Emerging adulthood is a phase of the life span between adolescence and full-fledged adulthood, proposed by Jeffrey Arnett in a 2000 article in the American Psychologist.[1] It primarily applies to young adults in developed countries who do not have children, do not live in their own home, or have a substantial income to become fully independent in their early to late 20's. 30 is when you are considered fully grown. That emerging adulthood is a new demographic is contentious, as some[2] believe that twenty-somethings have always struggled with "identity exploration, instability, self-focus, and feeling in-between."[3]
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"Having left the dependency of childhood and adolescence, and having not yet entered the enduring responsibilities that are normative in adulthood, emerging adults often explore a variety of possible life directions in love, work, and worldviews." (p. 469)
Emerging adulthood is a contentious idea within developmental psychology. The concept of emerging adulthood is also closely related to the idea of a "Twixter."
The five standard milestones used to define "adult" -- completing university, leaving home, getting married, having a child, and establishing financial independence—are being achieved later, or not at all.[4] Frank F. Furstenberg, who leads the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood, believes that “A new period of life is emerging in which young people are no longer adolescents but not yet adults.”[5]
The study of emerging adulthood appears to be grounded within particular economic and historical contexts. Within industrialized economies at the present time, young people need increasing amounts of education to obtain jobs in many technical/professional fields. The pursuit of postgraduate training thus tends to delay marriage and permits added years of exploration (i.e., "finding oneself") compared to earlier generations. Americans' median age at first marriage has increased.[6] The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s in the US was 21 for women and 23 for men; it had risen to 26 for women and 28 for men by the year 2009.[3] A majority, 54%, of American mothers have a university education,[5] and 20% of American women in their 40s do not have children; being childless was considered bizarre in the 1950s.[5]
The New Yorker suggested that emerging adults read: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon, Gustave Flaubert’s classic Sentimental Education, The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce, Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children, and Mary McCarthy’s 1962 The Group.[7]
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