Emerging Adulthood - Emerging Adulthood and Culture

Emerging Adulthood and Culture

Demographers distinguish between developing countries, which constitute more than 80% of the world's population, and the economically advanced, industrialized nations that form the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). This includes countries like the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, and Australia, all of which have significantly higher median incomes and educational attainment and significantly lower rates of illness, disease, and early death.

The theory of emerging adulthood is specifically applicable to cultures within these OECD nations, and as a stage of development has only emerged over the past half century. It is specific to "certain cultural-demographic conditions, specifically widespread education and training beyond secondary school and entry into marriage and parenthood in the late twenties or beyond". Furthermore, emerging adulthood occurs only within societies that allow for occupational shifts, with emerging adults often experiencing frequent job changes before settling on particular job by the age of 30. Such marital and occupational instability found among emerging adults can be attributed to the strong sense of individualization found in cultures that allow for this stage of development; in individualized cultures, traditional familial and institutional constraints have become less pronounced than in previous times or in unindustrialized/developing cultures, allowing for more personal freedom in life decisions. However, emerging adulthood even occurs in industrialized nations that do not value individualization, as is the case in some Asian countries discussed below.

Up until the latter portion of the 20th century in OECD countries, and contemporarily in developing countries around the word, young people made the transition from adolescence to young adulthood around or by the age of 22, when they settled into long-lasting, obligation-filled familial and occupational roles. Therefore, in societies where this trend still prevails, emerging adulthood does not exist as a widespread stage of development.

Among OECD countries, there is a general "one size fits all" model in regards to emerging adulthood, having all undergone the same demographic changes that resulted in this new stage of development between adolescence and young adulthood. However, the shape emerging adulthood takes can even vary between different OECD countries, and researchers have only recently begun exploring such cross-national differences. For instance, researchers have determined that Europe is the area where emerging adulthood lasts the longest, with high levels of government assistance and median marriage ages nearing 30, compared to the U.S. where the median marriage age is 27.

Emerging adult communities in East Asia may be most dissimilar from their European and American counterparts, for while they share the benefits of affluent societies with strong education and welfare systems, they do not share as strong a sense of individualization. Historically and currently, East Asian cultures have emphasized collectivism more so than those in the West. For instance, while Asian emerging adults similarly engage in individualistic identity exploration and personal development, they do so within more constrictive boundaries set by familial obligation. For example, European and American emerging adults consistently list financial independence as a key marker of adulthood, while Asian emerging adults consistently list capable of supporting parents financially as a marker with equal weight. Furthermore, while casual dating and premarital sex has become normative in the West, in Asia parents still discourage such practices, where they remain "rare and forbidden". In fact, about 75% of emerging adults in the U.S. and Europe report having had premarital sexual relations by the age of 20, whereas less than 20% in Japan and South Korea reported the same.

While emerging adulthood exemplars are found mainly within the middle and upper classes of OECD countries, the stage of development still seems to occur across classes, with the main difference between different ones being length—on average, young people in lower social classes tend to enter adulthood two years before those in upper classes.

While emerging adulthood occurs on a wide scale only in OECD countries, developing countries may also exhibit similar phenomena in certain population subgroups. In contrast to those in poor or rural parts of developing nations, who have no emerging adulthood and sometimes no adolescence due to comparatively early entry into marriage and adult-like work, young people in wealthier urban classes have begun to enter stages of development that resemble emerging adulthood, and the amount to do so is rising. Such individuals may develop a bicultural or hybrid identity, with part of themselves identifying with local culture and another part participating in the professional culture of the global economy. One finds examples of such a situation among the middle class young people in India, who lead the globalized economic sector while still, for the most part, preferring to have arranged marriages and taking care of their parents in old age.