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Although the rise of emerging adulthood is partly a consequence of the rising ages of marriage and parenthood, marriage ages were also relatively high early in the 20th century and throughout the 19th century.11 What is different now is that young people are freer than they were in the past to use the intervening years, between the end C Ch-08.indd 331 7/8/2008 12:34:31 PM h - 8 . i n d d 3 3 1 7 / 8 / 2 8 1 2 : 3 4 : 3 1 P M 332 Part III " Parents and Children of secondary school and entry into marriage and parenthood, to explore a wide range of different possible future paths. Young people of the past were constricted in a variety of ways, from gender roles to economics, which prevented them from using their late teens and twenties for exploration. In contrast, today s emerging adults have unprecedented freedom. Not all of them have an equal portion of it, to be certain. Some live in conditions of deprivation that make any chance of exploring life options severely limited, at best. However, as a group, they have more freedom for exploration than young people in times past. Their society grants them a long moratorium in their late teens and twenties with- out expecting them to take on adult responsibilities as soon as they are able to do so. In- stead, they are allowed to move into adult responsibilities gradually, at their own pace. WHAT IS EMERGING ADULTHOOD? What are the distinguishing features of emerging adulthood? What makes it distinct from the adolescence that precedes it and the young adulthood that follows it? . . . [ I]n this [reading] I want to present an outline of what emerging adulthood is, in its essential qualities. There are five main features:12 1. It is the age of identity explorations, of trying out various possibilities, especially in love and work. 2. It is the age of instability. 3. It is the most self-focused age of life. 4. It is the age of feeling in-between, in transition, neither adolescent nor adult. 5. It is the age of possibilities, when hopes flourish, when people have an unparalleled opportunity to transform their lives. Let s look at each of these features in turn. The Age of Identity Explorations Perhaps the most central feature of emerging adulthood is that it is the time when young people explore possibilities for their lives in a variety of areas, especially love and work. In the course of exploring possibilities in love and work, emerging adults clarify their identities, that is, they learn more about who they are and what they want out of life. Emerging adulthood offers the best opportunity for such self exploration. Emerging adults have become more independent of their parents than they were as adolescents and most of them have left home, but they have not yet entered the stable, enduring com- mitments typical of adult life, such as a long-term job, marriage, and parenthood. During this interval of years, when they are neither beholden to their parents nor committed to a web of adult roles, they have an exceptional opportunity to try out different ways of living and different options for love and work. Of course, it is adolescence rather than emerging adulthood that has typically been associated with identity formation. A half century ago Erik Erikson13 designated identity C Ch-08.indd 332 7/8/2008 12:34:31 PM h - 8 . i n d d 3 3 2 7 / 8 / 2 8 1 2 : 3 4 : 3 1 P M Chapter 8 " Childhood and Youth 333 versus role confusion as the central crisis of the adolescent stage of life, and in the decades since he articulated this idea, the focus of research on identity has been on adolescence. However, Erikson also commented on the prolonged adolescence typical of industrial- ized societies and the psychosocial moratorium granted to young people in such societies, during which the young adult through free role experimentation may find a niche in some section of his society. 14 Decades later, this applies to many more young people than when he wrote it.15 If adolescence is the period from age 10 to 18 and emerging adulthood is the period from (roughly) age 18 to the mid-twenties, most identity explo- ration takes place in emerging adulthood rather than adolescence. Although research on identity formation has focused mainly on adolescence, this research has shown that identity achievement has rarely been reached by the end of high school and that identity development continues through the late teens and the twenties.16 In both love and work, the process of identity formation begins in adolescence but intensifies in emerging adulthood. With regard to love, adolescent love tends to be ten- tative and transient.17 The implicit question is Who would I enjoy being with, here and now? In contrast, explorations in love in emerging adulthood tend to involve a deeper level of intimacy, and the implicit question is more identity-focused: What kind of person am I, and what kind of person would suit me best as a partner through life? By becoming involved with different people, emerging adults learn about the qualities that are most important to them in another person, both the qualities that attract them and the qualities they find distasteful and annoying. They also see how they are evaluated by others who come to know them well. They learn what others find attractive in them and perhaps what others find distasteful and annoying! In work, too, there is a similar contrast between the transient and tentative explora- tions of adolescence and the more serious and identity-focused explorations of emerging adulthood. Most American adolescents have a part-time job at some point during high school,18 but most of their jobs last for only a few months at most. They tend to work in service jobs restaurants, retail stores, and so on unrelated to the work they expect to be doing in adulthood, and they tend to view their jobs not as occupational preparation but as a way to obtain the money that will support an active leisure life CDs, concert tickets, restaurant meals, clothes, cars, travel, and so on.19 In emerging adulthood, work experiences become more focused on laying the groundwork for an adult occupation. In exploring various work possibilities and in ex- ploring the educational possibilities that will prepare them for work, emerging adults explore identity issues as well: What kind of work am I good at? What kind of work would I find satisfying for the long term? What are my chances of getting a job in the field that seems to suit me best? As they try out different jobs or college majors, emerging adults learn more about themselves. They learn more about their abilities and interests. Just as important, they learn what kinds of work they are not good at or do not want to do. In work as in love, explorations in emerging adulthood commonly include the experience of failure or disappointment. But as in love, the failures and disappointments in work can be illuminating for self-understanding. Although emerging adults become more focused and serious about their directions [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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