A DECADE OF ADULT DEVELOPMENT

Emerging Adulthood-19-26yrs

Emerging Adulthood-19-26yrs

Introduction

In the past few decades a quiet revolution has taken place for young people in UK society, so quiet that it has been noticed only gradually and incompletely. As recently as 1970 the typical 21-year-old was married or about to be married, caring for a newborn child or expecting one soon, done with education or about to be done, and settled into a long term job or the role of full-time mother. Young people of that time grew up quickly and made serious enduring choices about their lives at a relatively early age. Today, the life of a typical 21-year-old could hardly be more different. (Bell, 2007) Marriage is at least five years off, often more. Education may last several more years, through an extended undergraduate program—the “four-year degree” in five, six, or more—and perhaps graduate or professional school. (Dunn, 2008) Job changes are frequent, as young people look for work that will not only pay well but will also be personally fulfilling. For today's young people, the road to adulthood is a long one. They leave home at age 18 or 19, but most do not marry, become parents, and find a long-term job until at least their late twenties. From their late teens to their late twenties they explore the possibilities available to them in love and work, and move gradually toward making enduring choices. Such freedom to explore different options is exciting, and this period is a time of high hopes and big dreams. However, it is also a time of anxiety and uncertainty, because the lives of young people are so unsettled, and many of them have no idea where their explorations will lead. They struggle with uncertainty even as they revel in being freer than they ever were in childhood or ever will be once they take on the full weight of adult responsibilities. To be a young UK today is to experience both excitement and uncertainty, wide-open possibility and confusion, new freedoms and new fears. The rise in the ages of entering marriage and parenthood, the lengthening of higher education, and prolonged job instability during the twen- ties reflect the development of a new period of life for young people in the UK and other industrialized societies, lasting from the late teens through the mid- to late twenties. This period is not simply an “extended adolescence,” because it is much different from adolescence, much freer from parental control, much more a period of independent exploration. Nor is it really “young adulthood,” since this term implies that an early stage of adulthood has been reached, whereas most young people in their twenties have not made the transitions historically associated with adult status— especially marriage and parenthood—and many of them feel they have not yet reached adulthood. It is a new and historically unprecedented period of the life course, so it requires a new term and a new way of thinking; I call it emerging ...