‘Twenty something’: The social policy and practice implications of emerging adulthood

Abstract

Emerging adulthood has been identified by Arnett (2000) as a new developmental stage that comprises 18-25 years. This period of the life span has characteristic and significant personal challenges, and it also contains New Zealand’s highest proportion of problem behaviours such as hazardous drinking, dangerous driving, loneliness and mental illness. Research on 18-25 year-olds who have overcome difficult upbringings can provide insights on how to respond to other young people whose development is compromised. As a society, it is recommended that we pay more attention to the particular circumstances of emerging adults and that we allocate more social service resources to the members of this age group who are experiencing difficulties. Emerging adulthood, newly identified as a distinct phase of human development, must be an area of key interest for social policy analysts, social work practitioners and social service managers. This phase falls between the ages of 18 and 25 years and between adolescence and young adulthood. Like the categorisation of adolescence before it, emerging adulthood has come about as a consequence of economic progress and increased life expectancy, and it is a regular part of post-industrial societies such as our own (Arnett, 2004). On a simple and evidential level, this new division of the lifespan may explain why young people do not seem to settle down and marry like they used to. In fact, emerging adulthood is associ- ated with an array of defining attributes and included here is a general sense of enhanced wellbeing for the young people themselves. This period is of particular relevance to hu- man service professionals, nonetheless, because it also contains our highest proportion of troubled young people, and since it presents some unique opportunities for intervening in people’s lives in beneficial ways.