Lewis Muehe

PSY 215

March 16, 2020

Emerging Adulthood

There are many ideas about what the stages of life are. One up-and-coming stage of life is

the idea of an emerging adulthood. This is the stage between adolescence and young adulthood

that encompasses those who are roughly 18-16. Emerging adulthood surrounds the ideas of

exploring identity, developing intimacy, and exploring a worldview. All of includes, and was

developed by, the economy, divorce rates, breakdown of the “traditional family”, education,

birth control, and globalization. While emerging adulthood is an idea that is still evolving from

recent history, few psychologists have tapped into what that means in the present day. The front

runner of what is the common day concept emerging adulthood is Jeffrey Arnett, who has written

books about what it means to be in this time of life.

Emerging adulthood, as theorized by Jeffrey Arnett, is the time between adolescence and

adulthood that consists of “identity explorations, instability, self-focus, feeling in-between

adolescence and adulthood, and a sense of broad possibilities for the future.” (Arnett) Emerging

adulthood is far different now that it was in the time of our parents. Before, people in this stage

of life would be already, or getting, married, settling down, and starting the “rest of their lives”.

Arnett says that this stage of life is “distinguished by relative independence from social roles and

from normative expectations” (Arnett, 2000). The type of exploration in this stage can be in the

way of physical exploration and/or identity exploration. Residential changes occurring during
emerging adulthood are greater due to physical exploration, since “these changes often take place

at the end of one period of exploration or the beginning of another (e.g., the end of a period of

cohabitation, entering or leaving college, or the beginning of a new job in a new place),” (Arnett,

2000). The three notable areas of identity exploration are love, worldviews, and work. (Arnett,

2000).

A major part of emerging adulthood is self-exploration in identity in love, worldviews,

and work. In a TEDx Talk by Jeffrey Arnett, he talks about how this generation of emerging

adults take much longer to grow up than the generations prior. The first part of this he relates to

the median marriage age and how, in the 1960’s, it was 20 for women and 23 for men, compared

to now, where it’s 27 for women and 29 in men. He attributes the change in emerging adulthood

to four revolutions from the 60’s and 70’s.

The first revolution he talks about is the technology revolution. He discusses that, due to

technological advancements that allow us to make things with machines, our economy has

shifted to a knowledge economy from a manufacturing economy. This means that more people in

the emerging adulthood phase are getting educations rather than just getting married. This leads

to “pushing everything else out” to focus on their education and finding a stable career before

starting a family (TEDx Talks, 2015).

Following this comes along the sexual revolution; with the invention of contraceptives

and the idea that sex was immoral meant that sexuality and reproduction were no longer

dependent on each other. Young people are having sex earlier than before, and the “link between

sexuality and marriage became broken,” as the marriage age went up (TEDx Talks, 2015). The

sexual revolution involves not only the idea of sexuality, but also sexual orientation. The

experiences of those in emerging adulthood that are not heterosexual are different from their
heterosexual counterparts. Looking to the past, this specific demographic of emerging adulthood

had less freedom in their self-exploration; however, we are now in a much more excepting social

climate. (Frost et al., 2015)

The third revolution was the Women’s Movement. One massive change of this revolution

was the number of women in higher education, going from more than twice as many men than

women to 58% women to 42% men (TEDx Talks, 2015). This has affected the way that women

see the outlook of their lives and they’re now less dependent on finding a spouse, and more

focused on using their 20s for themselves.

The final revolution was the Youth Movement. This can be summed up by saying that the

youth wanted to be young for longer than they did before. This is a culmination of the effects of

the previous three revolutions that resulted in emerging adulthood which, quite honestly, leads to

a more stable young adulthood than those who rushed into it. All of this comes with a pushback

from the older generations because they believe that they’re taking longer because there is

something wrong with them, or that they’re lazy. Jeffrey Arnett says that this is because it “takes

longer to prepare yourself for the knowledge economy than it did for a manufacturing economy,”

and that these emerging adults will likely make better choices, albeit a bit later in life, than

maybe they would’ve when they were 19, 20, or 21 (TEDx Talks, 2015).

Comparatively to Arnett, Dr. Zorotovich from Georgia Southern University says that,

while this idea of emerging adulthood applies to those who seek higher education, it isn’t entirely

accurate for those who do not. She conducted a study to challenge the universality of emerging

adulthood and to explore the degree to which education status and other demographic

characteristics predict endorsement of the emerging adulthood dimensions” (Zorotovich, 2019).

The participants were surveyed based on their agreement with theory of emerging adulthood.
 The participants were initially separated based on their age, gender, race, level of

education, their living situation, if they were married, if they had children, and what their

employment status was. Overall, she found that those who most agreed with the idea of emerging

adulthood were those who part of the younger group and were also neither married nor parents.

She also talks about how the older end of emerging adulthood were less likely to agree with the

idea. She discusses how different demographic factors effected the way that the participant

agreed with the ideas. Dr. Zorotovich mentions the inconsistency in what is deemed to be

emerging adulthood and references how Arnett says that it’s difficult to place an exact age range

due to the rate at which people start major life transitions. (Zorotovich, 2019)

The tasks of emerging adult hood are fairly simple, explore identity, develop intimacy,

and explore a worldview. This stage is called the “in-between” age because these are young

adults who are working between growing out of adolescence and working towards self-

responsibility. This is a time of instability as many people in this stage are beginning higher

education or starting to work full-time jobs to support themselves. These people tend to be more

optimistic about their future because they believe they’ll live “better than their parents did,”

(Munsey, 2006).

The challenges of emerging adulthood, as outlined by Psychology Today, are that

emerging adults are mental health issues that are greater than those before and after them, mood

disorders, anxiety, and high rates of substance abuse. Other challenges that emerging adults face

are instability and change. Since there is less pressure to settle down and get married, many

people in emerging adulthood will go through more jobs and romantic partners than those before

them. This can cause a great deal of stress for these people, thus relating back again to mental

health concerns. (Darling, PhD., 2018)

 The intended achievements of this developmental stage is really for these people to find

themselves and develop their own feelings and opinions of the world. For some, this could mean

educational achievements of acquiring a degree or simply attending school. For others this could

be career achievements or finding a life partner to enjoy their 20’s with.

Overall, emerging adulthood is a time in someone’s life where they are, without sounding

cheesy, meant to find themselves. This is such an important stage of life for young people to

discover what they want to do with their future, develop an understanding for the world around

them, and build relationships with themselves and others. Again, while this is still a fairly new

idea that doesn’t have a lot of contention, many people in the psychological community seem to

agree with this emerging stage of life. However, further ideas and studies, like the one from Dr.

Zorotovich, should be looked forward to and anticipated.

 Personal Reflection

I’m personally in this emerging adulthood stage of my life and, while everyone seems to

say that it’s the “in-between” time of feeling like you don’t quite fit, it’s given me a sense of

belonging. Since entering this stage of emerging adulthood, I felt as though I didn’t belong

because I was no longer an adolescent, but I wasn’t deemed by my peers or those older than me

as an adult. As someone who graduated high school and started college at 17, I felt like I wasn’t

quite ready to be considered an adult, but I was absolutely ready to not feel like an adolescent

anymore.

I’m now about halfway through my emerging adulthood and I see a lot of, not necessarily

differences but, half similarities. I definitely found my identity in my emerging adulthood, I have

shaped the way I see the world, and I have found love. I’m nearing the end of the start of my

educational experience (I have many years and several degrees to go), I’m cohabitating with my

long-term partner, and am just barely starting to prepare to settle down with our currently non-

traditional family of two adults and three cats. I think a lot of this is pretty on par with what I

researched throughout this paper.

I don’t think there are any parts that explicitly didn’t get covered that should’ve, but I

wish that there were more specifics about what it means to find your identity and the definition

of love and intimacy. Obviously this is still a relatively new concept of development that I’m

sure will continue to develop over time, but I would’ve liked to have more information about

certain aspects. I wanted to include a lot more research about sexual orientation, sexuality, race,

socioeconomic class, and gender that just simply wasn’t available.

 References

Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through

the twenties. American Psychologist, 55(5), 469–480. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-

066x.55.5.469

Arnett, J. J. (2015). Emerging adulthood : The winding road from the late teens through the

twenties (p. 5). Oxford University Press.

Arnett, J. J. (2020). Emerging adulthood. In R. Biswas-Diener & E. Diener (Eds), Noba textbook

series: Psychology. Champaign, IL: DEF publishers. Retrieved

from http://noba.to/3vtfyajs

Darling, PhD., N. (2018). Emerging Adulthood: The Twenty-Something Stage of Life.

Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/thinking-about-

kids/201803/emerging-adulthood-the-twenty-something-stage-life

Frost, D. M., Meyer, I. H., & Hammack, P. L. (2015). Health and well-being in emerging adults’

same-sex relationships: Critical questions and directions for research in developmental

science. Emerging Adulthood (Print), 3(1), 3–13.

https://doi.org/10.1177/2167696814535915

Morgan, E. M. (2013). Contemporary issues in sexual orientation and identity development in

emerging adulthood. Emerging Adulthood, 1(1), 52–66.

https://doi.org/10.1177/2167696812469187

Munsey, C. (2006, June). Emerging adults: The in-between age. Https://Www.Apa.Org.

https://www.apa.org/monitor/jun06/emerging
TEDx Talks. (2015). Why does it take so long to grow up today? | Jeffrey Jensen Arnett |

TEDxPSU [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=fv8KpQY0m6o

ZOROTOVICH, J., & JOHNSON, E. I. (2019). Five Dimensions of Emerging Adulthood: A

Comparison between College Students, Nonstudents, and Graduates. College Student

Journal, 53(3), 376–384.