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Part I
Introduction and conceptual foundations![]()
1
The Experience of Being an Emerging Adult in Europe
Rita Žukauskienė
Emerging adulthood as a distinct period of life
In Western societies, conceptualizations of adolescence, youth, and adulthood are closely related to the age periods of school education, higher education, and stable employment. Adolescence is usually defined as a period of biological, cognitive, and social transitions between childhood and adulthood (Santrock, 1993). This transition is accompanied by multiple physical, biological, cognitive, emotional, intellectual, personality-related, and social developmental changes. Globalization and other socioeconomic worldwide changes call for new social resources and competencies that adolescents will need to function effectively as adults (Larson, Wilson, Brown, Furstenberg, & Verma, 2002). In most societies, the individual is expected to contribute to society by fulfilling adult roles after a certain period of “adolescence” or “youth.” Adolescents moving into adulthood are expected to assume the major roles played by mature members of the social group (Schwartz, Donnellan, Ravert, Luyckx, & Zamboanga, 2013). However, there is an ongoing debate on the universality of young adulthood as a distinct period of life. Schlegel and Barry (1991, p. 198) reviewed cross-cultural evidence on adolescence as a universal life stage and confirmed the view of “adolescence as a social stage in all human societies.” However, the authors also stated that a following “youth” period between adolescence and adulthood existed only in 20% of the cultures they studied.
The transition from adolescence to adulthood and the attainment of adult status have been conceptualized by a number of measurable markers, such as the age of marriage and the age of having the first child. Other markers included the age of leaving the parental home, making decisions on future profession, and stable occupation (Cook & Furstenberg, 2002). A few decades ago, the transition from adolescence to adulthood was rather uniform and linear, e.g., only a few sets of options were available after high school graduation. Young people could choose to continue education at a college or university, to enter the job market, or to join the military service. Usually, young people used to get married and have children in their early twenties (Zarrett & Eccles, 2006). In recent decades, industrialized countries have experienced major changes in terms of the transitions from university to work, labor-market opportunities, and transition strategies (Arnett, 2000; Bynner, 2005). Recent socioeconomic processes in industrialized countries have essentially changed the well-defined and clear pathways from adolescence to adulthood. Many important social role changes, such as changing one’s social status from that of a student to an employee, from living with parents to independent living, from being single to marriage or partnership, are no longer easily comprehensible and linear (Holdsworth & Morgan, 2005). The transition period from adolescence to adulthood is now significantly prolonged and the number of lifestyle alternatives that young people have is greater. A great degree of variability and lack of consistency in the pathways from adolescence to adulthood, characteristic of the beginning of the twenty-first century, resulted in the notion that experiences of individuals during this transitional period are significantly different from the experiences of prior generations (Arnett, 2000). Instead of following a single, uniform passage, young people now take many different routes; while some move slower, others follow a more traditional pathway marked by fast transitions (Jones, 1995). Overall, the pathways to adult life have become de-standardized, more flexible, heterogeneous, and differentiated. The transition to adulthood now is a complex process that involves multiple role transitions and distinctive steps, such as finishing formal education, acquiring professional qualifications, getting a permanent job, establishing one’s own household, and starting a family. Three top criteria for the transition to adulthood identified in a number of studies were accepting responsibility for oneself, deciding on one’s beliefs and values, and becoming financially independent (Arnett, 1998, 2000; Petrogiannis, 2011). However, this transition differs in different contexts, and differences are visible not only in comparison between the US and European countries, but also within Europe itself.
Arnett (2000) claims that it no longer makes sense to group 18- to 29-year-olds with young adults, because many emerging adults have not yet accepted established adult roles, e.g., they are “not married, do not have children, and have not yet settled into stable full-time work” (Tanner, Arnett, & Leis, 2009, p. 36). At the same time, those young people are no longer adolescents, because their puberty is over, and, unlike adolescents, they have already graduated from secondary school, and most of them no longer live in their parents’ household (Tanner et al., 2009).
Therefore, Jeffrey J. Arnett suggested a new life stage during which 18- to 29-year-olds negotiate their transitions to adulthood. Arnett (2000) proposed to consider this time of life a distinctive period, which he himself called “emerging adulthood.” Emerging adulthood is defined as “a period of development bridging adolescence and young adulthood, during which young people are no longer adolescents but have not yet attained full adult status” (Arnett, 2004, p. 312). Young people now stay in school longer, marry later, and have their first child later than they did in the past (Cherlin, Scabini, & Rossi, 1997; Coles, 2000; Helve, 2000). Studies conducted both in the US and in European countries show that the process of getting a steady full-time job is now often prolonged, and has been pushed back from early to late twenties or even into early thirties (Le Blanc & Wolff, 2006; Quintini, Martin, & Martin, 2007). According to Wyn and Woodman (2007), the ways in which young people approach and live their lives have changed dramatically. These changes reflect how emerging adults make sense of their daily life experiences and their new ways of being and acting, and underlie the different pathways of the transition from adolescence to adulthood (Parada & Young, 2013).
The period of emerging adulthood shares some distinctive features of both adolescence and adulthood. Demographically, emerging adults are defined by new behavioral norms, where instability in employment, residence, and romantic relationships is considered age-normative. Subjectively, young people between the ages of 18 and 19 do not define themselves as adults, as proven by Arnett’s survey studies in the US (Arnett, 1990). Arnett’s findings revealed that at the age of 18–20 the majority of youths do not feel entirely adult. Such feeling “in-between” is very typical of emerging adults. Psychologically, this is the age of identity exploration, self-focus, and great possibilities. As stated by Arnett, “emerging adults often explore a variety of possible life directions in love, work, and worldviews” (Arnett, 2000, p. 469).
However, there are some limitations to the extent to which the concept of “emerging adulthood” can be extended to other cultures. This period of the life course exists only in industrialized societies that allow young people to postpone the entry into adult roles and responsibilities until well past the late teens (Arnett, 2001, 2004, 2015). This period exists “only under certain conditions that have occurred only quite recently and only in some cultures” (Arnett, 2004, p. 21). For example, in the middle of the twentieth century, most young people in the US entered young adulthood by their early twenties. Only a small percentage of people continued in higher education, and most young men became employed by the end of their teens, if not sooner (Arnett & Taber, 1994). Most young people (both men and women) used to live with their parents until they got married at a rather young age (18–20 years old), and the entry to parenthood came about a year later, on average (Arnett & Taber, 1994). However, during the past half-century, the transition to adulthood has become increasingly prolonged as a result of economic and cultural changes (Arnett, 1998). For example, in the US the median age at first marriage and the median age of entering parenthood have steeply risen in relation to higher accessibility of higher education (Tanner et al., 2009).
Features of emerging adulthood in Europe
Up to recent decades, research examining individuals’ distinctive life patterns during their transition into adulthood was mostly conducted in the US (Arnett, 2000, 2001, 2015). Despite the caution that emerging adulthood may not be a universal period of human development but a period that exists only in some cultures, recently conducted research in European countries provides substantial evidence that many of the features of emerging adulthood, as conceptualized by Arnett (2000, 2004, 2011), can also be observed among youth in Europe. Following Arnett’s proposal, many studies have demonstrated that young people in Europe experience a similar period of life, e.g., in Finland (Fadjukoff, Kokko, & Pulkkinen, 2007), Greece (Petrogiannis, 2011), Italy (Lanz & Tagliabue, 2007), the Netherlands (Hill, Lalji, van Rossum, van der Geest, & Blokland, 2015; Piumatti, Giannotta, Roggero, & Rabaglietti, 2013), and Austria (Sirsch, Dreher, Mayr, & Willinger, 2009). Some work has already been done to examine emerging adulthood in Eastern European countries, such as Romania (Nelson, 2009), Lithuania (Vosylis, Raižienė, & Žukauskienė, 2014), Estonia (Nugin, 2010), and the Czech Republic (Macek, Bejcek, & Vanícková, 2007), that have undergone the transition from communism to free-market economy.
Previous studies conducted in European countries report some degree of variation due to differences in cultural background and traditions, but also due to recent changes in the region. European integration processes after the demise of the Soviet bloc and the consequences of economic and cultural globalization (du Bois-Reymond & Chisholm, 2006) as well as the latest economic recession have all contributed to this diversity. Within the European cultural context, between and even within the countries, regional distinctiveness is still evident (Petrogiannis, 2011). Differences in institutional, social, and economic policies in European countries lead to heterogeneity in the pathways of transition to adulthood (Billari, 2004; Buhl & Lanz, 2007; Douglass, 2007). For example, in southern Europe young people leave their parental home late, whereas in northern Europe young people do so at an earlier age (Robette, 2010). “These differences in pathways reflect social, cultural and institutional differences among societies, for instance, between the Mediterranean familialistic model and the Nordic public welfare model, leading to quite different forms of autonomy attainment” (Robette, 2010, p. 2).
Patterns of leaving home
Many researchers agree that leaving home is a key component of the transition to adulthood right across Europe. However, there are large cross-national differences in terms of the age at parental home-leaving with a strong regional component. According to Iacovou (2002), it is possible to distinguish different groups of European countries in relation to specific family processes (Regalia, Lanz, Tagliabue, & Manzi, 2011).
The first group is the “northern cluster” characterized by “children leaving home early and by several transitions until they marry and become parents” (Manzi, Regalia, Peucchi, & Fincham, 2012, p. 292). In many European countries, such as Scandinavian countries (Kins, De Mol, & Beyers, 2014), the Netherlands (Hill et al., 2015), and the UK, young people tend to leave their parental homes between 20 and 25 years of age (Eurostat, 2009). Leaving the parental home (physical separation from the family of origin) has a particular symbolic meaning and is a rite of passage to individualization (Van de Velde, 2002). Billari and Liefbroer (2007), referring to a Dutch sample, state that beliefs and parental norms play a decisive role in determining the time at which young adults leave home. Emerging adults experiment with different living conditions (living alone, with a partner, or with friends) between leaving the parental home and starting his or her family (Scabini, 2000). “Of all Europeans, young people in Nordic countries leave home the earliest, with half living outside the parental home from the age of 20 in Finland and Denmark” (Kins et al., 2014, p. 3). For example, in Denmark about 50% of all young women leave home by the age of 20, and about 50% of all young men by the age 21 (Iacovou, 2011). In other countries of North-Western Europe, such as the Netherlands, France, and the UK, half of all young women no longer live with their parents by age 22 (Iacovou, 2011). In Germany, young men leave the parental home at the age of 26 and young women at the age 21 (Weick, 2002). Young Germans also undergo a long interim period between moving out of their parental home and starting a family (Buhl, 2007).
The second group is the “southern cluster,” which includes Mediterranean countries plus Portugal and Spain, which are characterized by strong family ties, a more family-based sense of solidarity, and prolonged co-residence with parents which ends primarily only on the marriage of the emerging adult (Scabini, 2000). In the Mediterranean countries, the prevailing cultural model is one of autonomy as identity individuation within the family of origin (Regalia et al., 2011, p. 143). Emerging adults are not encouraged by their families towards economic and residential independence (Manzi et al., 2012). Due to the cultural tradition of strong reliance on, and valuing of, the family as a source of support, it is not uncommon to find children into their 30s living with their parents in Southern Europe (...
