Journeys Through Emerging Adulthood

Journeys through Emerging Adulthood takes the reader on a tour of contemporary transitions to adulthood, reporting on the latest cross-national and cross-cultural research into young adulthood and separating fact from fiction about this important life phase. Alan Reifman shows how today’s youth are taking more time to enter traditional adult roles, and explores the benefits and disadvantages of this gradual emergence into adulthood. This essential textbook navigates the research that reveals the substantial variety in young people’s paths to adulthood. It covers the spectrum of the young adult experience, examining the influence that parents have on their grown children’s progress and identity as adults, and considering the impact of traditional milestones such as higher education, establishing a career, forming romantic relationships and becoming a parent. It examines key topics including mental health in emerging adults and the likelihood of substance abuse, and how young adults might reach out into the community through volunteerism, religious involvement and political activism. Each section includes examples and studies conducted in a range of countries, exploring how the journey to adulthood can vary according to cultural context as well as individual circumstance. The book affirms that while there is great variety in how one transitions to adulthood, there is no correct path, and most people fare well – or even thrive – in adulthood. Featuring end-of-chapter summaries, quizzes and activities, Journeys Through Emerging Adulthood provides an accessible yet comprehensive overview of this significant life stage, connecting fundamental psychological theories with modern social phenomena. Reifman’s text is essential reading for both undergraduate and graduate students of psychology, human development and sociology, as well as students and researchers of any discipline interested in the path to adulthood.

This important book introduces Arnett’s emerging adulthood theory to scholars and practitioners in higher education and student affairs, illuminating how recent social, cultural, and economic changes have altered the pathway to adulthood. Chapters in this edited collection explore how this theory fits alongside current student development theory, the implications for how college students learn and develop, and how emerging adulthood theory is uniquely suited to address challenges facing higher education today. Emerging Adulthood and Higher Education provides important recommendations for administrators, counselors, and student affairs personnel to provide effective programs and services to facilitate their emerging adults’ journeys through this formative stage of life.

In this book Veteran disciplemakers Rick Dunn and Jana Sundene offer concrete guidance for those who shepherd and care for emerging adults, emphasizing relational rhythms of discernment, intentionality and reflection to meet emerging adults where they are at and then to walk with them further into the Christlife.

In recent decades, the lives of people in their late teens and twenties have changed so dramatically that a new stage of life has developed. In an original paper published in 2000, Jeffrey Jensen Arnett identified this period, coining it "emerging adulthood," and he distinguished it from both the adolescence that precedes it and the young adulthood that comes in its wake. His new paradigm received a surge of scholarly attention after his first book on the topic launched the field, and both a flourishing society and journal developed to further expand this area of research. Studies and publications on emerging adulthood now abound, and the leading research has yet to be organized into a single handbook that covers the field. The Oxford Handbook of Emerging Adulthood is the first and only comprehensive compilation spanning the field of emerging adulthood. Expertly edited by Arnett, this Handbook is comprised of cutting-edge chapters written by leading scholars in developmental psychology. Topics include theoretical perspectives and structural influences in the field; cognitive development during emerging adulthood; family, friendship, and romantic relationships; sexual identity and orientation; education and work; leisure and media use; mental health; religious and political beliefs; positive development; and substance abuse and crime, to name a few. Sure to be the definitive resource for researchers, scholars, and students studying emerging adulthood, this Handbook will pave the way for new scholarship in this expanding area of inquiry and serve as an excellent resource for the wider field of developmental psychology.

Sari Solden specializes in working with ADD adults and their partners. Her first book, Women with Attention Deficit Disorder, has sold more than 100,000 copies worldwide. Now, in Journeys Through ADDulthood, she takes a groundbreaking look at the emotional turmoil often precipitated by ADD and offers readers roadmaps to richer, happier lives. Living with ADD affects the development of one's view of self, especially for those not diagnosed until adulthood, after an entire childhood of feeling "different" without knowing why. There are no quick fixes-Solden takes a longer view of the challenges and sees living with ADD as an ongoing internal process. Journeys Through ADDulthood is a step-by-step guide through three stages, or journeys: toward understanding your brain and your primary symptoms; toward discovering your true identity and embracing your uniqueness; and toward learning to share your true self to connect with others. Illuminating her points based on the real-life journeys of two men and two women, Solden offers self-help exercises at the end of each chapter to point the way around common roadblocks on the road to empowerment, self-fulfillment, and the realization of long-buried dreams and goals.

Narrative Journeys of Young Black Women with Eating Disorders: A Hidden Community among Us explores how the realities of three young black women who have experienced eating disorders since childhood were transformed, discussing the larger implications of disordered eating in underrepresented populations. People of all ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic backgrounds are susceptible to their grips, yet black women and children are experiencing eating disorders and suffering in silence due to shame and stigma. Due to barriers such as the conventional thought that eating disorders do not occur in the black community, they are often not acknowledged, discussed, or treated properly. Stephanie Hawthorne argues that these women’s lived experiences substantiate the need for culturally sensitive and inclusive prevention, intervention, and care when it comes to mental health, and offers recommendations to schools, clinicians, parents, and adolescents to accomplish this goal. Scholars of communication, mental health, race studies, education, and medicine will find this book particularly useful.

This book offers a unique developmental perspective on identity construction in the context of mobility and transition to adulthood. Drawing upon semiotic cultural psychology, it embeds identity construction into the processes of meaning making; viewing identity as a field of hyper-generalised signs that are constantly reconstructed through encounters with social others in cultural worlds, and which allow individuals to make sense of themselves in relation to their lived pasts, experienced presents and imagined futures. Märtsin invites the reader to travel with eight young adults as they embark on their developmental journeys and seek to make sense of issues that matter most to them: home, adventure and belonging, friendships, recognition, and future-planning. The book is an invaluable resource for students and researchers interested in understanding the experiences of emerging adults in contemporary globalized world, but also for those interested in identity processes from a semiotic, cultural and developmental perspective.

In recent years there has been growing interest in the experiences of young people seeking asylum in Europe. While the significance of the role of age is recognized, both youth transitions and trajectories beyond the age of eighteen are still largely unexplored, the role and impact of mobility predominantly centering on experiences of movement from country of origin to country of settlement. Inhabiting Borders, Routes Home contends that in considering migration and settlement experiences of young refugees it is also important to consider the role of their mobility through age and transitions in the country of settlement. Based on narrative research with young refugees, this book explores how migration journeys are intertwined with life course journeys and transitions into adulthood, shedding light on the manner in which gender intersects with age in experiences of migration and settlement, with close attention to the processes by which 'home' is understood and constructed. Through the concept of 'home' the book draws together and reflects on interconnections between integration in areas such as education or housing and experiences of social networks. Examining experiences of the asylum process and the manner in which they are interwoven within a wider narrative of home both within and beyond, Inhabiting Borders, Routes Home will be of interest to social scientists working in the areas of migration, asylum, intersectionality and the life course.