The Network on Transitions to Adulthood

Edited by Richard A. Settersten, Jr., Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., and Rubén G. Rumbaut

Published by The University of Chicago Press (2005)

Sponsored by the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation
Research Network on the Transitions to Adulthood and Public Policy

Chapter briefs are available here

"I just wanted to say how much I have learned from ON THE FRONTIER OF ADULTHOOD. It's a wonderful project, and a very valuable book. I'm glad you did this. So are my students."

——Steven Nock, Department of Sociology, University of Virginia

Read the reviews

"The breadth and depth of this volume make it an invaluable guide for scholars ... "
Book review, Journal of Marriage and Family
"...it contains a wealth of it contains a wealth of background information that is both useful and thought-provoking "
Book review, The Canadian Sociological Association
"On the Frontier to Adulthood is successful in providing a developmentally and contextually relevant source of information about the diversity of forms that young adult development can take. The book provides realistic and relevant suggestions for policy that would strengthen the support system for all individuals in this emerging developmental period."
Book review, Journal of Adolescence
Instead of asking "What is wrong with young people today...Settersten and his colleagues have instead been trying to understand how have changing social and economic conditions combined to create a new life period..."
Book review, Medical News Today
"The strength of the book lies in the vast detail provided on what it takes to be an adult in contemporary western society written by talented scholars, most of whom are the leading figures in their subdisciplines"
Book review, Contemporary Sociology

Aims

The primary aims of this volume are to:

Describe and explain the growing complexity of the transition to adulthood, highlighting how this passage varies across subgroups, how it varies cross-nationally, and how it has changed over the last century;
Analyze the largest and highest quality secondary datasets available in the United States and Western Europe;
Use cutting-edge methodological and statistical approaches to shed new light on these patterns;
Elaborate how these findings might be used to rethink social policy and practice on early adulthood.

Overview of Contents

Importance of the Book for Social Research and Policy

Making the transition to adulthood -- leaving one’s parental home, securing stable employment, forming a family, becoming a parent, establishing one’s own household, and becoming civically involved -- may be more problematic at the turn of the 21st century than in previous eras. Compared to the relatively orderly sequence that marked adult status for many (especially for middle-class whites) earlier in this century, no modal pattern reflects the experiences of youth today. The markers of what constitutes a successful and complete transition are now seem uncertain, as does the likelihood that the decisions and investments that young people made today will be the right choices for them tomorrow.

In the final third of the 20th century, a number of trends occurred simultaneously that increased the complexity of events and transitions. In the decade after the Second World War, the rapid expansion of the American economy, the array of benefits to Veterans, and the growth of housing, permitted, if not promoted, a rapid and fairly uniform passage to adulthood. Favorable economic conditions and optimism about the future among young adults (in their late teens and early twenties) resulted in early family formation. Close to half of American men were full-time workers, and women, full-time mothers, by the time that they reached their early twenties. The historical era of the “marriage rush” and “baby boom” lasted only a couple of decades. It ended during the 1960s as rapid changes took place in both the labor market and social attitudes about women’s work and family roles. For example, by the mid-1970s, a high school education, which earlier in the century was uncommon, no longer sufficed to ensure a remunerative job, and many parents began to have difficulty supporting a family on a single wage.

Although the American economy has been booming since the early 1990s, income inequality increased from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, and remains high. We know little about the effect of this increased inequality on the ability of young people, especially those who are less well-off, to become established in the labor market, in families and as integral members of their communities. The greater variability in adult transitions may then reflect the inability of poor and minority youth to maximize their potential and to become incorporated into mainstream society.

The interactions among a series of cultural, institutional, familial, economic, and political changes and their effects on young people have not been systematically described in previous research. Nor have we fully examined how well these changes in the passage to adulthood have been accommodated by programs and policies aimed at young adults. This book begins to fill these gaps. It provides the most comprehensive treatment of this topic to date, offering textured understandings of the changes that have occurred in the organization of early adulthood over historical time, across societies with advanced economies, and for subgroups within a larger population.

This information is critically needed to address the possibilities and problems associated with attaining adulthood; to evaluate the effectiveness of existing policies and programs that are designed to support the transition to adulthood for youth in the mainstream and those in marginalized groups; and to design, implement, and evaluate new policies and programs that might better to facilitate this transition and build more supportive connections between education, work, family, and civic life.

This book both complements and significantly extends the view of three recent edited volumes on the transition to adulthood: First, Transitions to Adulthood in Europe (Corijn & Klijzing, Kluwer Plenum, 2001), which is focused exclusively on the Fertility and Family Survey and on European countries examined singly. Second, Transitions to Adulthood in a Changing Economy (Booth et al., Praeger, 1999), which contains four core chapters that explore young people’s orientation toward work and family; prior family experiences; prior experiences in the workplace; or career development and marriage formation. And third, a special issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (March, 2002), “Early Adulthood in Cross-National Perspective,” a collection of 11 articles assembled by one of the editors of this book (Furstenberg). The importance of this topic is also reflected in the activities of many professional organizations in the social and behavioral sciences. These organizations have not only experienced a surge of interest in the transition to adulthood, but they are also launching new teaching, research, and policy initiatives as a result. For example, the Society for Research on Adolescence has recently developed a special interest group on "Emerging Adulthood," an active group of interdisciplinary scholars devoted to understanding the development of individuals between the ages of 18 and 29.

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