Transitioning Into Adulthood

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Instead of focusing on traditional markers of adulthood, institutions should help young people plan for the wide variety of life experiences.

Key Points

Introduction

Families, schools, and the workplace were often viewed, in earlier decades, as the institutions primarily responsible for successfully assisting young people into adulthood. Today, the transition to adulthood is more complex and these institutions give mixed messages on when, who, and in what situations young people are considered adults creating uncertainty and ambiguity in their lives. Better support systems are needed that focus on economic, academic, and the social and emotional needs of young people, to help them plan and execute a successful life course.

Early sociological studies from the 1950s through the 1970s identified graduation from high school as the primary marker of the transition from adolescence to adulthood (Coleman, 1974). This demarcation by grade indicated a change in role, responsibilities, and educational and occupational opportunities. More recently, sociologists tend to describe this transition as embedded in a life-course trajectory whereby norms, values, and independence evolve at different rates, sometimes accelerating and sometimes remaining fixed. Along with variation in the pace of making the transition to adulthood, this process varies significantly among adolescents, determined in part by historical, cultural, and social and economic resources (Johnson, Crosnoe, & Elder, 2011; Settersten, Furstenberg, & Rumbaut, 2005). Pathways to adulthood are shaped by social context, such as the family, peers, schools, communities, and individual characteristics—both biological and environmental. Complementary to the sociologist’s perspective, psychologists also take a developmental approach, defining this period as “emerging” or “young adulthood,” where adolescents move into new roles, altering relationships with their family and friends, and seeking support from significant others in work, school, and other contexts (Arnett, 2000; Guan & Fuligni, 2015). Today, scholars irrespective of their discipline generally agree that transitioning into adulthood cannot be easily identified by an event such as receiving a diploma.

Physiologically, the state of adulthood is not too difficult to identify. Most young people by age 20 have grown to their maximum height, reached sexual maturity, and the full frontal cortex of the brain is nearly fully developed (Giedd et al., 1999; Lenroot & Giedd, 2006). ¹ From a physiological perspective, adolescence tends to end with young adulthood from ages 20 to 24. Just depending on these overt physical characteristics, however, would likely miss the choices and social development patterns often attributed to adulthood, such as marriage, childbearing, additional education and training, and employment. These social and economic indicators have heuristic value in defining adulthood, as they are observable, although the timing has changed over the last 30 years. These variations in timing, and the economic and social pressures associated with each, such as completing a 4-year college degree within 6 years with substantial personal and parental educational debts, or the inability to choose or find sustainable employment, cast reasonable doubt over the traditional view of what it means to be a fully independent adult in today’s society. If one were to use only these social and economic indicators as markers of the transition to adulthood, one would be likely to make a Type II error, that is, ascribing to “adulthood” these markers when in fact many additional social, emotional, and moral dimensions define adulthood today.

Adolescents leave high school faced with multiple educational and occupational choices about what to do after graduation, what jobs are meaningful and likely enduring, and when to live independently. Instead of being able to identify when adulthood begins, young people often receive mixed messages regarding when their families and society consider them adults. If the U.S. government deems necessary, you can be drafted into armed services between the ages of 18 to 25, but you cannot hold many public offices—even though you can vote; you can get a marriage license and a credit card, but you need your parents’ signature to receive a loan to attend college—the destination of most adolescents after high school. Life choices, especially regarding the future, are complex and uncertain. Many adolescents are unsure of what others expect of them and unsure of what they expect of themselves as they try to envision what markers they need to be regarded as adults.

One favorite pastime of young children is rehearsing the roles they will have as adults (Csikszentmihalyi, 2014). YouTube videos show young children watching computer screens and pressing keys, talking on cell phones, taking pictures, and fixing their own treats. While these are snapshots of adult tasks, they show only a slim slice of children’s understanding of adult roles and responsibilities. Parents work in places that are not just miles away from home but in foreign countries where they use Facetime to bring intimacy, despite thousands of miles of disconnection (Schneider & Waite, 2005). Childhood play no longer has clear ideas of adult roles, and this is not just confined to those in elementary school. Studies of teenagers and young adults—even those in college—show that they do not know what their parents do at their jobs or what types of work they would like to do as an adult. They do not know what expectations are realistic, what skills will be useful for their futures, or how to acquire those that could make them more marketable in a changing economy (Csikszentmihalyi & Schneider, 2000; Schneider & Stevenson, 1999). Confusion over jobs is only one of the challenges of understanding when one can claim to be an adult. The patterned cycle of the transition to adulthood no longer means marriage, childbearing, or living independently, especially when many young people today find themselves in postsecondary school at age 24, or living at home, and unattached romantically.

Forming Attachments, Marriage, and Childbirth

The normative passages into adulthood a mere 60 years ago have disappeared. Most young people graduating from high school in the 1950s married soon afterward. Today, the average age of marriage is 27 for women (about 7 years later than 70 years ago) and 29 for men (U.S. Census Bureau, 2015, Table MS-2). One of the major drivers of this change has been that most socially, economically, and educationally advantaged women, and those with college degrees, have delayed marriage more compared with women without a high school diploma or postsecondary degree. Women with college degrees tend to wait until after 30 to marry and then have children. In the case of the college graduate, delaying marriage allows a clearer sense of personal and financial independence. Postponing marriage may be a reasonable choice, given career uncertainties in today’s volatile economy.

The age of first birth for women is also climbing but not as dramatically as time of first marriage; the median age at first birth is now 25.7 years old. By age 25, 44% of women have had a baby but only 38% have married. ² Children born in single and unmarried households tend to have behavioral problems, engage in early sexual activity, and fail to complete high school or college (Haskins, 2014). If in a cohabiting situation when the child is born, mothers tend not to stay with the biological father of the child and are more than three times as likely than married parents to move on to a different cohabiting or marital relationship. Some have suggested that these unmarried cohabiting 20-somethings are the teenage unmarried of the 1980s (when teenage births after a steady decline took a sharp incline through the beginning of 1990 [Ventura, Mathews, & Hamilton, 2001]); these relationships lack permanence, and mothers are likely to suffer economic and social challenges for themselves and their children.

These statistics speak to a significant change not just in marriage as a marker of adulthood but how marriage and childbirth relate to social stratification. Women with nonmarital births are more likely to have less education. For women who drop out of high school, the overwhelming majority give birth before their 21st birthday—which has not changed much since the 1970s. Young people who fail to complete high school (or receive only a high school degree) and have children may see their adult roles begin at earlier ages, and the numbers suggest that childbirth is more likely before marriage (Haskins, 2014).

The social media that depict the lives of 20-somethings provide a very different picture than what many young women the same age but with children experience. We are not arguing that everyone needs to marry and have children. Rather among those who have children, especially those with limited postsecondary education and living in unstable relationships, the responsibilities of adulthood are particularly challenging. Difficulties arise in finding adequate child care, a flexible work situation that accommodates the child’s needs, social services, and family supports. These young women meet one traditional marker of adulthood—motherhood—but do so without the social and economic resources that allow them the same advantages as their more educated peers, who are choosing to marry later and then have children.

Gender Advantages in Transitions

Women now make up 56.7% of those enrolled in 2-year and 4-year colleges (Ginder, Kelly-Reid, & Mann, 2015), and overall women’s college attendance and completion rates have increased. Fifty years ago, men outnumbered women attending 4-year postsecondary institutions. Gender parity was reached in the 1980s, and since that time, women have outpaced men in enrollment, degree attainment, and entrance into graduate degree programs (Diprete & Buchmann, 2013). Research suggests that the larger pool of women entering higher education institutions is being driven by those first in their families to attend college, residing in less advantaged households, and often attending 2-year institutions.

Women appear to overshadow their male counterparts not only in college entrance but also in other arenas that create a more successful path to adulthood. Women are more likely than men to graduate from high school, have lower dropout rates, and are less likely to receive a high school certificate (General Educational Development Certificate) instead of a traditional high school diploma. The men who have dropped out and failed to obtain a high school degree are disproportionately African American and likely to have lived in poor neighborhoods, grown up in single-parent homes, and attended low-performing schools. Many of these young men, ages 18 to 24, are also dramatically overrepresented in the prison population, with one of out of every 10 African American men in this age group incarcerated (Heckman & LaFontaine, 2010).

Female advantages also emerge in transiting to, persisting at, and completing postsecondary education. Attending college in the fall following high school graduation predicts college persistence (Bozick & DeLuca, 2005). In the past, men were more likely than women to enroll immediately after high school. Today, men are more likely than women to delay college enrollment, although this is more likely for men in less socioeconomically advantaged families (Kena et al., 2015). Once in college, women are more likely to complete their degree, and among those who receive a bachelor’s degree, women are more likely to finish sooner.

Women also test higher in verbal college entrance exams, but men have the advantage in mathematics tests (Ross et al., 2012). This relates to the majors and career paths women select in college. One area where these gender gaps are large is science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). This is particularly the case for women in physics, engineering, mathematics, and computer science (Schneider, Milesi, Perez-Felkner, Brown, & Gutin, 2015; Snyder & Dillow, 2015). In some of these fields, such as computer science, the proportion of women entering the field has actually decreased (Mann & DiPrete, 2013; Snyder & Dillow, 2015).

What might explain the reversal of the overall college-enrollment gender gap? One explanation is poorer male academic performance and less attachment to school than women (Diprete & Buchmann, 2013). Another recent explanation suggests that the trend in delayed childbirth combines with reduced family size such that this pattern varies considerably in how family resources are allocated by gender (Chen, Schneider, & Frank, 2015). That is, examining the resources parents spend on their daughters and sons, across three national longitudinal datasets (controlling on variations in family size), the authors find that parents invest their resources unequally among their children. Female enrollment in 4-year institutions seems particularly sensitive to parent efforts to save money for college and involve their children in summer learning and extracurricular activities. The decline in family size, women’s participation in the labor force, and growth of nontraditional families may have shifted parent resource allocations by gender, advantaging daughters.

Postsecondary Enrollment

The overwhelming majority of adolescents leave high school for some type of postsecondary education experience. Whereas this experience tended to occur at age 18, the time spent in high school has increased, and a number of students graduate at 19 years old, particularly in urban areas where students tend to take credit recovery (retaking courses failed or graded low), staying in high school longer to obtain a diploma. Even though many states have raised their advanced course standards for high school graduation, many students leave high school with major gaps in the educational preparation needed to make a successful transition into college (Ross et al., 2012). This is particularly the case in many urban schools serving students from underrepresented minorities. The problems of preparation are severe (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2013). But not just a lack of knowledge and skills impede the successful transition into college; few supports, especially in schools serving low-income students, facilitate a reasonable transition into a college program that matches students’ interests and skills (Schneider, 2015).

The average high school college counselor serves several hundred students, who are diverse in their interests and college readiness. In middle-class schools, while the ratio of students to counselors may also be high, teachers, peer groups, private tutors, and consultants help with advising. In contrast, many students in low-income schools serving minorities find themselves without adequate help to navigate what college is right for them, how to pay for it, and how to apply for admission (Executive Office of the President, 2014). Some schools serving more advantaged students face another problem, that is, a college pressure cooker, where peers, teachers, and parents keep college in constant discussion (McDonough, 2004). The rhetoric about college is a constant reminder of achieving high grades, preparing for admission tests, and writing personal essays, all of which exacerbate social and emotional development questions of identity, self-esteem, and coping strategies.

What then are the consequences of these high school experiences? Many students, particularly those who are low-income and minority, end up in college underprepared or in postsecondary paths that do not capitalize on their strengths. Enrollment in postsecondary institutions varies by social class, with many urban and low-income students beginning college in 2-year institutions, where the odds of graduation are lower than in 4-year institutions.

Not all 2-year institutions are holding facilities for young people who expect to complete an associate’s degree but never do and fail to transfer to 4-year institutions. Numerous efforts aim to help community colleges better serve their clientele, with stronger advising programs, classes specifically designed to help young people achieve, and tutorial services to help keep grades up and students on track to graduation. Several states have engaged in stronger articulation programs between community colleges and 4-year institutions (Gross & Goldhaber, 2009). For example, Arizona has set up a steering committee that provides information to students about requirements and oversight on curricular alignment between community colleges and 4-year institutions (see aztransfer.com).

Four-year colleges face multiple problems as well. In some institutions, students are ill-prepared for the courses they take and value weekend partying more than the content of their classes (Arum & Roksa, 2011). The college experience is under major scrutiny, and there is a push to hold colleges accountable for students ill-prepared for the work force (Obama, 2015). In addition, some colleges have come under fire for ignoring problems of racism, sexual harassment, and sexual violence (Schmidt, 2015; White House, 2014).

From Postsecondary Education Into the Workforce

Most parents and their adolescents entering college expect to graduate in 4 years and then find stable employment; however, these timings and outcomes have changed quite considerably over the last 20 years. The average time to earn a bachelor’s degree has increased by nearly a year. For the cohort of students who began their postsecondary education in 1972, 53% graduated in 4 years, and 82% graduated in 5 years (Bound, Lovenheim, & Turner, 2012). Today, 44% of graduates finish in 4 years, and 66% finish within 5 years. The number of years between entrance and graduation are even higher for Black and Hispanic college students. Only 31% graduate in 4 years, and about 53% graduate in 5 years. A similar trend also reflects parent education; the lower the level of education of one’s parents, the less likely one is to graduate in a timely manner (NCES, 2012). Lengthening the time to graduation typically means additional expenses to the student and family; it also has resource implications for the postsecondary institutions as it places strains on the capacity for housing and instruction.

One reason for the increase in time to degree may be students’ need to work to supplement the decreasing financial assistance to their families (Bound et al., 2012). College costs have increased significantly in both nominal and real terms; the average net cost of attendance at a 4-year public institution has risen from $10,100 in 2000 to $11,800 in 2012, an increase of 17% (U.S. Department of Education, NCES, 2014a). ³ At the same time, median household income has actually decreased in real terms over this time period by approximately 7% (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Federal Reserve Economic Data, 2015). College continues to be more expensive, as family resources are more constrained.

This economic reality occurs at the same time as the rise in student debt. The average cumulative student loan debt per borrower (at graduation) has increased by 22.6% from 2000 to 2014 (CollegeBoard, Trends in Higher Education Series, 2015), and student loans now stand behind home mortgages as the second-largest source of debt in the United States (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Statistical Release, 2015, Table G.19). The rise in student loans and default rates on those loans has gained considerable attention in the media. However, those most likely to default on student loans are those students who have taken out the least amount of money to attend a community college or a for-profit college (Dynarski, 2015). Those who take out larger loans tend over time to obtain high-paying jobs, allowing them to make payments on time. Currently, a new repayment system based on income has been instituted, but enrollment is complex, and those who need it most are the least likely to have the skills necessary to navigate the process.

At the same time that the costs of higher education are increasing, the returns to education immediately after graduation have decreased. Whereas the median annual earnings of someone with a bachelor’s degree was nearly $54,000 in 2000, it has declined to slightly more than $48,500 in 2013 (U.S. Department of Education, NCES, 2014c, Table 502.30). The unemployment rate for adults who hold a bachelor’s degree is more than twice what it was in 2000 (U.S. Department of Education, NCES, 2014b, Table 501.80). Although it is not a new phenomenon for recent college graduates to struggle to find a job, over that last decade, the number of underemployed graduates—that is, those in jobs that do not require a college degree—has risen from 34% in 2001 to 44% in 2012 (Abel, Deitz, & Su, 2014).

Several reasons may explain why recent college graduates are having an increasingly difficult time finding work that matches their credentials, including the unstable economy and technological changes that have shifted labor-market demands. Whatever the cause, more young people find themselves employed as waiters and baristas rather than anthropologists or engineers. Transitioning from college into the world of work takes time, but more young people, stuck in low-wage or part-time work, have difficulty viewing themselves as independent adults with a sustainable occupation. ⁴ Career success is not useful as a marker of adulthood, when young people have to wait until their late 20s or early 30s to achieve the labor-market outcomes that they envisioned when they began college.

One consequence of the economic situation is that more young people cannot afford to live independently. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2014), 30.3% of Americans aged 18 to 34 live at home with their parents, up from 22.9% in 1980. Certainly, the recent recession contributed to this, but even as the economy has recovered, many young adults are still in a position of relying on their parents for financial support.

Psychological and Social Markers

Other problems that many young people face in their 20s are substance abuse and mental-health issues. Substance use and misuse peak by age 27 (Johnston, O’Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2009). Data from Monitoring the Future, a nationally representative sample of youth, shows that alcohol use (including daily use, daily drunkenness, and binge drinking) is highest during young adulthood. Substance abuse, especially during college, has been linked to academic problems, fighting, and sexual behavior problems. These problems are often associated with college students but are particularly troublesome for young adults who are not in college or who received their degrees during their 20s. Whites, compared with other racial and ethnic groups, are more likely to use alcohol and have higher heavy drinking levels, controlling for other factors, and this condition is more likely to occur among men than women. What is less clear is the relationship between socioeconomic factors and substance use in young adulthood, with some studies reporting higher income being associated with higher young-adult drinking frequency (Casswell, Pledger, & Hooper, 2003).

Meaningful work, volunteering, participating in civic activities, and romantic involvement in young adulthood are negatively associated with alcohol abuse and dependence. Determining how young people develop socially and how happy they are in college and afterward has been fraught with problems, including researchers who tend to rely on cross sectional instead of longitudinal samples—examining snapshots instead of trends. One major exception (Galambos, Shichen, Krahn, & Johnson, 2015) examines happiness from early adulthood into midlife (ages 18 through 43). Happiness increased from age 18 through the early 30s and then turned slightly downward by the early 40s (controlling for gender, parents’ education, grades, self-esteem, marriage, unemployment, and self-reported physical health).

Women are more likely to increase their happiness in their 20s, but this difference is small. This study demonstrates intraindividual change across the life course, showing diversity in individual growth trajectories, as a function of gender, socioeconomic background, and self-esteem. These variations speak to differences in the transition into adulthood, often overlooked by some researchers and the social media taken to branding particular cohorts of young adults, most recently the “millennials.” General patterns, while catchy and a marketing tool, mask intraindividual factors, especially regarding gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (SES).

What Does It Mean to Transition to Adulthood? What Policies Matter?

For some, the traditional social and economic markers of adulthood begin at 18; these young people are working and are romantically attached—though not necessarily married—and likely to have children within 2 years. However, these adult markers occur mainly among those with a high school diploma or less, in less economically advantaged households, and in communities with limited resources. These young people are not drifting but face real-life adult responsibilities. They are not emerging adults; they are adults, but they still cope with many psychological and social worries found in adolescence, such as drinking, drug use, depressive symptoms, and the anxiety and stress that accompanies holding a job and the realities of everyday life. This is clearly one of the most at-risk groups, and the programs to assist them are woefully inadequate, some providing small financial assistance without proper employment training and reasonable work placements. Men are particularly vulnerable, especially those who are minority and incarcerated. Some newer, rigorously evaluated programs that target high school African American men at risk of gang membership and violence have had positive effects (Heller et al., 2015), and the Obama administration has recently embarked on several initiatives to reduce crime and rehabilitate those incarcerated.

Among those with some postsecondary education experience but who did not attain a degree, these personal and social issues tend also to be a problem, especially finding stable employment. Unfortunately, research on the psychological and social challenges of these young people has tended not to view them as a distinct group. Economically, they often face the same occupational challenges as those who graduate with only a high school diploma, and they often enter into cohabiting situations where childbirth is likely. This group needs more customized programs that examine initial education and training experiences and deal with their unique circumstances that prevent them from succeeding.

Community colleges and 4-year institutions are becoming more responsive to the preparation and social–emotional needs of young people, and a number of programs ease the transition from high school, providing more support throughout the postsecondary experience. Many of these programs provide tutorial assistance with the expectation that they can increase persistence and degree completion, and a number of them also offer social and emotional counseling. The Obama administration 2 years ago initiated First in the World (FITW), a competitive grant program designed to help at-risk groups persist in postsecondary education. Grants to postsecondary institutions aid in developing and testing strategies to help low-income, minority, part-time, and working students succeed in college. A promising aspect of FITW is the funds set aside for validation studies that use the most rigorous types of design for potential scale-up.

After decades of scientific research, we are familiar with what types of services are likely to assist high school and college students in their persistence and degree completion: better academic preparation, more counseling that directs student interests and skills toward reasonable educational goals, and increased financial aid information and assistance. However, what seems to be lacking is that often these programs need to be customized for specific populations that may need preparation beyond just career services, but we tend to believe that these reforms will work for everyone. Another problem is the lack of a scientific basis for scale-up. Small effect sizes, those that indicate marginal impacts, are sometimes dismissed, which may lead promising results to go unnoticed. The science of implementation is often not carefully documented, especially when researchers underexamine the influence of contextual factors on programmatic outcomes. The science of improvement needs more attention, as the Carnegie Corporation has articulated (Bryk, Gomez, Grunow, & LeMahieu, 2015).

Clearly, not all young people enter college and treat it as an opportunity to study infrequently, take nonchallenging courses, prioritize social activities, and end up graduating into a phase of indecision, stress, vulnerability, and social dependency. Some young people are goal oriented, plan where they want to go next, carefully select how they spend their time, and build social networks that are key to future occupational opportunities and lasting friendships. But these young people tend, for the most part, to have had the advantages of parents and other adults in both high school and in college who have guided them in making reasonable choices. But even for them, in choosing the next phase of their educational training, the stress of more schooling, debt, and dependence on family make the 20s a trying time.

It has become less important to define exactly when one is an adult. Rather, the key issues are to understand how young people are coping with today’s volatile labor market, tenuous social connections including weak social network supports, ⁵ and the personal resilience to weather disappointment and failure. These problems are not pervasive among all young adults; they vary by race, ethnicity, social, economic, family, and community resources. Institutions such as schools are not as well-equipped to help young people make this transition. Similarly, colleges are not organized to provide information or capacity to identify potential work opportunities, networks, and social support resources—especially for underrepresented groups. The labor market sends weak signals about what are likely to be sustainable occupational choices, how to find them, and whether they are reasonable matches with young people’s talents, skills, and interests. The unclear connections between institutions, the overlapping roles, and the growing differentiation—both within and across race, class, and gender—exacerbate inequalities in education, training, employment, marriage, and sense of well-being. This all occurs within a larger global culture that increasingly emphasizes flexibility, choice, and change (Buchmann, 1989). Instead of tagging a time or phase in the life course, institutions such as families and schools need to recognize that the challenges after high school are real. Perhaps more than at any other time, they need to play a more active part in helping young people plan and execute a successful course for the next decades of life.