The Emerging Adult

Describing how young adults today have fewer responsibilities, while their parents have more responsibilities and expectations but significantly less authority.

The transformative change to the concept of the period of young adulthood perhaps doesn’t generate enough critical rigous. In the last couple of decades the role of parents to young adults has changed, and not for the good of either the parent or the adult child. Parents are now expected to continue to play a key parenting role for their children until well into their twenties. This typically includes financial and emotional support yet it can also inadvertently become an obstacle to the individuals ability to individuate. Life was simpler and arguably healthier when young people were expected to fend for themselves once they left home. Nowadays economic drivers are forcing young adults to remain dependent on their parents. Consequently the young adults are often resentful while the parents are unsure of the parameters of their role.

The shared experiences of young people in their twenties in industrialised societies has taken on a new meaning over the past half-century and in 2000, Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, professor of psychology from Clark University, Massachusetts, coined the term “emerging adulthood” to describe the period of development spanning from about ages 18 to 29, that is experienced by many young people in their twenties in Westernised cultures and in certain other parts of the world as well. Prior to the 1980s, young people in their 20s typically finished their education, moved out of their parents’ home, got married, and had children, usually by the time they were 25 years old. This particular sequencing of events has been transformed just as our understanding of our expectations of how an individual should live in their 20s has undergone a radical revolution.

According to Arnett (2000), the conceptualization of the “Emerging Adult” as a distinct developmental stage between adolescence and adulthood came about as a result of four societal changes that occurred during the 1960s and 1970s:

• The Technology Revolution

• The Sexual Revolution

• The Women’s Movement

• The Youth Movement

The arrival of adulthood became delayed as a consequence of the aforementioned social movements and, arguably, also as a result of longer and more widespread education; delayed entry into marriage and parenthood; longer career ladders and a subsequent longer transition to secure work (Arnett, 2014).

The rise in importance of education in the young person’s life since 1950 has been well researched (Arnett et al. 2011). In 1950s most young people moved directly from adolescence to settled adulthood between the years 18 and 25. In western cultures relatively few people obtained higher education in the 1950s, and of those that did, the vast majority were men. Women tended to remain in their family of origin until they married. Most women, however married young, often in their teens or their early 20s, with entry to parenthood roughly a year later. For a variety of reasons, young adulthood has transformed since the 1950s. Both men and women are much more likely to obtain a third level degree, and these days more women than men obtain more education (Arnett et al., 2011).

The Sexual Revolution of the 1960s brought about changes to attitudes to premarital sex and now the majority of people have intercourse before marriage, often as much as a decade before they marry, with most people cohabiting before they marry (Arnett et al., 2011). The median age for marriage and parenthood has risen steeply and it is now closer to age 30 in industrialized countries (Mathews and Hamilton, 2009). Arnett’s reconceptualization of young adulthood posited that a new way of becoming an adult became normative towards the end of the twentieth century and, with this theory, he coined the term “emerging adulthood” (Arnett, 2000).

Image: Trends in the Timing of First Childbirth. (Arnett et al., 2011)

Arnett identified the lack of stable roles as a signifier of the changing nature of young adulthood. Stable positions in love and work that had previously taken place in the late teens or early 20s, now takes place in the late 20s or early 30s (Arnett, 2000). Although these people are no longer adolescents, yet they are not fully adults – hence the term “emerging adult”. Typically, emerging adults depend on their parents for a certain level of financial support and, in turn, their parents place expectations of reciprocity from their children.

Arnett (2014) identified five characteristics that are common to emerging adults: 

1. Seeking identity

2. Experiencing instability (both in terms of love, work and residence)

3. Focusing on self-development

4. Feeling “In-Between” adolescence and adulthood

5. Optimistically believing in many possible life pathways

In his research, Arnett recognized that the typical and traditional characteristics that signified adulthood i.e. leaving the family home, getting married, and having children were changing and identified the following “Big Three” criteria for adulthood:

1. Accepting responsibility for yourself

2. Making independent decisions

3. Becoming financially independent

In Debating Emerging Adulthood: Stage or Process? Arnett et al. (2011) provide further perspectives on the discussion around “emerging adulthood”. Arnett’s thesis that a new life stage – the emerging adult – has developed between adolescence and young adulthood, lasting roughly between 18 and 25 years old is expanded to encompass the context of culture, educational attainment and social class, where Arnett and Tanner point to different emerging adulthoods and seek to explore and describe the variations of emerging adulthood. Within the same book, developmental psychologists, Kloep and Hendry argue that stage theories are an insufficient framework that should be abolished and other explanations need to be sought for the processes that govern transitional stages. Thus this text provides the argument for a deeper understanding of the human condition, whether it is through the lens of “stage or process”.

Since 2000, the cohort of “the emerging adult” has been studied extensively by Arnett with a focus on the timing and impact of transitional events such as; leaving home; finishing education; finding employment; getting married; starting a family; redefining relationships with parents; pursuing love lives; shaping a career path; developing religious beliefs; having hopes for the future (Arnett, 2014). The 1990s TV programme Friends illustrated the phenomenon of the emerging adult, with an emphasis on friendships, transitory relationships, unstable jobs and delayed entry into financial stability (Garber, 2019).  Arnett  (2014) focused his area of study on young adults in the US with a comprehensive understanding of both their opportunities and concluded, “To be a young American today is to experience both excitement and uneasiness, wide-open possibilities and confusion, new freedoms and new fears.” During the course of my work, it has became apparent that the emerging adult is not just an American phenomenon but also evident across the western world.

The impact of the emerging adult on parents is far-reaching. Parents are placed into an impossible position of being expected to pay the bills when called upon; to be a guiding voice when needed; and yet to shut up and keep out when not required. Boundaries are essential in this new chapter of your life. While it is perfectly fine and loving to provide financial and emotional assistance to your adult child when they require it, it is also perfectly fine to presume that this is not an open-ended deal. The principle of reciprocity underlies many social customs and traditions, where acts of kindness are expected to be returned in some form. This perhaps needs to be highlighted as the teenager becomes a young adult.

References

Arnett, J. J. (2004). Emerging adulthood: The winding road from the late teens through the twenties. New York: Oxford University Press

Arnett, J. J., & Tanner, J. L. (Eds.) (2006). Emerging adults in America: Coming of age in the 21st century. Washington, DC: American Psychogical Association.

Arnett, J. J. (2007). Adolescence and emerging adulthood: A cultural approach (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Arnett, J. J. (2010). Adolescence and emerging adulthood: A cultural approach (4th ed.). Boston: Prentice Hall.

Arnett, J.J. (2014). Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from Late Teens through the Twenties. Second Edition. New York: Oxford University Press.

Arnett, J.J., Kloep, M., Hendry, L.B. and Tanner, J. L. (2011). Debating Emerging Adulthood: Stage or Process? New York: Oxford University Press.Arnett

Garber, M. (2019). “On Chandler Bing’s Job”. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/09/friends-25-prescience-chandler-bing-job/597829/

Mathews, T. J., & Hamilton, B. E. (2009). Delayed childbearing: More women are having their first child later in life. NCHS Data Brief, 21. National Center for Health Statistics. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db21.htm