What It Means to Be an Emerging Adult

I have spent my career studying a developmental stage called emerging adulthood. It includes people around ages 18 to 29 who are clearly no longer adolescents, but also lack some of the hallmarks of adulthood, such as being financially independent and established in their professional lives, being married, or acting as caregivers. (Side note: Emerging-adult scholars would never say that people who are unmarried or child-free are not full adults; we know they are.)

Research on emerging adulthood aims to understand how young people coordinate a lot of priorities at once (education, love, career), and how they cope with the sometimes slippery feeling of transitioning to adulthood. Based on interviews with about 100 young people in their late teens and twenties, Jeffrey Arnett articulated five characteristics of emerging adulthood. Do they sound like you? Or maybe like your young adult child?

Another Wave of Identity Development. Arnett argued that emerging adulthood provides a temporary break from the responsibilities of adult life that allows people a little more time to figure out who they are. We start this process during adolescence, but few of us really feel settled in our identities by age 18. Emerging adulthood is a time to keep trying new things and to decide whether we want to hold onto, revise, or discard the values and beliefs we held as children.

In my research, I have found that emerging adults often learn a lot about themselves through romantic relationships. They figure out what boundaries they want and need, what characteristics really matter to them in both a partner and a relationship, and how they want their interactions to feel. All of these are aspects of self-discovery that can only really be accomplished by forging close relationships, whether with romantic partners or others.

Feeling in-between. Emerging adults often feel not quite like adolescents and not quite like adults. In a class I taught on adult development and aging, I used to ask students whether they felt like adults. Many said definitively “no,” some said “kind of,” and only a small minority said a definitive “yes.” This feeling is especially common among college students because they are living away from home and the watchful eyes of their parents, but often still rely on their families for some amount of emotional and/or financial support.

Emerging adults form meaningful, committed romantic relationships, but most still want to delay making permanent commitments like marriage. There is a “yes but not yet” approach to marriage that shapes how people engage in dating and relationships. In my work on relationship histories, it was clear that emerging adulthood was not just about casual dating and hookups. Participants had long-term relationships, but those did not always materialize into marriage because they just didn’t feel ready.

Instability. Emerging adults move a lot. They change jobs a lot. There are fits and starts to adulthood that show up as some level of instability for most emerging adults.

Transitions between romantic relationships also contribute to this instability. Today, most couples will move in with the partners they ultimately marry and an increasing number will live with people who they don’t end up with. That means instability in both the romantic ties themselves and also emerging adults’ living situations. Many emerging adults also experience relationship cycling, in which they break up with a partner and then reunite days, weeks, or even years later. Exploring different romantic relationships is both caused by instability and creates some instability.

Self-Focus. Without the duty to care for a spouse or kids, emerging adults are able to focus on their own goals and desires. Self-focus is not about being selfish or narcissistic, though some scholars argue otherwise. Instead, self-focus allows emerging adults to explore the world with their own priorities at the forefront of their minds.

In their love lives, emerging adults show self-focus in their choices about whether and how to pursue romantic partnerships. Sometimes they keep things casual, so they have time and bandwidth to focus on school or work. Sometimes they stay single so they can develop their own interests or do some identity exploration without someone else in the mix. This is both normal and beneficial, according to my research findings with Jonathon Beckmeyer.

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Optimism and Possibilities. One of the things I love about studying and working with emerging adults is their sense of optimism about the future. Emerging adults have the freedom to imagine their lives developing in lots of different ways, and they are often excited to see how things unfold.

In their love lives, many emerging adults aspire to build relationships that are rooted in friendship and that act as a stabilizing force in their lives. They imagine a balance of romance and companionship. They almost all want to have a lifelong partner, even if they plan to wait a long time to make the commitment.

Takeaways for Emerging Adults

The transition to adulthood can be tricky. You have to coordinate your education, get a job that pays the bills, and find love (or choose singlehood with purpose). Meg Jay, a therapist who specializes in working with emerging adults, suggests that it helps to make some decisions and commitments during your twenties: You don’t have to have everything figured out, but settling in on one or two aspects of life can ease the sense of instability many emerging adults feel.

Takeaways for Parents and Loved Ones

Emerging adults need us to trust them to find their way. It is easy to view the instability of this period as inherently problematic, but in fact, it’s a gift for young adults to have time and space to explore themselves, their careers, and their relationships before making lifelong commitments. Serving as a positive, steady source of support as they build the life they want is among the most important things parents and other family members can do for their not-quite-adult loved ones.

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