Case sociologist finds becoming an adult takes longer these
days
Settersten’s new book titled On the Frontier
of Adulthood: Theory, Research and Public Policy
February 24, 2005 | For more information: Susan
Griffith (216)-368-1004
 It takes longer to become an adult these days, and the passage to adulthood
is more ambiguous and complicated than in the past, according to a Case
Western Reserve University sociologist and researchers from the Network
on Transitions to Adulthood and Public Policy funded by the John D.
and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
“Although pinpointing the onset of adulthood is not easy, it’s
most certainly not the magic legal ages of 18 or
21,” according
to Richard Settersten Jr., chair of Case’s department of sociology,
co-director of the university’s Schubert Center
for Child Develoment and co-editor of the new book, On the Frontier
of Adulthood: Theory, Research and Public Policy (University of
Chicago Press, 2005). Settersten, with Frank
Furstenberg Jr. of the University of Pennsylvania
and Rubén
Rumbaut from the University of California, Irvine,
explore this new and often misunderstood period
of life.
Caught between adolescence and adulthood, Settersten and his colleagues
say young people are navigating a new life phase. And to reach adulthood,
they need greater help getting there from their families or other support
systems.
“Adulthood no longer begins when adolescence ends,” Settersten
said, especially where the “big five” traditional markers
of adulthood are concerned—leaving home, finishing school, starting
a job, getting married and having children. In
prior generations, these transitions were completed
by the mid-20s.
Today, this set of transitions is often not completed until well into
the early or late 30s for many people. And what we might think about
as a neat “three-box model” of life—with education
up front, work in the middle and retirement or leisure at the end—is
crumbling.
This model of life, the study indicates, underlies the organization
of many social institutions and policies, despite the fact that these
old scripts of life no longer match the realities of the world today
or how the lives of current generations of young people will unfold.
In some ways, the road to adulthood now more closely resembles that
of agricultural times than it does the last few
decades, where at the turn of the last century, it took young people
a long time to reach self-sufficiency while working on family farms.
Now other social institutions, especially educational
ones, have replaced the farm in allowing youth
to cultivate the skills needed to be self-sufficient.
The four-year college, in particular, serves to “bridge” adolescence
and adulthood by providing shelter, planned activities,
health care, adult and peer support, and entertainment.
For young people who do not attend residential colleges, other institutions
may serve as important bridges—community colleges, the military,
national service and work organizations. But these settings, Settersten
and his colleagues say, need to be “re-architected to provide
stronger scaffolding for vulnerable groups of young people who do not
have strong family supports in place.” The Network is now conducting
several large-scale demonstration projects to explore how this can be
done.
Transitioning to Adulthood
According to Settersten, one of the new hallmarks of successful movement
through early adulthood may be interdependence
rather than independence.
“A brand new challenge to understanding this period is how individuals
develop a sense of autonomy amidst increasingly
long periods of dependence on others, without strong
or clear scripts to guide them, and when the institutions through which
they move are based on models of early adulthood that no longer reflect
the realities of the modern world,” he said.
Because this is a period of “sink or swim” for American kids, those who
manage to swim often do so only because they receive a great deal of
family support or have other informal safety nets to prop them up as
they make their way.
“These circumstances put young people in a position where they
now are more attached to their parents than ever
before,” Settersten
noted.
The book’s contributors find that sizable costs associated with
childrearing now occur between 18 and 34, in both money and time, and
that these percentages have increased dramatically in the last 30 years.
“When middle-class families are making such tremendous levels
of investments in their children through their 30s, we must especially
ask about the fate of young people who come from struggling or fragmented
families that simply cannot assist their children in these ways,” Settersten
says. “Worse still, we must ask about the fate of young people
who have been in the foster care, special education or juvenile justice
systems and are abruptly cut off from state support when they hit ‘eligibility
cliffs’ of 18 or 21. These groups are completely on their own
without any safely nets whatsoever.”
On the Frontier of Adulthood is the result of more than four years
of collaborative research. Instead of asking the question, “What
is wrong with young people today?” which so often seems to underlie
media portrayals, Settersten says that he and his colleagues have instead
been trying to understand “How have changing social and economic
conditions combined to create a new life period, what new capacities
and skills do young people now need to navigate this period successfully
and how do institutions and policies need to be revamped to smooth entry
into and through adult life?”
Contrary to popular perceptions, Settersten and his colleagues do not
find that young people are unwilling to take on adult roles. “If
anything,” he says, “the opposite may be occurring, as young
people now seem very aware of how difficult it is to become ‘independent’ or ‘autonomous’ against
current economic and social conditions, and they seem hesitant to make
commitments they cannot honor or that they think may fail.”
For further information on the activities of the John D. and Catherine
T. MacArthur Research Network on Transitions to
Adulthood and Public Policy, see
http://www.pop.upenn.edu/transad/.
About Case Western Reserve University
Case is among the nation's leading research institutions. Founded in 1826
and shaped by the unique merger of the Case Institute of Technology and Western
Reserve University, Case is distinguished by its strengths in education, research,
service, and experiential learning. Located in Cleveland, Case offers nationally
recognized programs in the Arts and Sciences, Dental Medicine, Engineering,
Law, Management, Medicine, Nursing, and Social Work. http://www.case.edu.
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