YOU’RE NOT DONE YET — A Parents’ Guide for Navigating the Guidance Gap
Philadelphia, PA — July 2025 — Across the country, a quiet but growing crisis is unfolding—not only for young adults, but also for their parents. Young adults, ages 18 to 34, grapple with record-high levels of anxiety, delayed independence, and economic instability. Parents, who are increasingly the backstop for young adults’ emotional and financial support, have lacked expert advice on what is normal during this transition and what help is enough or too much.
You’re Not Done Yet: ParentingYoung Adults in an Age of Uncertainty (2024) is one of the first books to fill the guidance gap, offering parents the support they urgently need: a compassionate and practical roadmap to navigate this worrisome, confusing, and often isolating era of extended parenting.
Leading adolescent and young adult mental health experts, Dr. B. Janet Hibbs and Dr. Anthony Rostain, team up again following the success of their critically acclaimed title, The Stressed Years of Their Lives, an invaluable guide for parents of college students. Now, they turn their expertise to an unexpected development—when parental roles don’t end by a child’s early 20s, but grow more complex and emotionally demanding.
“Today’s generational baton pass into adulthood takes longer than it used to,” says Dr. Hibbs. “Parents are living through the longest chapter of parenting ever—and many are overwhelmed, and unsure how to help.” Parents want to know what happened, why, and what to expect.”
Dr. Rostain adds, “This book helps parents understand this developmental delay, reset their expectations, find clarity in the chaos, and stay connected to their young adult children—without losing themselves.”
A Mental Health Crisis—For Both Generations
Recent research confirms that young adulthood is a period of profound struggle. The Global Flourishing Study, published in Nature Mental Health, surveyed over 200,000 people across 20+ countries and found that young adults (ages 18–34) are faring the worst in nearly every measure of well-being: happiness, health, relationships, purpose, and financial security. A 2023 study from the Harvard Graduate School of Education found that U.S. young adults report twice the levels of anxiety and depression as teens.
From the lingering impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic to skyrocketing housing costs, student debt, global unrest, and climate anxiety, today’s young adults are coming of age in an environment radically different from what their parents faced. These pressures make it harder to meet traditional adult milestones. Their new normal is not their parents’ mid-20’s success sequence of: complete your education, get a job, live independently, marry, and have children. Today’s young adults are taking longer to reach each marker, with many navigating multiple career restarts, long-term relationship delays, and housing instability well into their 30s. Their new normal is also a new developmental stage, widely identified in academic circles as Emerging Adulthood.
Emerging Adulthood is commonly experienced by young adults, who intuitively understand it as different from what is expected by parents, but it is seldom recognized as a distinct new developmental stage. This in-between period, post-adolescent, not yet fully adult, is characterized by flexible, nonlinear progress with cycles of dependence and independence. Most emerging adults experience prolonged education, job changes, financial instability, fluid relationships, and multigenerational living. For the first time in over a century, half of young adults in the U.S. now live with their parents.
“Parents and families are the primary safety net for today’s young adults,” says Dr. Rostain. “This book gives them the tools and confidence to handle that role—with strength, empathy, and clarity.”
“Whether pleasantly surprised or mildly alarmed by this unexpected extension of intensive parenting, many parents discover they’re not done yet—and feel unprepared for what comes next,” according to Dr. Hibbs
The emotional toll of this new developmental stage for young adults, with its extension of parenting, results in higher levels of stress for parents, too.
In 2024, the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory titled Parents Under Pressure, spotlighting the mental health crisis among parents. The advisory calls for action, warning that parents—especially those supporting adolescents and young adults—are increasingly burned out, anxious, and isolated.
You’re Not Done Yet speaks directly to this reality, offering parents both understanding and tools to embrace their evolving roles, care for themselves, improve communication with their emerging adults, and find common ground to support their launch to independence. Finally, there is expert guidance, providing validation, strategies, and hope, as parental roles change from advice-giver to sounding board, from rescuer to partner in growth.
Answers For The Parenting Shift No One Talks About
As parents have shifted from easing their early twenty-somethings into independence to an extended period of support, they have faced a “guidance gap”— when expert advice for parents dries up, just as the demands of parenting increase.
This book helps parents answer key questions they face every day:
- What’s “normal” for a 25-year-old still living at home?
- How can I support my adult child’s mental health without enabling them?
- What’s my role now—and how do I care for myself, too?
What You’ll Find in You’re Not Done Yet
- An empathic, practical guide, with in-depth exploration of large-scale social trends related to the new normal of delayed adulthood.
- Help to distinguish between common but temporary developmental stalls and more challenging problems when mental health concerns impede progress.
- Proven strategies to reduce parent-child conflict, with tips to improve communication and find common ground.
- Support for parents—You are not alone, with answers to your questions, suggestions to improve coping, manage stress, guilt, and emotional burnout–and know when to seek help, for your young adult, or for yourself.
Inside the Book: Tools for a New Era of Parenting
- The New Normal of Adulthood
Why independence is slower to arrive—and how to recognize what’s typical vs. concerning. - How to Relate to Your Young Adult
Move from advice-giving to active listening, and from cross-blaming to collaborative connection. - Careers & College in the 21st Century
Support decision-making in a rapidly changing world—without pushing outdated expectations. - Flourishing or Floundering?
Understand ADHD, screen time, and executive function issues that can derail development. - Parents as Mental Health Advocates
Learn how to engage with your child’s treatment—and why your own mental health matters, too.
About the Authors and Speaking Availability
About the Authors and Speaking Availability
Janet Hibbs, M.F.T., Ph.D. and Dr. Anthony L. Rostain, M.D., M.A. are also the co-authors of the bestselling The Stressed Years of Their Lives and are available individually or together for interviews, workshops, expert commentary, and parent education events. Their work combines clinical experience with real-world insight to help families meet today’s challenges.
Janet Hibbs, M.F.T., Ph.D., is a recognized authority on family and parent-child relationships. Her speaking engagements draw on expert clinical experience and 15 years as a graduate faculty member. Dually licensed as a psychologist and a family therapist, Dr. Hibbs is an Approved Supervisor for the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. She is a popular media guest, with national appearances on TV and radio. She is the author of Try to See It My Way: Being Fair in Love and Marriage, as well as book chapters, academic and national news articles. She is co-founder of Contextual Therapy of Philadelphia.
Anthony Rostain, M.D., M.A., is a nationally recognized expert in child and adolescent psychiatry. He is chief and chair of psychiatry and behavioral health at Cooper University Health Care and professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in Camden, New Jersey. He is also emeritus professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. He practices lifespan developmental psychiatry and is the co-author of four books, dozens of articles and chapters, and is a nationally and internationally renowned lecturer.
Now Available
You’re Not Done Yet: Parenting Young Adults in the Age of Uncertainty (2024)
Authors available for interviews, expert commentary, book talks, and parent workshops
Media Contact: MacMillan Speakers
Email: speakers@macmillan.com
646-307-5058
