you practice that and your 20-something brain wants to practice that. So, but it’s new, so you know, 20-somethings in general are very uncomfortable with uncertainty, they are very uncomfortable with gray areas, they feel overwhelmed about the future, usually about your 30s hopefully you’ve engaged with that enough or you practice that enough that you start to be able to do that with a little bit of less stress.

Brett McKay: So, I think you talk a lot about your book how you mentioned just a minute ago how 20-somethings are very – never present bias that is focused on that you are now – I mean how does that kind of shoot 20-somethings in the foot later on?

Dr. Meg Jay: Yeah. Well, if we go back to what the frontal lobe is doing, so it’s thinking about time, and probability and uncertainty. So, these are new concepts really for 20-somethings, I mean, who mostly have gone through life with semester sized chunk within. So, this is a different way of thinking, so they are more cognitive areas we make it all ages, but two of the cognitive areas, one is present by us and that is, I’m going to with what makes me happy now and I’ll worry about later, one reason that they’re still trying doing that is also prone to optimism bias and that’s the idea that nothing bad is ever going to happen to me.

So, what happens is 20-somethings are, you know, without slowing down and really forcing themselves to think about the future and really thinks through, they have a tendency to make short sided or loved decisions that may not have legs, because their minds are very present oriented and they are very optimistic, it’s hard for them to imagine that the choices they make today it might hurt tomorrow.

Brett McKay: Okay. So, let’s talk, I mean, this is a podcast website kind of geared more towards men. So, let’s talk about this, are there any gender differences between the problems and frustrations, your clients experience, I mean, do men experience their 20-somethings differently than your women clients, and if there are differences, I mean, what’s the cause, is it more cultural, is it economics or there are differences between the male and female brain that might cause those difference and experiences?

Dr. Meg Jay: You know, well, I will say this; I have a PhD in clinical psychology and in gender studies from Berkeley. So, I have thought a lot, read a lot, taught a lot about gender. What’s taught me more than anything about gender honestly is two things, one is working with people behind closed doors, 20-something men and women, the other is having a son. So, I think about the experience of being a 20-something different way than I did when I was, you know, PhD student reading them – that what I see doesn’t always match up to what we hear in the media.

And, what specially stands out to me is what about that 20-something than get, but right now I’m actually not doing a lot of media right now because of my schedule, but I really wanted to make the time to talk to you today, because I have a real soft spot in my heart for 20-something then who in my office are nothing like the sort of lazy, no good, ways of space, so they are made out to be in the media, you know, we hear a lot about that now, the crisis of men and what happened with the men, you know, I’d say that they’re struggling just as much as a women, but they just have fewer places to turn with that, and that it is very different to be 20-something men than 20-something women partly because you don’t have any support or it’s not culturally okay for you to be struggling as much as the women.

Brett McKay: Yeah, I can totally see that happening, because you are right there aren’t a lot of places where men can go, you know, young men could talk about these sorts of things, and like maybe the mentorship that was once there or the community that was once there for men, a lot of that’s gone for whatever reason, it is really sad. I mean, do you feel like the men that come in there, are they more worried about their career or they’re just as worried about relationships as women are, is it pretty much the same thing?

Dr. Meg Jay: I mean it’s the same thing but in a different way, I think, you know, a million years ago Freud said, love and work, work and love, that’s all there is, and of course there is more to life than that, but mostly that’s what my clients want to talk about work and love. And, for women it’s different because they feel, you know, a modern women and I would count myself among them and feel like I could have a rocking career, I could choose to stay home and be supermom, maybe I’ll do both that I have a lot of ways I could go with that and not disappoint anyone.

And, I don’t think as much as we like to say that, you know, I don’t know there is no gender bias anymore, and I don’t think men have quite the same choices that they feel a lot more burdened by the need to work that they need to work to be or they feel that they need to work and to be successful to kind of be respected as men, they fear that they are going to work and one day be responsible for a whole gaggle of people like a partner and children, and that’s a very real possibility.

Whereas I think most women don’t go into work thinking gosh one day I might have to support five people. But that 20 – feel afraid that that’s going to happen to them that they may not have the eco partner that they are hoping for. So, work has a very different kind of pressure to it, because they feel especially stressed about finding something good, finding something successful, but also wanting to find something that they enjoy, so that’s just it feels a lot less of a choice for men and still a lot more of cultural imperative.

In terms of relationships, you know, the 20-something men I work with want relationships more than we give them credit for, but they are not really sure if they have what 20-something women want that they see images in the media about 20-something, superwomen who have it all, want it all or doing it all, and they feel like, well, I’m not there yet, I’m not sure that I’m going to be able to measure up, and I hear about that a lot in my office.

Brett McKay: What do you tell those guys who have that sort of, I guess, status anxiety as I guess what you would call it?

Dr. Meg Jay: You know I do some reality testing or reality checking with them around with those images in the media, you know, that those are images of young women who want it all or have it all or who are doing it all. But, you know, most of the young women that I work with are also like the young men that I work with, they are struggling and they would be, they don’t expect their partner to have it all figure it out, they want someone, you know, they can sort of share life burdens with, they don’t necessarily need someone to rescue them from all of life burden sort of to be some kind of superhero.

But it’s interesting – actually I’ve got an email from a really thoughtful male graduate student a few weeks ago and he said I just have a hard time believing that some 20-something women out there wants to partner with somebody who is, you know, working pedants and, you know, may not have a good job for five years, you know, I felt sad reading that email that that’s what he thought, but that’s what he had been led to believe, because I think there are a lot of women out there, who would recognize, hey, you are smart, good person like this 20-something man, and that is someone I’d want to be with, but he’s been led to believe it that he is not.

Brett McKay: That is really sad. Let’s talk about one of my favorite lines in the book and actually inspired the post that we wrote on the website.

Dr. Meg Jay: I saw that. Thank you.

Brett McKay: Yeah. It was really – it was well received. But anyways you were talking to a client named Sam and I guess, Sam is about 28, and he still lives in the basement of his parent home, and doesn’t really have a career, and he comes to you, and he says the older I get the less I feel like a man, and then your respond, I’m not sure you are giving yourself much to feel like a man about. And, it seems like Sam, I think a lot of young men, but also young women too like they feel like as soon as they feel like a man or an adult, then they would magically start doing adult things. But your responds to him kind of suggest that, no, in spite doing adult things or men thing whatever you want to say that’s when you begin to feel like an adult. Do you see that and a lot of your clients they have this expectation that they need to feel like an adult before they can actually start doing those grown up things?

Dr. Meg Jay: Absolutely and they have it backward, so they feel like, I need to feel like a man before I can take on a real job or real relationship, but you are what you do, and study after study shows that where that confidents that a lot of 20-something men, you know, confessed that they don’t have any confidence, I don’t feel competent, I don’t feel strong, I don’t feel like a man but that comes from experience. And, you kind of have to get out there and practice at or work toward being an adult just like you have to practice at work toward feeling or being anything. So, you know, the longer you stand on the sidelines, especially as you get older and start to feel very self-conscious being there, the less capable you feel of getting back in the game, you know, there’s some research phrase of that getting along and getting ahead is what leads to that sort of confident grown up feeling that people come to when they are 20s or 30s if they engage with adult roles.

Brett McKay: So, if you want to feel like a man, you’ve got to act like a man or at least practice being a man?

Dr. Meg Jay: Yeah. I mean, whatever that is to you, you know, and so, but I mean it’s usually means go out and get the best job you can, I mean, most of this need to work, so get out there and engage with it, and go out there and, you know, engage with relationships, and some kind of meaningful way, it doesn’t mean you have to get married tomorrow. But it probably means that you need to maybe go to the next step in terms of developing some relationship skills that might lead to something.

Brett McKay: Okay. So, you talk a lot about the book talking about the problems and anxieties of your clients, but then you also devote a lot of time to giving suggestions on what 20-somethings can do in different aspects of their lives to make the most of that time. So, in terms of career, one thing that really stuck out to me, I know this is really pressing a lot 20-somethings right now like what are you going to do for rest of your life? You talked about the importance of developing identity capital, what is that? I mean I’ve heard of social capital, emotional capital, capital – money capital, what is identify capital?

Dr. Meg Jay: It’s identify capital, you know, I like, it’s not my term, it’s from psychologist who coined that term, but most 20-somethings have never heard that term unless you are getting a PhD in physiology and I thought they opt to hear it, because I think it’s a good replacement for a phrase they have heard and that’s identity crisis. And, so I have had so many clients having an identity crisis, I don’t know what I should do with my life. And, they imagine that they should come into my office and think that through for months or years, and then we are going to come up with the answer.

And, I guess, technically speaking that could be a good business model for me, but I don’t think I would actually be helping anyone. So, you know, this is not the way that careers happen anymore like that’s actually the identity crisis models from the 50s when people really did kind of pick one thing and do that forever, but it’s not quite how it works anymore. So, I really encourage 20-something is not to put all this pressure on making the choice or a choice, but to do thing that create choices and to really flip this feeling that their 20s are about closing doors and, you know, narrowing life to imagining your 20s is being about opening doors and widening your perspective.

So, identity capital is just the idea that who knows what you are going to do the rest of your life, but if what you are doing right now says something good about who you are or it’s giving you valuable skills or connections or degree or leg-up then that’s capital that is an investment and having something else next what’s going to be good. So, one good piece of capital leads to another good piece, to another good piece, it really just means, you know, life is, adult career is going to be a series of news and you want them to be strategic and to lead to more and more.

My first piece of identity capital out of college was being an instructor, so it doesn’t have to be, I don’t mean you have to go work in a bank, I just mean you are better off doing something that other people recognize or respect or that says something about you that helps you get to the next step, and something that doesn’t it’s more avoidant and not connected with where you might like to go next, you know, trying to stay away from kind of the placeholder jobs that people perceive, well, if I do kind of a nothing job, I haven’t chosen anything, but not choosing is a choice, I mean, you are choosing not to be doing something with capital that might lead to more choices.

Brett McKay: So, ways you can develop identity capital, college, getting an advanced degree, volunteering like you did our bound, maybe it could be peach for, teach for America, starting to business to…

Dr. Meg Jay: Absolutely, you know, it’s really, you think about it as your collection of personal assets. So, anything that you are doing it kind of adds to that collection of not just to what I can put on my resume, but a lot of times for career that’s what it comes down to, but just, you know, that adds to what you are and what you are doing with your 20s. If you have many clients who know that their jobs are not adding anything, they are not adding value to their lives. And, if you know that about your job you should not spend much time doing that.

Brett McKay: So, what about relationships, anything that 20-something can do to give them a better chance of having a happy and fulfilling relationship later on in life or now?

Dr. Meg Jay: Sure. Well, I mean, I think one of the milestones that has most shifted is marriage or partnership and that people I think the average ages of marriage is now about 27, whereas in the early 70s it was 21, believe it or not. And, you are more educated, crowded, it’s even later, I got married in my early 30s for example.

But, as a mentor of mine used to say the best time to work on your marriage is before you have one. And, so that means that potentially if you use your 20s or having relationships that are conscious and unintentional or you are really exploring relationships as much as you would explore career like, I’m going to try out different kinds of careers, I’m going to try out different kinds of relationships, different kinds of people, and to see what fits that, I mean, everybody who wants to partner, wants to partner well, and many people felt, I want to partner better than my parents did or I want to be sure that I don’t, you know, I don’t want to windup divorced.

And, getting married later in and of itself doesn’t increase your chances of success, it depends on whether you use to that time before in some way that kind of improves what you know about relationships and what you know about what kind of person is right for you. So, you know, I tell 20-somethings I work with, this is the time to explore not just your sexuality, that’s easy, but more complicated part is being intentional about what you think you’re wanting a partner, and to really think through what it’ll mean for you to partner well.

Brett McKay: So, use dating a sort of practice, I mean, practice run for marriage I guess in a bit, in a way?

Dr. Meg Jay: I mean, I think, I wouldn’t give a hard and fast rule, you know, you are not allowed to date anyone who isn’t marriage material – you know, I’m sure people would love to say that’s what I’m saying, but I think, you know, obviously at some point you have to shift from, this is fine, this is fun to what kind of person is actually going to be a good partner for me, and that has to be or it’s better if that’s very conscious intentional process to really think through what is that I want from my partner not, oh, this person looks good and everybody around me is getting married, which happened.

Brett McKay: It does happen, I’ve heard of that quite a bit. So, how about this, whenever you’ve written about like, you know, the importance of the 20-something time is your life, we always have like guys in their 30s or their 40s like read this thing, oh, this is great, but I wasted my 20s, am I doomed to life mediocrity, what you’d say to those guys, are they doomed or is it like hope for making improvements even later on in life?

Dr. Meg Jay: Right. No, of course they are not doomed, I mean, you know, I do have to say that I wrote this book for 20-somethings partly on behalf of the clients I’ve had, the students I’ve had who, you know, have some complicated feelings about their 20s. And, it’s hard to sit across from a struggling 20-something; it’s a lot harder to sit across from a struggling 30-something, because that’s a harder place to be. So, it’s really because of the people in their 30s who are struggling that I said I want to write a book for 20-somethings because they are just at the very start of adulthood, I can have a lot of more impact on their lives.

A mentor of mine used to say working with 20-somethings is like working with planes, it’s just they are taking off, and you know, a small change in course makes a big difference in where you land, you know, where you end up down in the line. I mean, obviously as a 30-something you probably haven’t landed yet, you are on your way somewhere you may have to turn the wheel a bit more sharply to change course, but you know, all any of can do and start where we are, my philosophy is certainly not down with 20-somethings, I mean, down with 30-somethings, but it’s just, you know, I specialize in 20-somethings because I think so many people said, why didn’t I hear all this sooner, so that’s what I’m doing.

But of course all the same advice applies, because it’s really about the research of adult development, and all still applies to 30-somethings and we all can just start from where we are, I wish I had started writing earlier in my life when I did, and my first book came out when I was 42, but, oh well, I mean, better late than never.

Brett McKay: Exactly. Oh Dr. Jay, any final words of wisdom to our 20-something listeners?

Dr. Meg Jay: I guess my final words of wisdom would be not to worry about what other people are doing or about what other people, you know, say that you should be doing or that you should want even me that living an intentional life is about being honest with yourself about what life you think you might like in 10 years, and simply getting going on that, and it’s actually a good feeling once you do it.

Brett McKay: It was very good. Well, Dr. Jay, thank you so much for taking the time and talking with us. This is a fascinating discussion. I’m sure a lot of our listeners are going to get something out of this. So, thank you again.

Dr. Meg Jay: Thanks Brett, my pleasure.

Brett McKay: Our guest today was Dr. Meg Jay. Dr. Jay is a clinical psychologist, and the author of the book The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter–And How to Make the Most of Them Now. And, you can find that book at Amazon.com, and bookstores everywhere.

Well, that wraps up another edition of The Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out The Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And, if you enjoy the show and you get something out of it, I’d really appreciate it, if you could go on iTunes, Stitcher, whatever that you use to listen to the podcast, and give us a rating, it would help us out a lot, and getting the word out of the podcast and letting other listeners find it. So, I’d really appreciate that. Until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.