A Longer Road to Adulthood

Abstract

Abstract This chapter introduces the concept of emerging adulthood as a new stage of the life span between adolescence and young adulthood, lasting from the late teens through the twenties. The historical origins of emerging adulthood are explored, focusing on Four Revolutions in the 1960s and 1970s that laid the foundation for the world as we know it today, including the new life stage of emerging adulthood: the Technology Revolution, the Sexual Revolution, the Women’s Movement, and the Youth Movement. Emerging adulthood is described in terms of five distinctive features: identity explorations, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between, and possibilities/optimism. Reasons are presented for why previous terms for the years 18–29 are inadequate (e.g., “late adolescence,” “youth”). Then the cultural context of emerging adulthood is described, with an emphasis on how it exists across developed countries but is not common in developing countries except among the small but growing urban middle class.

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