Dr. Jack Stoltzfus Interview on Helping Adult Children Launch Successfully
- 6 hours ago
- 7 min read
Dr. Jack Stoltzfus is America’s Launch Coach™. He doesn’t teach people how to launch boats; rather, he teaches parents how to let go in love with their 18- to 29-year-old children. Today, according to some surveys, 48% to 50% of these young adults live with one or both parents. For those who have left home, there is a troubling trend: one in four young adults cuts off communication with their parents. Dr. Jack’s mission is to ensure that parents launch their adult children into self-sufficient and responsibly independent lives while maintaining a caring connection with them and avoiding the trend toward estrangement.
Dr. Jack has spent much of his 40 years of service as a licensed psychologist working with families and has recently focused on the transition period for 18- to 29-year-olds. He is the author of *The Parent’s Launch Code: Loving and Letting Go of Our Adult Children* and provides counselling, education and resources through his website, parentslettinggo.com.
John (Jack) Stoltzfu, America's Launch Coachs
What led you to become “America’s Launch Coach” and focus on parents navigating their children’s transition into adulthood?
The backstory begins with my estrangement from my father during my young adult years and the reconciliation that followed. Fast-forward to fifteen years ago and my experience as a father of three young adults, who, I can thankfully say, have launched successfully. Alongside this two-pronged experience, I was unable to find professionals or resources serving this parent population.
There is a hidden epidemic of parents struggling with the challenge of launching young adults in the era of the internet, gaming, pornography, job scarcity, college debt and the cost of housing. These challenges are different from those parents faced thirty or forty years ago, particularly when it comes to leaving home and how their parents handled this transition. The common refrain from parents of young adults today is one of frustration and helplessness, and the need for patience is greater than ever. I have identified six practices parents need to strengthen to successfully launch their young adults.
You have identified four types of failure to launch. Which type do parents most often misunderstand?
Let me answer by describing the most common, the most challenging and then the most heartbreaking. The most common is the “stalled” young adult. This is the young adult who is stuck at home, playing video games, not working or going to school and having no plan for the future. One twenty-five-year-old young adult told his parents he just wanted to be “a stay-at-home son.”
The young adult with a serious substance use problem or mental illness presents one of the most challenging cases of failure to launch. My belief is that unless the mental illness is managed or the substance use is addressed, launching isn’t possible. Finally, the most heartbreaking failure to launch is the young adult who has cut off all contact with a parent and refuses to respond to any overtures from them to reconnect. As one parent experiencing this said, “It’s worse than if they were dead.”
You have questioned whether “failure to launch” is even the right way to describe what young adults are experiencing today. What do you think we should understand differently?
Beginning with millennials and continuing with Generation Z, we have seen a longer transition to adulthood. Jeffrey Arnett, who coined the term “emerging adulthood” for this stage of life, describes adulthood as:
Accepting responsibility for oneself
Making independent decisions
Becoming financially independent
These 18- to 29-year-olds in the emerging adult population are taking longer to achieve adulthood, especially in terms of traditional notions of adulthood, such as a career, marriage and financial independence. Most 18- to 29-year-olds change jobs seven times during their twenties and don’t settle into a career until the age of thirty-two. The age at first marriage today is 30 for males and 29 for females. This is in contrast to 50 years ago, when the age at first marriage was 23 for males and 21 for females. Today, over 60% of parents subsidise their young adults financially.
There are many explanations for this trend, but it doesn’t necessarily suggest a failure to launch. College debt, job opportunities, the cost of living and housing costs are contributors. Parents need to adjust to this new reality and not assume that there is necessarily a problem or a failure to launch.
You have observed significantly more young men than young women struggling to launch. What do you believe is contributing to this?
Referrals to me as a coach for parents of young adults have averaged a ratio of three males to one female. A number of factors contribute to this trend. The job market is not as robust for more traditional male jobs, such as manufacturing and skilled trades. Males seem to be more comfortable at home and default to video gaming and pornography at a much higher rate than young women. Why risk rejection by asking a woman out when you can stay at home and use porn and a bot as your sex partners? Males are less socially adept and may be reluctant to apply or interview for jobs. Once discouraged by multiple job application rejections, males may have more difficulty rebounding.
How can parents recognise when financial or practical support has shifted from helping their adult child to enabling dependence?
Enabling has become a negative term, but it can apply to both enabling dependence and enabling independence. As a rule, parents shouldn’t do something for adult children that those children can do for themselves or, at a minimum, should only meet them halfway. I advise parents, when making decisions or taking action involving their adult children, to ask:
Am I doing this out of love, fear, anxiety, guilt, frustration or anger?
Is my decision or action in line with my values and principles?
Will my decision or action contribute to greater dependence or independence?
When an adult child shows little motivation to become independent, what can a parent change without trying to control or fix them?
I think parents need to challenge adult children living at home to step up and participate as if they are roommates by cooking meals, doing laundry, cleaning their rooms, shopping for groceries and completing other tasks that they will need to learn and do when they move out. Beyond this, certain privileges may need to be withheld if they are not stepping up, such as the use of Wi-Fi, a car or a phone.
Finally, I like to challenge parents to pull these kids out of the house rather than telling them to get out. Offer to do a volunteer activity together, go to the gym together, drive them to a job interview, shop for groceries together and so on.
How has your experience of estrangement as a young adult influenced your belief that independence and a caring parent-child relationship should develop together?
First, one of the fundamental practices parents need to employ or strengthen is reassuring their child, at any age, that they matter, that they are loved unconditionally and that nothing can break this bond. This love is not contingent on the young adult’s actions.
Second, unless they have been perfect parents, parents need to apologise for things they said, did or failed to say or do that may have offended or hurt the young adult. This is one of the healing practices that helps parents let go of guilt and softens any resentment the young adult may harbour.
Finally, parents need to manage the dynamic of caring, holding on and letting go. This is a fundamental dynamic that starts when the baby arrives. For older teenagers and young adults, too much holding on breeds dependency, but too much letting go risks abandonment and estrangement.
What is the most important shift parents need to make as their relationship with their child moves from parenting a dependent to relating to an adult?
Parents need to begin allowing more choices, decision-making and autonomy during the teenage years. This doesn’t mean simply stepping back and disengaging, an approach some parents adopt when their child turns 18. Rather, parents need to continue relating in a supportive way while shifting their focus toward supporting the young adult’s identity development and independence.
Two skills addressed in *The Parent’s Launch Code* that support this shift are coaching and consulting. Coaching involves drawing out what the young adult wants, while consulting allows the parent to offer ideas or experience with the caveat that the decision belongs to the young adult. In this regard, I suggest parents use a sandwich approach: tell them it’s their decision, offer your advice, and then tell them again that it is their decision and that you won’t be mad if they don’t take your advice.
You define a successful launch as more than simply moving out of the family home. What does a genuinely successful launch look like to you?
First, to dispel a common misconception or bias, a successful launch is not dependent on whether the young adult lives at home or outside their parents’ home. The Western worldview that values independence often assumes it means living outside the family home. I recently appeared on a podcast with a podcaster from India, and I said that parents in this country start to panic when their twenty-five-year-old is living at home. He said that in India, if a twenty-five-year-old is living outside the home, that is a problem.
Second, a successfully launched young adult, whether living at home or outside the home, is self-sufficient, capable of making important life decisions, financially self-supporting and either maintains an ongoing positive relationship with their parents or has resolved any resentment or conflict with them. Most developmental psychologists don’t include this last characteristic, and therapists who see young adults who are estranged from or have unresolved issues with their parents may inadvertently reinforce this stance by accepting only the young adult’s narrative.
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