Do Transitions and Social Structures Matter? How ‘Emerging Adults’ Define Themselves as Adults

Abstract

Recently, theories and research in the new field of ‘emerging adulthood’ have indicated that young people may currently view adulthood based on individualistic criteria and not according to the passing of one or another of the transitions many sociologists use to frame the analysis of youth. Based on qualitative interviews conducted with 25–29 year olds in the province of Québec, Canada, this article analyses how self-conceptions of adulthood are constructed. Findings show that, contrary to the results from the field of ‘emerging adulthood’, the young adults who were interviewed refer to adulthood in terms of both individual qualities and transition markers. Then, by placing the interplay between these two dimensions into a larger socio-economic context, the article argues that attention needs be paid to transitions and changing social structures in research on youth biographies.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Standard Research Grants programme. I would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.

Notes

1. According to Statistics Canada, the low income level for an individual living alone in 2004 in the city where the interviews were conducted was approximately Can$16,000 (gross).

2. The construction of autonomy and identity in the context of financial or material dependence on parents has been analysed in a number of recent studies in France. See for example Cicchelli (2001) and Ramos (2002).

3. Arnett also refers to this distinction (2004, p. 214).

4. I discuss this paradox below.

5. Some have referred to the experience of young parents or professionals who cling to their youth culture, and who therefore alternate between the classic biographical phases, as ‘swinging lives’ (EGRIS 2001).

6. The French movie Tanguy was shown in Québec theatres in 2002. The film is a comedy that portrays a young man in his late twenties who lives at home and is psychologically dependent on his parents. His parents desperately try to make him leave home through a variety of stratagems. The expression ‘Tanguy’ has since been widely used in Québec to label young adults in their twenties living with their parents. A modification to Quebec's social welfare programme in 2005 was even jokingly labelled ‘la réforme Tanguy’ by government officials because it reduced payments to welfare recipients living with their parents.

7. Van de Velde's work on the interplay between national welfare state regimes, family values and religious heritage in the structuring of the youth phase may serve as an example of how to approach the question of self-conceptions of adulthood in a multi-faceted and cross-national perspective (Van de Velde 2007).

8. See Holdsworth and Morgan (2007) for an exploration of the notion of ‘generalized other’ using transcripts of interviews conducted in research on the process of leaving home.

9. In such research it may be worthwhile to explore whether perceptions of being integrated in society can be equated with conceptions of self as adult. Although adulthood and full citizenship have in the past been equated on a theoretical level (Jones & Wallace 1992; Jones 1995), this has not been done from the point of view of young people's perceptions of their own biographies.