There used to be four common life phases   : childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age.Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age.Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood. They see that people in this age bracket are delaying marriage.They're delaying having children.They're delaying permanent employment.People who were born before 1964 tend to define adulthood by certain achievements moving away from home, becoming financially independent, getting married and starting a family. In 1960, roughly 70 percent of 30-year-olds had achieved these things.By 2000, fewer than 40 percent of 30-year-olds had done the same. Yet with a little imagination it's possible even for baby boomers   to understand what it's like to be in the middle of the odyssey years.It's possible to see that this period is a sensible response to modern conditions. Two of the American best social scientists have been trying to understand this new life period.Through their work, you can see uncertainty that now characterizes this stage.Young people grow up in tightly structured childhoods, Robert Wuthnow of Princeton observes, but then graduate into a world of uncertainty.Old success recipes don't apply, new systems have not been established and everything seems to give way to a less permanent version of itself.Dating gives way to Facebook and hooking up.Newspaper reading gives way to blogging.For example, in 1970, 49 percent of adults in their 20s read a daily paper, now it's at 21 percent. The job market is changeable.Graduating seniors don't find corporations offering them jobs that will guide them all the way to retirement.Instead they find a vast menu of information economy options, few of which they have heard of or prepared for. By 2000, most of the 30-year-olds   _  .
were financially dependent got well-prepared for the employment got married early and started their family preferred blog writing to newspaper reading