The Emerging Adulthood
Traditionally becoming an adult means to have reached the five milestones of completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. Robin Henig’s “What is it about 20-Somethings?” and Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s “The Coddling of the American Mind” both discuss this transition to adulthood in the western society and how it has been delayed. This gap between adolescence and adulthood can be referred to as the emerging adulthood stage. The emerging adulthood is a real life stage and this is when people are finding their identity, stability, self-focus, possibilities and when they experience the “in between” feeling. Statistics support that the emerging adulthood is a new life stage between adolescence and …show more content…
Parents are one element that cause this and this is because they are taking longer to let their children go. This ties with the age of self-focus where you are learning to be freed from parents’ orders and decide what you want to do, where you want to go and who you want to be with. Henig points out, “The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were young, was 21 for women and 23 for men; by 2009 it had climbed to 26 for women and 28 for men, five years in a little more than a generation” (Henig). This self-focus stage has moved marriage and having children later in life after this emerging adulthood stage. Parents also effect the “in between” feeling that emerging adults experience because they continue to help their children and their children are still dependent on them. Like many of my peers as a college student with a minimum wage paying job, I continue to rely on my parent’s financial support and still live with them. People do not completely feel like an adult because of things like living in their parents’ house as well as receiving financial help from their
Traditionally becoming an adult means to have reached the five milestones of completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child. Robin Henig’s “What is it about 20-Somethings?” and Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s “The Coddling of the American Mind” both discuss this transition to adulthood in the western society and how it has been delayed. This gap between adolescence and adulthood can be referred to as the emerging adulthood stage. The emerging adulthood is a real life stage and this is when people are finding their identity, stability, self-focus, possibilities and when they experience the “in between” feeling. Statistics support that the emerging adulthood is a new life stage between adolescence and …show more content…
Parents are one element that cause this and this is because they are taking longer to let their children go. This ties with the age of self-focus where you are learning to be freed from parents’ orders and decide what you want to do, where you want to go and who you want to be with. Henig points out, “The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were young, was 21 for women and 23 for men; by 2009 it had climbed to 26 for women and 28 for men, five years in a little more than a generation” (Henig). This self-focus stage has moved marriage and having children later in life after this emerging adulthood stage. Parents also effect the “in between” feeling that emerging adults experience because they continue to help their children and their children are still dependent on them. Like many of my peers as a college student with a minimum wage paying job, I continue to rely on my parent’s financial support and still live with them. People do not completely feel like an adult because of things like living in their parents’ house as well as receiving financial help from their