Young Men and the Recession

Growing pains: Rate of young men struggling in careers alarmingly higher than for young women, By Elizabeth Stuart, June 2, 2012, Deseret News: “Every morning, they’re outside his bedroom door, marching their little action figures across the carpet and jabbering in cartoon voices, a reminder of everything he can’t control. He asked them to play elsewhere. He asked them to use quiet voices. But the three boys aren’t his children and this isn’t his house. Twenty-six years old and done with college, Austin Dent is back under his parent’s roof. In addition to his three nephews, he shares the space with his mom, dad, a sister, a brother-in-law and a three-legged dog. When he first lugged his things up the stairs after finishing his coursework at the University of Utah a year ago, he’d been gone so long his parents had redecorated his boyhood room with a vanity, girly trinkets and flowers. He didn’t rush to settle in. He was just in limbo, he told himself. Dozens of applications and six temporary jobs later, though, Dent has replaced the vanity with a video game console he bought in the classifieds. Now he half-jokingly, half-seriously describes that state of limbo as ‘perpetual…'”