Emerging Adulthood Research Paper

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As human beings we go through many phases in our lives. We are first infants, than children and as time goes by we become adolescents and once we mature and form an identity we are said to be adults. As said in our book “across cultures adulthood is expected to be a stage of maturity, responsibilities and accountability” (Vaughn, 55). But is there something in between adolescence and adulthood? Jeffrey Arnett believed there was and he described it as emerging adulthood. Emerging adulthood based on our class lecture is defined as “a new life stage with five features such as feeling in between, identity exploration, self-focused, instability, and possibilities” (Module 4, 3). This stage happens between the ages of 18-25 whereas emerging adults we are trying to decide where we want to work at, …show more content…

Many questions arise in this stage as it’s a period where we want to be responsible for ourselves and our decisions but we still depend on our parents. Emerging adulthood varies between classes and cultures as we are becoming more industrialized, there is an increase in education, delaying marriage and first jobs in order to get a career. As Rosenberger states in her article “What emerging adulthood is, what adulthood is, and how the two relate are moving targets in a constantly changing world” (p.95). As you go through the period of exploration and possibilities you are putting on hold marriage and childbearing which are considered roles in adulthood. However, we live in constant changing world and emerging adulthood and adulthood are in different ways defined by society based on different times and different condition. As time has passed we have seen emerging adulthood become a global phenomenon taking different forms based on economic, historical and cultural differences. These particular forms allows to see our social norms differentiate by countries based on different family ties, cultural beliefs and economic status through

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