Michael Ungar
& Cathy Campbell
The Boomerang Years
What Employers, Educators and Parents Need to Know about Today's Young Adults
(Or: Get off my couch! Get out of my face!)
The life script is well-entrenched: graduate from school, leave home, and get a job that will satisfy you for the next 50 years. Too bad it doesn’t work that way.
The privileged kids can afford to take the unpaid intern jobs and drift from one post grad course to another. Those with fewer resources can get trapped in low-skilled, low wage part time jobs. Both groups are often saddled with debt, living back in the childhood home, and resentful of the difficulties they face in starting their lives.
This book offers insights into the challenges facing young adults and guidance for mentors. Ungar and Campbell base part of this book on clinical work and research with 100 young people ages 23-30 from communities coast-to-coast, both rural and urban, where there is either economic boom or economic decline.
Campbell and Ungar highlight seven career principles for those grappling with the propulsion from adolescence to adulthood. They include:
- Balance dreaming and reality
2. Do what you love somewhere in your life
3. Plan with positive uncertainty
4. Find a direction rather than a destination
5. Expect the unexpected.
6. Always have a Plan ‘B’
7. Expect to be uncomfortable
They also identify three types of personalities: Navigators, Explorers and Drifters and the keys to motivating them.
The Boomerang Years will equip adults with the sensitivity and savvy to inspire youths on their path in life and work.
Michael Ungar is a family therapist, researcher and author of nine books for parents and professionals. His latest include We Generation: Raising Socially Responsible Kids and Too Safe for Their Own Good: How Risk and Responsibility Help Teens Thrive.
www.michaelungar.com
Cathy Campbell is a nationally recognized expert in career and vocational counseling and young people’s career pathways.
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