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The Best Thing You Can Immediately Do For Your Kids (and Yourself)


Our kids provide us oodles of long-term meaning, but not always short-term happiness. Harvard’s Bob Waldinger showed me this graph of the challenges of marital satisfaction soon after kids arrive with things getting better until years later when our kids often return home in their twenties. Nearly 50% of kids move in with their parents in their 20s. Sixty years ago, this number was less than 30%.

Based upon recent global happiness data, the quarter-life crisis is a thing. When you become an adult, you move from a highly structured existence, likely in school or living with your family, to a more open-ended one. In recent years, this period of unsettledness has become elongated. 

The median age of first marriage keeps going up; the median age of first-time motherhood is 30, the highest ever recorded. And, Gen Zers are more likely than older workers to be independently employed or to have multiple jobs, rather than one stable career. They’re also less likely to feel connected to others or to be involved in religious and other organizations, and more likely to be lonely.

That’s why MEA has created two weeks in July dedicated to InterGen Weeks where we welcome you to bring your adult or teenage kids to experience our Baja campus: July 29-July 8 or July 20-29. For those of you who’ve experienced our Baja campus, you know what a great place it is relax and reconnect with 3 pools, 2 hot tubs, 2 steam rooms, a deserted beach, and more hangout time with our mindfulness expert Teddi and our shaman Saul since it’s quieter on campus in the summer. We’ve also dramatically reduced our prices during our Refresh weeks so it’s a great vacation for yourself as well. You can learn more HERE.

Lastly, when it comes to the workplace, your kids are part of the intergenerational revolution. Starting next year and for the first time, the US Department of Labor says that the majority of Americans will have a younger boss so there’s some hope for your kids’ careers as while us older folks are staying in the workforce longer, power is moving to Millennials and GenZ because they’re “digital natives” and the rest of us are “digital immigrants.” I recently gave a talk to a global company about the value of intergenerational diversity and they created this graphic from the talk. 

Hope we see you and your kids in Baja this summer. That week of 4th of July is a perfect time for an affordable family getaway!

-Chip

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