Is Your 16-24-Year-Old Son Stuck in FTL???

Historically, there have been times when rocket ships failed to launch properly or were not able to safely meet their destinations. Factors such as: faulty engineering, poor weather conditions, and others were blamed for this lack of successful execution. Some literature has termed this Failure to Launch (FTL). This word has also been used to describe a phenomenon related to what parents have seen as their 16-24-year-old sons’ inability to effectively transition into adult roles.  

In Failure to Launch and Young Men: The Mental Health Crisis, experts have coined this as “. . . a phrase that describes a young person who is having an increasingly difficult time maturing and transitioning into the next stage of development; adulthood.”

The author, Jonathan Hetterly, discussed three trends which indicate that young men are struggling in specific areas: beginning a career, completing college, and are having major difficulty transitioning into adulthood. Additionally, it was concluded that these fellas have become generally avoidant because they lack the confidence to take initiative due to fear of failure (See full article link below).

The article claimed that societal fear has led to overparenting, and is hindering a young man’s ability to be an adult.     

What explained FTL? He asserted that increased parental stress over the inevitability of fearful events occurring, which is only exasperated by social media exposure, has led to this belief that the world is not safe. This negative framework has incubated an attitude of fear in parenting, which is especially harmful for young men that will one day need to be responsible.  

Are these main tenants based in evidence? There are, I am sure exceptions with many 16-24-year-old parents being successful with transitioning their sons responsibly into adulthood, but my experience both as a student, and now as a professional relationship coach/counselor, has indicated that there is great room for improvement. 

Check-in: Does your son suffer with not wanting to work, attend college, or take any initiative in his life? He may have FTL, which may require extra support.  

College Attendance

I first learned about FTL, while I was studying at Howard University for my Master’s Degree in Social Work. During an insightful conversation with a leading scholar in communication, he said that his research showed that young men’s attendance in college had dropped considerably from   fourty to twenty percent. These numbers are correlative with other scientific inquiry.  

Lack of Ability to Transition into Adult Roles    

Parents that I have worked with in counseling and coaching have often complained to me that despite all of their best efforts, their sons refused to do anything remotely viewed by them as being productive. These extremely exasperated and overwhelmed individuals were concerned at first that their adult children would never develop the drive and initiative required to be successful adults in life.

Failure to Enter the Workforce  

Work force experts have expressed that young men, 16-24, are entering the market in lower numbers than they have ever seen, and books have been written on the subject, which will be elaborated further in other posts.

This FTL is a very real reality, and many young men are suffering from its effects for the reasons alluded to here, as well as others, so parents need to be particularly aware not to get stuck in this vicious cycle.       

See full link to referenced article here: 

https://www.psychbytes.com/failure-to-launch-syndrome-and-young-men-the-mental-health-crisis/

Thank you for reading.

Your thoughts are very appreciated.

Researcher’s Bio

Karen Bontrager helps 16-24-year-old men make permanent shifts in their behavior from merely surviving in life to thriving through transparent coaching/counseling in one-on-one conversations and in group work, and through topic sensitive workshops. With this ontological approach, I partner with my clients to discover their essence, (aka highest and best self) by powerfully reflecting and listening to them. My clients quickly learn how to generate self-awareness and to voice their own relationship needs in a clear, constructive way by learning key coaching techniques/evidenced based counseling approaches/tools to work past their traumatic events and addictions to move forward. The clients are then equipped to develop healthy relationships with key relationships: parents/siblings/friends, and with intimate dating partners because they have learned how to proactively use their voice.