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I Decide: Politics and Community in the IPod Generation. Is
the younger generations politically
disengaged? It appears not. In our interviews with young
adults across the country, we’re
finding that many have strong
political passions and identities. Many vote, not because
they believe their vote will have an impact but because they feel it’s
a moral imperative, an ethic that some learned from their parents and intend
to pass down to their children. Some even identify with a political party
because of the principles the party stands for. But there
is little sense that political parties represent the views of this generation. In
fact, party politics and traditional
institutions are not the venue that galvanizes this generation.
Rather, the politics of this generation is personal: Single issues, cultural
identities, and roles (such as parenting) are common ways that they get
engaged in the political fray.
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Higher
costs of living. Debt
is a very real issue for this
age group, both housing, consumer,
and college. Credit cards start early and this group runs up sizable
debt. Because of costs, youth tend to move back home more often than
in the past. They also return home to live when they go back to school.
As one working-class mother of 7 said, “I encourage all my
kids to come back home. It’s the only way poor kids can afford
college.”
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Given that parents are providing more monetary support to
young adults, is there a risk of a growing divide
between higher income and lower income families? As Americans, we’d
like to think that where or to whom you’re born is only a temporary
status. With a little hard work, some gumption,
and a bootstrap, we can be anyone we want to be. That certainly seems
to be the case with a group of 20-somethings who grew up in St. Paul.
These young adults believed for the most part that they were the authors
of their lives and, if they were unhappy with the way things were going,
that they could plan for and act to change things. But is that really
the case? Or does class matter in America? Consider Jake and Bo, two
white 29 year olds who both attended St. Paul public schools. Following
high school, Jake’s
parents paid for his BA at William and Mary.
After graduating, he attended a prestigious
private law school on
the East Coast, also financed by his parents.
Bo, meanwhile, attended a local public university, which he felt was
his only option because his mother could not afford to foot his education
bills. Despite working substantial hours while attending college, he
dropped out when he found himself having to go without food. Jake is
now an attorney, while Bo has worked a series of manual and service jobs.
Recently laid off, Bo has returned to community college, still hoping
to someday earn his degree and land a well-paying job.
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Changing notions of what it means to be an adult. What does it
mean to youth to be an “adult”? Is it the roles they assume
(parents, jobholder, homeowner) or is it a process, a
journey toward happiness or fulfillment? How has this changed in recent
generations? Do Boomer kids seek self-actualization over parenthood and
all those “scary adult
things like responsibility, stability. As one young adult
said, “you
think you’re supposed
to get serious and really mature, like your parents.
Another young adult characterized being an adult as having
more “should
do’s” than “can
do’s.”
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Changing notions of marriage and family. Clearing notions
of family are changing. More young adults are
delaying marriage and childbearing, and are more comfortable
living together than before. In our interviews, we are
uncovering some interesting rural and urban differences in these views,
though. Rural youth in Iowa, for example, are marrying much earlier than
urban youth, and see their mate in pragmatic terms (it
was the thing to do, we’ve been dating since high school anyway)
while urban youth have much more romantic ideals of the perfect mate—and
thus delay marriage longer.
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What happens to youth after leaving foster care at age 18? Upcoming
PBS documentary (May 2005): Aging Out, a film by Roger Weisberg
(Sound
and Fury, Why Can't We Be A Family Again, and Road Scholar)
and Vanessa Roth. This is a highly vulnerable group—family ties are
fragile, many live in poverty, housing is difficult to find and
afford, and many have young children to support. In short,
they have no personal safety net. A sizable group, in
fact, are at risk for homelessness.
- What happens to youth after leaving juvenile justice or prison? These
youth are probably the most disadvantaged: they typically lack a high school
degree, they have no or little work experience, they are likely to return
to peers who were bad influences, and they often have strained family ties.
- About 100,000 young adults aged
18-24 will be released from prison (adult) in 2004. About 1 million
individuals aged 18–24 were
under probation supervision in 2002.
(Uggen & Wakefield,
chapter
5, On
Your Own without a Net,
forthcoming University
of Chicago Press)
- Civic involvement: youth are more disconnected and distrustful of others
(social trust), mainly
because of an institutional mismatch, not because youth are simply opting
out. What does this mean for civic participation and a healthy democracy?
How do social trust and social isolation interact? Declines in social
trust have been linked to increases in materialist values as central
life goals. Materialism, in turn, has been linked to poorer physical
and mental health. Plus, many of the skills employers look for (team
work, ability to work with diverse groups, responsibility) are learned
through civic participation.
- Mortality rates of teens going down while rates among young
adults since 1998 are on the rise. Males dies at 3x the rate
of females
- 20% of young adults (not teens) report that they are daily smokers.
This is a much higher rate than among teens, and this rate has increased
in last 3 years. Possibly stems from tobacco settlements: tobacco companies
are no longer allowed to target teens, so a shift of resources to older
markets may be underway.
- Age 18-29 is the highest uninsured group in the US: 1/3 of those aged
18-29 have no health
insurance. Few young adults have an identified health care provider.
They rely heavily on family planning or college health systems. After
18, young adults have the right to determine their medication, mental
health treatment, etc.,
yet they often lack the resources to do so. Parents can carry college
students on their health insurance until age 23. However, those who are
not attending college and working in jobs with no benefits have no access
to insurance.
- Mental health system: Most prior services and supports end at age
18; new eligibility must be established. Young adults with a history
of mental disorders are at high risk of failing to finish high school,
be neither working nor in school, engaging in crimes, abusing substances,
and having unplanned children. Between 24% and 39% of youth with past
mental health issues experienced each of those conditions, while only
7% to 10% of those without a history of mental health issues experienced
each. [source, Gralinski et al., chapter 10, On Your Own without a Net,
forthcoming University of Chicago Press]
- What can we do for young African American males? They are losing ground
on earnings and employment,
and they are disproportionately represented in the juvenile justice and
prison populations. The majority of adult males in prison report having
children at home, yet their prison record and low earnings make supporting
those children difficult.
- Immigration and the American Dream: Not all immigrant youth are upwardly
mobile. Youth in the
second generation sometimes do worse than their parents. In addition,
a debate is underway on whether acculturation is the best route.
- How are community colleges adapting to the needs of youth today? Opening
Doors, an evaluation
of a novel community college program that is attempting to make community
college more responsive to the needs of young adults today, is showing
positive early results (see www.mdrc.org)
- The rise in youth-led institutions. These organizations, which are
run by youth (4-H is an example) are becoming popular. Involving youth
directly in the daily operation of organizations builds skills and contributes
to positive development, perhaps creating future civic leaders.
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