Adults Financially and Emotionally Dependant on Parents

If your children are under the age of 30, chances are that you still play a disproportionately large role in their emotional and financial wellness, and even take care of smaller aspects of their wellbeing. This is according to a new report from the Co-operative Group, which has identified a ‘lost generation’ of 18 to 30-year-olds in the UK for whom debt is normality – a “debt-eration” – and who are finding it hard to become independent in the country’s challenging economy.

 

The study found that young adults in the 18-30 age range have asked their parents for financial help for a range of things from food shopping costs (43%) to holidays (36%) to debt payments (16%) and house purchases (8%). However, the economy cannot take all the blame for this strange outcome of family wellness, as it goes beyond financial support. 80% of emerging adults still rely heavily on their parents for help with basic tasks and decision-making, including transport (40%), chores such as cleaning and ironing (34%) and help with finding a job (27%).

 

The report has identified a “debt-eration”, with nearly two thirds (60%) of 18 to 30-year-olds admitting to having debt, and an alarming 77% not alarmed or worried by it. This debt has many sources, including student loans (63%), credit cards (31%), personal loans (23%), overdrafts (19%) and money borrowed from parents (18%). On broader issues, the report found that two-fifths (40%) are dissatisfied with their lives so far, feeling that they should have achieved more in their lives.

 

According to Martyn Wates, the Co-operative Group’s deputy group chief executive, ‘The findings of our study into 18 to 30-year-olds living in Britain today offers a unique insight into their view of the world and their prospects for the future. It should not be forgotten that it is these young adults who are ultimately going to shape the future of Britain for years to come, so they need support and encouragement to thrive.’ Psychologist Donna Dawson added, ‘In order to help this generation to cope better, parents should encourage independence, initiative and self-sufficiency. This in turn will generate the self-confidence needed to tackle work and money issues, as well as help them to develop a more realistic outlook during an uncertain economy.’

Adults Financially and Emotionally Dependant on Parents

Categories: adults, debt, Debt-eration, group, operative group, Parental Dependancy, Parents, report, Research, year olds, young adults

Are People Staying Virgins For Longer?

In the past, we might have seen virginity as something that was a natural occurrence until you got married, and as such it was something that didn’t even need to be talked about. If you weren’t married then you were still a virgin, and if you weren’t a virgin but had not married yet that made you ‘sinful’ or a shame to society. Of course, by our modern standards of living, there is nothing wrong with consensual sex between two adults and marriage is not something that even comes into the equation. Perhaps we even got very used to concept of people losing their virginity at a very young age.

There were many social panics in the media that revolved around younger and younger girls getting pregnant. It was also noted that the average age of people losing their virginity was becoming much lower than ever before. It seemed that this inexorable rise of people losing their virginity very early was likely to be that way forever, so it might have seemed that we could forget about the subject. However, it now seems that there may have been a little of a reversal of this trend, and some people are not losing their virginity until they are somewhat older.

There was a new report that was issued by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics which takes a look at the sexual habits of the world that we currently live in. The report is based on in-person interviews and look at approximately 13,500 men and women between the ages of 15 to 44. The report describes all the different types of sexual fact such as what age’s people are having sex, who is having sex with each other and a number of other facts. And perhaps the most interesting aspect of the report is that it seems that virginity is making something of a comeback!

The researchers found that between the years of 2006 and 2008 the percentage of 15- to 24-year-old males who had never had sexual contact of any form with another person was up to a surprising 27 per cent. This number was up from 22 per cent in 2002 and shows an interesting upward trend for virginity. During the same period, 15- to 24-year-old females who had never had any form of sexual contact was up to 29 per cent, and this number was again up from 22 per cent in 2002.

Supposedly the majority of this increase was to be found for those people between the ages of 15 and 19, which suggests it is younger people who are making the decision not to have sex earlier on in their lives. This seems to be counter to the media image that we often find that teenagers are sex crazed and that their insatiable lust for sexual encounters knows no limits. This is certainly one of the more interesting and unexpected aspects of the report.

It might be true that when people see these results that will construe them to mean that less people are having vaginal sex. But the truth is that this shows that their younger people are having no sexual contact whatsoever, including anal or oral sex. It seems that many younger people are making the decision to take themselves away from sex altogether until they are a little older. If these seems to contradict the feelings of many of the major news outlets and media companies perhaps it shows that things are not as clear cut as it might seem.

Categories: people, people losing, report, sexual, sexual contact, virginity, young people, younger, younger people

How True is The Daily Telegraph Report on Stress?

Once again it seems that newspapers have been inaccurately reporting the results of scientific experiments to make them more ‘headline worthy’. The offending newspaper is the Daily Telegraph, which asserted an article titled: “Daily stresses take toll on long-term mental health”.

According to the newspaper: “that little row with your spouse or stress of finding yourself stuck in a traffic jam may be taking a heavier toll on your mental health than previously thought”, but is this really a fact or is it a misreading? Well, even though the research that the Daily Telegraph’s report based on is sound and the conclusions drawn are the same it doesn’t really tell the whole truth.

The Daily Telegraph’s story is based on a long-term study from America that measured what people said were their daily stress triggers or ‘stressors’ and how they said they emotionally reacted to those stressors. It then compared the findings with symptoms of mental health conditions a decade down the line.

Experiencing negative moods, feelings and emotions at the start of the researched was linked with whether people had symptoms indicative of major depression or generalised anxiety disorder after ten years. The reported emotional reaction to the stressors predicted whether people reported they had mental health issues, but not whether they had a diagnosis based on symptoms of these conditions.

The study had very serious limitations such as a low participation and a high drop-out rate make the conclusions that the Daily Telegraph drew very difficult to justify. The study was conducted by researchers from the University of California Irvine, California State University Fullerton and Pennsylvania State University in the US, and was funded by the US National Institutes of Health.

How True is The Daily Telegraph Report on Stress?

Categories: Daily Telegraph, report, Stress

Why are medical discount cards being used instead of insurance?

Health insurance can be a costly expenditure, which could explain the growing number of people who are opting out of this form of back-up and looking for cheaper alternatives wherever they can find them. However, with more and more people looking at medical discount cards as a way of cutting back on the bills, it seems as though people are being misinformed as to what counts as a solid insurance plan. Medical discount cards have been advertised as having no deductibles or co-pays, giving the illusion that you’re ending up with the same deal as when you take out health insurance. Health insurance may cover you for those costly treatments and procedures in moments of emergency, but discounts wont – despite the promise that they can.

This isn’t quite the case though, leaving many people without any cover when they become ill or need treatments. Many experts and lawyers have stated that there should be clear warnings against this kind of activity and about the misleading sales pitches luring people into using them. Yet despite the risks, many people simply aren’t reading the fine print and are getting caught out by large bills and pricey treatments that they believed themselves to be covered for. Many medical discount companies claim that they can provide large savings on GP visits and treatments, prescriptions and even dental exams. However, this is simply not the case as they are unable to fulfil these claims. Consumers have been warned to be very sceptical of these types of promotions and should ask for as much information as they can in order to gain a full understanding before taking out any enrolment on these schemes.

In a recent lawsuit in Florida, a law firm won a case in which a company had pitched that its product could act as health insurance when it was in actual fact just a discount card – and with very little saving with even that. The monthly cost for the card, which had a limited use, was more than $100 – over 80 percent of people who had signed up to the card programme had ended their subscription within a six month period. In another case, a man in California is suing a company who he had taken out a programme with after he had suffered with a stroke and was landed with a $400,000 medical care bill – his card only covered him for $4500, yet he was unaware until the bill arrived. He hopes to gain compensation for the misleading claims the discount card offered when he took out the scheme.

Not all of the cards are made equal though. Some do offer genuine savings and can cover prescription expenses and medical procedures. But none of them are health insurance, something which is misleading in a number of claims. Experts are advising people to read the small print and gather as much information as they can before enrolling in any scheme, as well as being fully aware that, although they may gain a deal on their medical expenses, they aren’t covered for large claims in the same way insurance provides back-up. It’s also suggested that people get full information about the refund policy before they enrol, so that they are able to exit the programme if need be, without racking up a large debt. If it’s difficult to get the information, it’s not worth taking a risk if anything goes wrong, so you should look elsewhere for a similar deal or a different programme. It’s also worth doing your sums beforehand and checking that it is worth the money and the risk before you sign any papers.

Categories: claims, discount, health insurance, medical insurance, medicare, report

Having a Gay Parent Doesn’t Affect a Child’s Development

A report suggests that the almost two million children being raised by gay couples and single gay parents in the US show as positive outcomes for wellbeing as children raised in straight households.

The report has been co-authored by Benjamin Siegel, a professor of paediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine, and Ellen Perrin, professor of paediatrics and director of development and behavioural paediatrics at Tufts University.

Their study was published in the American Academy of Paediatrics a week before a Supreme Court judge, Justice Antonin Scalia, suggested that sociologists and psychologists were divided over whether safe-sex parents are good for children. However, the paediatrics expert believes the evidence contained in his report shows that there is solid scientific evidence to show that gay parents make no difference to the social and health outcomes of their children.

The report explored and analysed several longitudinal studies of gay and lesbian parents, concluding that a child’s wellbeing is affected more by relationships with their parents and how secure family life is than by either parental gender or sexual orientation.

One study included in the report is the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study that has been following 154 lesbian mothers since 1986. Recently it questioned 78 adolescents to compare how both mothers and children compared in their self-reported status against national samples.

Mothers said their children were highly socialised, had fewer social problems and showed less aggressive and bad behaviour than other children of their age. For their part, the adolescents’ reported a similar quality of life to children who lived with heterosexual parents.

Other studies analysed for Siegel and Perrin’s report included three in the US and Europe that covered lesbian mothers and adult children with parents in a same-sex relationship. Again there was no difference in outcomes for children of gay people compared to those of children with heterosexual parents.

The report appears to provide hard evidence that children fare no worse being raised in a gay household.

Having a Gay Parent Doesn’t Affect a Child’s Development

Categories: Children, gay parents, heterosexual parents, lesbian mothers, mothers, paediatrics, Parents, report