OLDER AND OLDER YOUNG PEOPLE: Book review from Frank Furstenburg

...A half-century later, the social script for growing up has again been radically altered, and no one thinks that the young are taking on responsibilities too early in life. Today, it is nearly universally accepted that one cannot attain a middle-class life without at least a college degree and some years of experimentation in the labor force. Marriage, if it occurs, comes later than ever before in our nation's history. Well-educated people awkwardly postpone childbearing to their late twenties or early thirties (if not later); the less educated embark on it earlier and often outside of marriage.

Jeffrey Jensen Arnett is one of a growing legion of social scientists, and one of the few psychologists, examining this new pattern of coming-of-age in American society. His slender and engaging book, "Emerging Adulthood," reworks and integrates some of his professional writings. Some of his ideas about this developmental stage are informative and insightful, but many professionals and policymakers will find the volume singularly focused on middle-class youth and detached from the changing social and economic context that has rearranged the social timetable. ...

Drawing on the work of Erik Erikson and other theorists, Arnett defines emerging adulthood as a time of instability, self-focus, exploration and perceived possibility. This process generally takes place from the late teens to the mid-twenties. According to both Arnett and the participants in his studies, emerging adulthood concludes by age 30. This assumption is neither demonstrated nor especially convincing, since many of the events that shape development -- schooling, renegotiation with parents, intimate relationships and partnership, childbearing and childrearing -- are often not concluded by the late twenties. ...

My biggest disappointment with the book is the omission of those young adults who have been marginalized by the mainstream institutions of school, work and even family. ...

...At a time when cutbacks are being made on a daily basis in public assistance for education, housing, childcare and health, it appears that parents are being called upon to assume a growing share of economic, social and psychological support for their young adult children. It is just possible that this go-it-alone approach may drive families out of the business of having children altogether.

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posted by Eve at 11:49 PM VOTE

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