Miscellaneous

Emerging Adulthood

By Chris Stevenson

Stumbled across this article in the NY Times today.  It's a subject I've thought a lot about and discussed with a lot of people, mainly because I personally went through it and have watched others do the same.  It appears to be some sort of culture shift or phenomenon.

The article is good, but based on my own observations I think they didn't get the reasons why correct.  Their reason was based mostly on the psychology, but I'd take it a step further and look for why the psychology of young adults seems to have changed.  Our parents' and grandparents' generations didn't seem to have this psychology.  So something had to have changed.  My explanation would be that culture has changed and minor institutions that have probably existed for hundreds or thousands of years, like the wayward youth, have taken firmer root in our culture, reached icon status, became more widely accepted and are now becoming the norm.  So where the wayward youth was a novelty in 1500AD, now everyone's doing it.  I think today's trend really grew legs in the 60's.  Think of the books, music and movies of the time.  They really encouraged young people to rebel against all cultural mores, including what were the expected stages of life.  The second thing I would point to would be economic.  Used to be that you could expect to get a good job right out of college.  There was a set pathway that was acceptable for young people and the businesses that hired them.  That's changed.  Entry level jobs for recent college grads really suck and today's young person would rather wait tables and have more time for other things than to grind away at a shitty job.  Young people have also realized that youth is precious and that it's important to make the most of it, or maybe they've always known that and now it's more at the forefront of everyone's minds.  So that's even less incentive to buckle down for a 9-5 at the company.  On the business side, too, things have changed.  College grads do not have much real productive value and it's an investment for a company to hire someone and train them.  Depending on the job, it could take a year or more to turn a college grad into a productive employee.  Apparently, that's been a losing proposition for businesses for some time.  So what businesses have done is to create a layer of jobs that appear to be well suited for a person with a college education, like more layers of lower management, when in reality it's job that no one wants to do.  It's a system that just doesn't work for business or young people.  Personally, I'd like to see the education system change to something that provides more practical real-world skills and produces graduates who actually know something and can do something of value.

The article also really played up the parents' role in creating this "new stage of life."  Maybe in their polling that was the case, but in my own personal experience there weren't parents there enabling emerging adulthood.  For one thing, for most families, the parents don't have the money to fully support their kids from age 18-28.  So it's just not even an option.  From what I've seen, most young people in emerging adulthood get menial jobs and get by on their own.  They don't have any money and the job they are in isn't going to lead to a career and big salary someday, but they are basically independent.

One interesting thing that I've seen happen recently on the education front is that universities recognized that it was taking longer for people to graduate.  So they've instituted programs to get students finished sooner.

In sum, I think this is a real thing, though it probably doesn't meet the criteria to become a new life stage.  And it's worth discussing and learning about so that we can understand ourselves and the world a little better.

Full post as published by Cursed With Ambition on August 18, 2010 (boomark / email).