Jeffrey Jensen Arnett does a fair amount of public speaking about his concept of “emerging adulthood,’’ the notion that there is now a new phase of life somewhere in between adolescence and adulthood, a period of exploration and experimentation that can last well into the late 20s.
It strikes a chord of recognition with many parents, who thank Arnett for explaining why their grown children seem adrift in the years after college, but it also rubs some folks the wrong way. “I’ve gotten this negative feedback: ‘What’s the matter with them? Why don’t they grow up?’ ’’ says Arnett, a research professor in the psychology department at Clark University.
There is nothing the matter with them, in his view, and they’re growing up just fine, albeit along a circuitous path. “The 20s are up in the air now. People are doing all these different things; they’re not settled,’’ he says. “What they’re doing is trying things that they very wisely realize they’ll never have a chance to do again. And often it’s things that are very creative or altruistic.’’
If you’re dubious about that, and believe that once you hit 18 you should just get on with the business of adulthood, Arnett has some more bad news for you: Emerging adulthood, like everything else, is going global.
Researchers, including Arnett himself, have detected the phenomenon in countries as different as Italy, Denmark, China, India, Argentina, and the Czech Republic. In part, it reflects the universal quest for personal fulfillment, and the refusal by many young people to fall into preordained roles, at least for a while.
But it is made increasingly possible by the growth of the middle class in many countries, which no longer need their children to start earning wages at an early age to support the family. Many young people are leaving their rural birthplaces for the greater opportunities available in the big cities.
“It’s a function of prosperity,’’ says Arnett. “That’s why you see it growing in places like China and India, that are growing more prosperous. They don’t want to work some little miserable patch of ground their whole lives like their parents did. They look at Europe and the United States with a lot of envy and enthusiasm. They say ‘I want to have that, too.’ ’’
It was five years ago that Arnett published “Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road From the Late Teens through the Twenties.’’ It was a portrait of a generation in flux, describing how increasing numbers of young people chose to put off careers, marriage, parenthood, and other traditional markers of adulthood until they were well past the age when they were expected to “settle down.’’
If anything, that is happening with even more frequency now, according to Arnett. In part, it is a residual effect of the fact that so many 20-somethings grew up in divorced families and are leery of commitment unless they are sure they have found their soulmate. (“It’s very moving, interviewing the ones who come from families where there is a bitter divorce, and they swear ‘This is never going to happen to me,’ ’’ says Arnett. “And I know as a social scientist that the risk is higher they will get a divorce if they come from a family of divorce.’’)
When it comes to making a living, most of them are not the spoiled slackers of caricature; in Arnett’s view, they just want to keep their options open so they’ll be free to travel or to move to a different city. So they might eschew the career ladder in favor of short-term “McJobs’’ that will allow them to pick up and go on a moment’s notice. Many of them worked for free on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign; others volunteer in the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps; still others chase the dream of being a filmmaker or a writer. Many of them forgo the big salary and work for peanuts in nonprofits that help the less privileged.
And what do their parents think of all this? Well, Arnett believes emerging adulthood has its roots in the behavior of the parents, i.e., the lifestyle rebellions and conventional-wisdom-toppling that was the favorite sport of the baby-boom generation.
“The baby-boomers were the revolutionaries,’’ says Arnett. “They invented the idea that work should be fun. Nobody ever thought that before. And now their kids think so, too.’’ He laughs, then adds: “And they’re pulling their hair out!’’
Don Aucoin can be reached at aucoin@globe.com. 
