In my own life I have seen patterns of behavior consistent with the idea of a state like emerging adulthood. Some people are not convinced that emerging adulthood is truly a life stage. On all sides of the stage hypothesis debate, there is an awareness that if this is truly determined to be a life stage then certain reforms will have to be made.
I feel that I grew up with a lack of training for handling the adult world, which has affected my actions and attitudes toward adult life. I thought being an adult would be simple and I would excel due to natural talent. However, upon entering into the real world I learned through trial and error that I was not nearly prepared for the responsibilities and expectations of adult life. There were many things to learn about adulthood which had eluded me.
Fortunately I have had the opportunity to meander, make different decisions, and mistakes. These allowed me to fail, learn, try something different and find my niche. Without objective guidance, I have had no idea where to begin. So surrounded by possibilities I just made decisions to try whatever came along and seemed like fun. This approach often led to failed pursuits. From each failure, I began narrowing down possibilities one by one. Using experiences to narrow down possibilities led to valuable learning about myself. The pursuit of so many seemingly unrelated pursuits also created the sense and appearance of meandering and never following through with things.
Not only did I have no idea about how to find a path on which I could be successful, but I also had no idea of how to manage the nuts and bolts of day to day responsibilities. Being suddenly confronted with tasks at which I had no experience, and for which I had no guidance, I quickly became overwhelmed. I failed or just plain quit many things. I felt incapable and out of place due to the failures and frustration, which was a difficult feeling to shake. The experiences of failure, which led to recognizing my own ignorance allowed me to learn valuable skills and transferable abilities that have since aided me in making progress toward adulthood. However, I still experience the residual effects of anxiety over what should be commonplace things, like keeping a schedule, filling out tax forms, and confronting the bills that arrive in the mail.
I wonder how many of these same things my parents must have experienced? To have raised me but not prepared me with essential skills for daily life or self-knowledge enough to even have a direction to begin with they may have been lost in those areas themselves. The unfortunate conclusion about this I am inclined to draw is that upon entering the adult world themselves, the previous generation may have been thrust into deeper responsibilities than those I have had to contend with. Not having the opportunity to experience an emerging adulthood free of major responsibilities, they may have been forced to deal with adult life in a state that was less than full self actualization. With challenges such as holding down a job in a structured environment that may have left them feeling dissatisfied, but needing to stay in the job to maintain a financially stable household and provide for a family, that generation may not have acquired the self-knowledge needed to see the guidance that their children, floundering through emerging adulthood, would need to be successful. Then again, how much good advice have we all turned a deaf ear toward? I seem to have seen my parents specifically, reach more fully actualized states in their older years. Perhaps that is one argument for emerging adulthood as a true developmental stage. If one does not complete that stage at the appropriate time in life, then that person may struggle to obtain the skills related to that stage for the rest of their life.
There is no way to change the past, no way to know if things would have been different for our parents or for us had they the opportunity to experience an emerging adulthood like many people in the 18-30 age range experience today. This uncertainty about the outcome of a different approach to the emerging adult life stage may be partially responsible for the lack of a common agreement on whether or not this is truly a life stage. I believe that there is not enough evidence yet to completely discount either the idea that it is a separate life stage, or the idea that handling emerging adulthood differently will produce different outcomes in adulthood. As with the time before adolescence was recognized, children in that stage were treated as adults or as children. There was not a recognized adolescent transition phase. Without appropriate safeguards to adolescent development in place, nobody could have known that taking a different course would bring about different effects. Additionally, until research had been conducted and enough evidence gathered to demonstrate definitively that adolescence was a different stage of development there could not have been an acceptance of the stage. Nor could there have been any agreement on what adolescents required for full healthy development. Since the research has become clear and the stage accepted reform has occurred consistent with helping adolescents mature in the healthiest way that may be enabled.
I feel that the stage at which research on emerging adulthood stands, there are only indicators of it as a different life stage. There isn't enough hard evidence yet to definitively declare it different, but the research is incomplete. According to Henig's article, in studies of brain and nervous system development the longest running studies went until the subjects were 25 years of age. In these studies, the growth curve for white matter development in the brain seems to suggest continued growth into at least the late 20's, but that is the best logical supposition anyone can make based on this incomplete data. I feel more research will need to be done with older subjects and carefully examined before this can be definitivly labeled a life stage.
Outside of the academic and scientific communities however, people still have choices. I believe it may be valuable not only to individuals, but to the researchers working on this project and possibly even to society as a whole to test variations on the idea of support systems for people in this age range.
Having an additional support network could be of great help to individuals learning to navigate the adult world. These programs should experimentally range in level of structure and involvment, from highly ordered and rigid, to relaxed and informal. The focus of these programs should also be taken into account, varying from fully rounded training to helping people in this stage work through their confusion and the problems they face. These foci could also go as far as career potential identification or into the realm of service culture. These differing parameters can act as independent variables for the researchers studying the nature of emerging adulthood, and the effects of different support approaches. Checking the different approaches against different personality types could help determine if there is a general good fit, or if programs should be tailored to fit an individual's developmental needs.
The overarching goals of the programs should be to produce more healthy, self-actualized people ready to take on their roles in the adult world. Some possible approaches to this could be integrated into the college setting, or a mentorship program based on tribal ideas of elder roles. In the proposed systems, elder mentor figures could be in place to support emerging adults, while the emerging adults are in a mentoring position to adolescents. A structure like this could enhance the sense of empowerment, and community, and teach a number of valuable ideas to multiple groups simultaneously. Having a mentor at this stage in life could assist emerging adults in finding answers to the questions about how to manage the responsibilities of adult life in a way that is personal, and effective for the individual. From expereinced older adults and possibly trained professionals, a lot of good could come from showing willing emerging adults how to be responsible and understand their world.
Some specific skills that I believe should be addressed in any program like the ones proposed here are the skills required to navigate and manage the complex world of personal finance. Also, communicating effectively is an important skill many colleges integrate into the core cirriculum, but many people choose not to go to college. Programs outside of a college setting could integrate these skills also, even if the approach is less structured.
Understanding one's self should also be a priority of attending one of these programs. With the diversity in the population's ability range, it seems logical to me that people will have different strengths. Also, since there are so many career possibilities, if individual strengths are applied to the right vocation by voluntarily recognizing what one is able to do well, not only will the general sense of satisfaction be present for doing something well, but effective teams can be built which contributes to the success of the whole population.
Personal experience and critical consideration of this state have led me to believe that the benefits I have suggested as possible from a reform program to support emerging adults are clear. I believe reforming the expectations of and support available through emerging adulthood to be in the best interest of all. Whatever the research points to in terms of labeling a new life stage, I believe that self actualization and success are both important for reaching true adulthood. While an individual may reach the previously listed milestones without that support, having the chance to reach self-actualization because of this time of emerging adulthood may help reduce problems in the future. More satisfied people live healthier more productive lives. Healthier more productive lives are good for cutting costs and increasing profits. This situation is good for the economy. When these people have their own children they will be prepared to raise them in a healthy way and hand down the life lessons and skills those children will need to reach full development. If for some reason this passing down of knowledge does not happen in the home, there could be programs in place to assist the next generation just as they could this generation.
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| Image source: commons.wikimedia.org |
Henig, Robin Marantz. "What Is It About 20-Somethings?".
New York Times Magazine 18 Aug. 2010: 1-10.
www.nytimes.com. Web. 9 Feb. 2011
