The Untethered Generation
Searching For Belonging in The Absence of Ritual
Young adulthood is one of the most sacred and pivotal stages of life. Today, it is also one of the least supported. Across cultures and history, the transition from childhood to adulthood was marked by formal rites of passage: ceremonies, rituals, and challenges that pushed young people beyond their identity as “child” and into the responsibilities of adulthood.
In many cultures, these rites remain profoundly demanding. In South Africa, Xhosa boys undergo ulwaluko, an initiation school that includes circumcision, seclusion, and mentorship as a passage into manhood. Among the Maasai in Kenya and Tanzania, warrior initiation requires endurance, discipline, and community responsibility. In Aboriginal Australia, the walkabout sends adolescent boys into the wilderness to survive on their own, testing their resilience and connection to the land. In India, the Upanayana (sacred thread ceremony) initiates boys into spiritual study and adult identity.
These practices share the core elements of rites of passage: separation, testing, and re-integration through public recognition.
In contrast, in the United States and much of the West, age-related milestones such as Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, quinceañeras, Sweet 16s, and graduations are often treated more as celebrations than true initiations. While some, such as the Bar and Bat Mitzvah, require significant preparation and community participation, in Western contexts even these are frequently overshadowed by the party itself. They mark age formally but often fall short of catalyzing the deeper transformation into adult responsibility.
The Collapse of Initiation in Modern Culture
As a result, many young adults remain in a suspended state: living at home well into their twenties, often returning after college, enmeshed in potentially damaging family dynamics, and carrying their parents’ emotional distress rather than individuating as adults. In fact, in 2020 the share of 18–29-year-olds living with their parents in the United States reached 52%—a historic high not seen since the Great Depression (Pew Research Center, 2020). This is particularly damaging in addicted or abusive family systems, where no real break occurs and young people continue acting out inherited roles rather than gaining perspective on them.
In many cases, young adults are also experimenting with adult realities like sex, substances, and intimacy before they have developed the emotional maturity and independence to hold space for them. Mental health struggles are significant among this group: about 12% of U.S. young adults ages 18–25 reported serious thoughts of suicide in the past year, and 2% attempted suicide (NAMI). Concurrently, intimate partner violence remains a real threat—estimated at 1 in 6 college-aged women experiencing abusive dating behaviors, including physical, sexual, digital, and emotional aggression (AP News). Together, these crises suggest how the absence of structured initiation leaves many young people vulnerable, confused, and unsupported at the very threshold of adulthood.
Traditional rites of passage were not casual or optional; they were rigorous cultural processes that demanded preparation and sacrifice. These were not designed to stunt freedom but to consecrate it—marking the passage from dependence to responsibility in a way that was witnessed, valued, and celebrated by the community.
By contrast, today’s vague cultural markers of adulthood—getting a driver’s license, going to college, getting a job—lack both the symbolic weight and the communal recognition of initiation. In the absence of traditional structures, young adults are left to interpret their struggles alone, without a shared cultural narrative that validates their transition and imbues in them the confidence and fortitude necessary to navigate the stressors of their world.
What we see instead are trials without context, hardships without ritual, and pain without purpose. Young people face crushing financial pressure, rising anxiety and depression, and relational instability, but there is no container that frames these challenges as meaningful tests leading to growth.
Without that structure, what should have been initiation simply feels oppressive. This is why so many young adults struggle with resilience: they are either overprotected—coddled into fragility without chances to fail and recover—or else abandoned to overwhelming stress without guidance. In both cases, they are denied the backbone of perspective that “warrior training” once offered.
At the same time, social media has in many ways stepped into the role once held by ritual. Validation-seeking, influencer culture, and the pursuit of shallow and meaningless status symbols—whether cosmetic procedures, luxury goods, or curated online personas—have replaced coming-of-age challenges and meaningful milestones that build character and resilience. In place of real initiation, where elders transmit wisdom and the community witnesses transformation, young adults are left competing for digital validation in a space that can never confer belonging or inner strength.
The erosion of rites of passage is not a minor cultural inconvenience. It is one of the reasons we see prolonged adolescence, fragile self-concepts, dopamine addiction, and so many young people who lack the capacity for intimacy. Age alone does not create adulthood. Without separation from family, testing of knowledge and strength, and formal recognition by the community, many young people remain children in grown bodies—still identifying primarily as sons and daughters—rather than stepping into the leadership, guidance, and innovation their communities need.
Young people need rites of passage now more than ever—not only to become resilient adults, but to stand up to the very forces that threaten their generation’s future. As Joseph Campbell and Arnold Van Gennep both affirmed, the final stage of initiation in the hero’s journey is not separation or testing, but integration: returning to the community with wisdom, strength, and the ability to sustain life, family, and the earth.
Initiation is not oppressive; its absence is. Sacred rites of passage are the missing ground from which future revolutionaries, healers, and leaders must rise.
When Childhood Roles Follow Us Into Adulthood
In my coaching work with young adults, I see the absence of initiation manifest in painfully concrete ways. Many of my younger clients (including some in their 30s) remain enmeshed in their families of origin—living at home, dependent on parents, and unconsciously carrying childhood roles—while, at the same time, seeking adult relationships and expecting to be treated as mature partners.
The contradiction is striking: they want the advantages of adulthood in dating and intimacy, yet have not crossed the threshold of true independence and responsibility. This can show up as frustration, co-copendency or avoidance, self-sabotage, and relational conflict, because they are asking to be seen as adults without embodying the emotional sovereignty that adult partnership requires. Parental enmeshment blurs boundaries, and dependence distorts self-concept, leaving them vulnerable to cycles of anxiety, depression, and disappointment when reality does not match their expectations and their relational skills are ineffective.
Where initiation once offered structure, meaning, and resilience—and created a values-based foundation from which young adults could launch—I now help clients reconstruct these missing rites through therapeutic tools, somatic practices, and the creation of personal rituals that anchor them in autonomy and integrity. In practice, this means guiding them to break unconscious family roles, become secure within themselves, establish embodied boundaries, and claim the psychological independence that makes authentic intimacy possible.
Initiation is not only preparation for adulthood; it is preparation for love, family, and leadership. Without it, young adults enter relationships carrying the weight of unfinished childhood.
Reclaiming Rites of Passage Through Shadow Work
One of the most essential aspects of this reconstruction is helping young adults recognize and reclaim the parts of themselves they were never allowed to fully express as children. This is often referred to as "shadow work"—the process of bringing unconscious beliefs, painful patterns, and suppressed emotions into conscious awareness so they can be healed and integrated. Without this work, unresolved wounds run the show—attachment anxieties, fear of abandonment, avoidance of intimacy, or compulsive caretaking that masquerades as love.
By learning how their unhealed history unconsciously drives their choices in dating, friendships, and even career paths, young adults can begin to rewrite their story.
Through modern rites of passage and using trauma-informed tools, I support young adults to bridge this gap. These processes—anchored in shadow integration, somatic practice, attachment repair, and personal ritual—provide the ground from which confidence, security, and resilience can grow.
When a young adult crosses the threshold into true sovereignty, they gain more than independence. They gain the ability to love without fear, to lead without domination, and to build relationships and communities rooted in integrity.
The absence of initiation is not a personal failing of today’s young adults; it is a cultural wound. When rites of passage disappear, generations are left to stumble without guidance, and both families and communities pay the price. Parents feel helpless, young adults feel lost, and relationships fracture under the weight of unspoken expectations.
But this loss is not irreversible. With the right structures—trauma-informed coaching, shadow work, somatic practice, and intentional ritual—young adults can reclaim what culture has failed to provide. I see it every day: the moment a young person steps into their sovereignty, the confusion lifts. They begin to see themselves not as children scrambling for approval, but as adults capable of love, responsibility, and vision.
We do not need to wait for culture to change before offering initiation. We can create it here and now. And in doing so, we prepare a generation not just to survive, but to love well, lead with integrity, and build futures that reflect resilience rather than rupture.
