"Adulting" has now become a verb, and it scares us. Yet it is also essential if we are to live our best, most authentic lives. So how do you do it if you’ve not learned all the necessary lessons? And what defines an adult, anyway? These are the questions tackled by Julie Lythcott-Haims in her new book, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult (2021, Henry Holt & Company). In our interview, we address how the meaning of adulthood has changed from what it used to be; the necessary balance between “fending” for oneself and relying on others; and how Julie’s own life experiences shaped the development of the book and her ideas. This episode is for adults trying to improve themselves, parents trying to raise them, and those in between.

Julie Lythcott-Haims is the New York Times bestselling author of the anti-helicopter parenting manifesto How to Raise an Adult which gave rise to a popular TED Talk. Her second book is the critically-acclaimed and award-winning prose poetry memoir Real American, which illustrates her experience as a Black and biracial person in white spaces. Her new book, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult, has been called a “groundbreakingly frank” guide to adulthood. Julie is a former corporate lawyer and Stanford dean, and she holds a BA from Stanford, a JD from Harvard, and an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. She currently serves on the boards of Common Sense Media and the Black Women’s Health Imperative, and on the advisory board of LeanIn.Org and Parents magazine. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her partner of over thirty years, their itinerant young adults, and her mother.

Eugenio Duarte, Ph.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in Miami. He treats individuals and couples, with specialties in gender and sexuality, eating and body image problems, and relationship issues. He is a graduate and faculty of William Alanson White Institute in Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis, and Psychology in New York City and former chair of their LGBTQ Study Group; and faculty at Florida Psychoanalytic Institute in Miami. He is also a contributing author to the book Introduction to Contemporary Psychoanalysis: Defining Terms and Building Bridges (2018, Routledge) and has published on issues of gender, sexuality, and sexual abuse.

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