Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood
Christian Smith, Kari Christoffersen, Hilary Davidson, and Patricia Snell Herzog
Abstract
Life for emerging adults is vastly different today than it was for their counterparts even a generation ago. Young people are waiting longer to marry, to have children, and to choose a career direction. As a result, they enjoy more freedom, opportunities, and personal growth than ever before. But the transition to adulthood is also more complex, disjointed, and confusing. This book draws on 230 in-depth interviews with a broad cross-section of emerging adults (ages between eighteen and twenty-three) to investigate the difficulties young people face today, the underlying causes of those difficu ... More
Life for emerging adults is vastly different today than it was for their counterparts even a generation ago. Young people are waiting longer to marry, to have children, and to choose a career direction. As a result, they enjoy more freedom, opportunities, and personal growth than ever before. But the transition to adulthood is also more complex, disjointed, and confusing. This book draws on 230 in-depth interviews with a broad cross-section of emerging adults (ages between eighteen and twenty-three) to investigate the difficulties young people face today, the underlying causes of those difficulties, and the consequences both for individuals and for American society as a whole. Rampant consumer capitalism, ongoing failures in education, hyper-individualism, postmodernist moral relativism, and other aspects of American culture are all contributing to the chaotic terrain that emerging adults must cross. The book identifies five major problems facing very many young people today: confused moral reasoning, routine intoxication, materialistic life goals, regrettable sexual experiences, and disengagement from civic and political life. The trouble does not lie only with the emerging adults or their poor individual decisions but has much deeper roots in mainstream American culture—a culture which emerging adults have largely inherited rather than created. Older adults, the book argues, must recognize that much of the responsibility for the pain and confusion young people face lies with them. Rejecting both sky-is-falling alarmism on the one hand and complacent disregard on the other, the book suggests the need for what it calls “realistic concern”—and a reconsideration of our cultural priorities and practices—that will help emerging adults more skillfully engage unique challenges they face.
Keywords:
emerging adults,
personal growth,
American society,
consumer capitalism,
hyper-individualism,
postmodernist moral relativism,
moral reasoning,
intoxication,
materialistic life goals,
sexual experiences
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2011 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199828029 |
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2012 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199828029.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Christian Smith, author
Notre Dame
Kari Christoffersen, author
University of Notre Dame
Hilary Davidson, author
University of Notre Dame
Patricia Snell Herzog, author
University of Notre Dame
More
Less