Read an article over the weekend that proposed that “young adulthood” was becoming a distinct phase of life these days.
Basically, it was talking about people in their twenties who are out of school and working, but delaying such “adult” activities as buying a house, getting married, and having kids.
It said adolescence itself was a relatively recent development. Previously, kids went more quickly from childhood right into assuming more adult responsibilities. It proposed young adulthood as a new phase, representing yet additionally delayed maturation.
What do you think? Is this a valid concept? Is it universal, or limited to the US? What would be the causes for this? If it is valid, can any value judgments be assigned to this phase? Can you predict any additional developmental phases that might arise in the future?
Interesting question. Obviously, I can’t speak for all young adults, but most of my friends and I are in our mid-20s. Most of us work in non-profits or the arts; a few are in grad school. None of us live at home with our parents. As a group, we’re just now starting to get married and buy houses. Frankly, I don’t see any reason to rush into marriage, babies, and homeowning.
My friends and I have, for the most part, consciously chosen our the path of our lives. It seems much more important than in the past for one’s job to be personally fulfilling; a lot of us spent a few years trying to land jobs that mean something to us. Likewise, we’ve all seen too many examples of marriages gone horribly wrong. As a result, marriage is not something we take lightly. And marriage now seems like an option, not an inevitability. (A good thing, in my book.)
As for kids and homebuying, unless you know for damn sure that you are where you want to be (with the right partner, in the right place), both seem ill-advised. Again, not things to do lightly. Besides, note the “non-profits and arts” jobs above–most of us couldn’t afford a house and young’uns right now.
And I’m not so sure that makes us more immature or less responsible than previous generations. I was talking to my mother-in-law recently–she mentioned how pleased and surprised she was that her children had such cozy (rental) homes and such happy (unmarried) relationships. When she was my age, she pointed out, she was living in a schoolbus on a commune.
As a 22-year-old now a full year out of undergrad, I have my first “career” type job (although what I am doing now is not really all that related to what I want as a career, but I digress), and am renting an apartment, feeling my way out in the “real world”. I’d lived away from home during collegiate summers, and so that aspect of independence has naturally developed.
What’s really lacking right now is a sense of “maturity” and “responsibility” that is inherent in those in the “adult” phase of life (well, at least some in that phase). I can function as part of a corporate culture, and also many times appear well-educated and well-spoken. However, I still make ill-fated rash decisions, and am more concerned with guitars ruling the world and partying hard with hot chicks than anything else. I would say that this type of paradox is actually the rule for people my age, as we struggle to get our legs under us in this new unfamiliar territory. I’d imagine it would be different for those who chose not to attend college and have been in the “real world” for longer (ex. a guy with whom I graduated HS has 3 children already).
I would agree wholeheartedly with the POV that the impetus to marry and own a home is not as strong with my generation (what are we again, Generation Digital?:dubious: ). I think that the rash of bad marriages that ripped apart families close to our own has caused this departure from common thinking. I’d like to think that this will cause people to regard us as more realistic or pragmatic about such decisions.
Well then, I guess I’ll never be an adult since getting married isn’t on my list of priorities, I don’t think owning a house is something I want to do, and I know for sure I’ll never want a kid.
I wouldn’t be too sure about having not gone to college and ‘facing the real world’ earlier being accurate. Some of us had the real world include working forty or more hours a week at a job in order to provide for our basic necessities and all the costs related with going to college, and those of us are really intimately acquainted with ‘the real world.’
Going to college is often viewed by people who aren’t in college as some kind of family-sponsored party-fest walk-in-the-park, that it’s not ‘the real world’ because there are no responsibilities. On the contrary, for quite a few of us there’s the responsibility of paying rent, bills, taxes, food expenses, health insurance, car payments, car insurance and then, since we were in college on top of that, tuition, student fees, books, and lab fees. I worked anywhere between 30 and 40 hours a week, went to college full time and took care of all my household chores.
But of course since I didn’t want to do the big three things grown up people do, namely buy a house, get married, and have kids, that apparently means I wasn’t an adult.
Guess I should’ve just told the electric company and the IRS that as a non-adult, I didn’t have to pay them.