Embedded in the word are cultural semantics that—often subtly, sometimes explicitly—provide us with clues about what it means to be welcomed into society as full members. This process of acknowledgement is one of mutuality. It is neither a matter of crossing a threshold or passing a rite of passage once and for all, nor a one-way trajectory of gradual adaptation. Rather, it is a dynamic, intersubjective process of social recognition in which collectivities and individuals are inescapably implicated.1 Our validation as full adults occurs in our dealings with the most removed and abstract state institutions; it shapes our experiences and subjectivities at school, at work, and in voluntary associations; and it is vital to our friendships and other intimate relationships, as well as our everyday encounters with strangers. This is important to note because according to the theory of social recognition our self-esteem and self-worth, our very humanity, hinge on the way these dynamics of recognition unfold in our lives, and how—sometimes knowingly but usually through habitual actions and learned attitudes—we negotiated their vicissitudes. This is the book's raison d'être and the crux of the argument, which it elaborates in order to highlight the social constitution and the meaning of adulthood in affluent, highly differentiated, contemporary societies.
To elaborate what is social about adulthood is not to imply, however, that adulthood is somehow foisted upon us, that we are passive recipients of an ascribed position. Through our practices we not only reproduce but also challenge and change received notions and ways of life. We are at once subject to and productive of those dynamics of social recognition that shape what it means to be an adult, whatever our self-perceptions and self-identifications may be. This is rarely acknowledged in the literature where a psychological approach prevails. Both as a critique of and a complement to the individualizing perspective, the sociological perspective evoked here enables us to illuminate and then rethink some salient contradictions and ambiguities concerning the perceptions, practices, and experiences of young adults as well as their social scientific valuations.
Adulthood and Social Science
As a discipline dedicated to analyzing and interpreting social change, sociology is well situated to investigate the ambiguities and uncertainties surrounding adulthood. It may come as a surprise, then, that although time and again sociologists have marveled at the dearth of sociological investigations of adulthood as an area in its own right, none have to date addressed it adequately. The call to do just that has been made by generations of sociologists. For instance, in 1976 the journal Daedalus dedicated an issue to adulthood in which its editor-in-chief, Stephen R. Graubard, expressed the following concern:
[T]he word ‘adulthood’ figures rarely in the scientific literature of our time; it has none of the concreteness that attaches to terms such as ‘childhood’ or ‘adolescence,’ and indeed seems almost a catch-all cry for everything that happens to the individual human being after a specific chronological age—whether eighteen, twenty-one, or some other…. We are insufficiently informed about how concepts of adulthood have changed over time, about how adult behavior is culturally conditioned…[and thus] more substantial inquiry is called for. (1976: v)
A few years later, Neil J. Smelser (1980: 2) observed: “Why the adult years, arguably the most productive and in some ways the most gratifying years in the life course, should have gone unattended for so long is a mystery.” More recently, Jane Pilcher (1995: 82) echoed Smelser's sentiments when she referred to “the neglect of adulthood as a social category,” as did James E. Côté (2000: 53) when he noted, “although adulthood…constitutes the longest period of the life course, it is the least understood.” Returning to the topic in 2003, Pilcher and colleagues (2003: 1) summarized the state of affairs concerning adulthood in sociology: “It seems odd that while sociology is largely concerned with the practices and experiences of adults, there is as yet no convincing ‘sociology of adulthood’ equivalent to the established areas of sociologies of childhood, of youth and of old age. Moreover, each of these major stages of the life course is defined, in cultural practices and in sociological theories, largely in relation to adulthood.” This book not only addresses the unusual relationship between sociology and adulthood, but also aims to make a contribution to a much-needed sociological turn, particularly in all those areas that are concerned with the life course.
Psychology, on the other hand, abounds with literature on adulthood. From the viewpoint of developmental psychology, adult individuals are expected to have made the vital decisions that give them a direction in life; to have acquired a set of stable preferences, life-guiding principles, and a range of social competencies facilitating their social interactions. Terms such as independence, responsibility for self and others, commitment, and maturity come to mind. Stability in and commitment to work and intimate relationships—“the capacity to work and love,” as Freud allegedly called it—are other related criteria that are central to psychological approaches to adulthood.2 Psychologists began to take a particular interest in this “life stage” some time after the discovery of the “midlife crisis.” With this term Elliot Jacques (1965) attempted to explain a perceived rupture with earlier modalities of adulthood, although it took some ten years before the midlife crisis entered the vernacular with the publication of Gail Sheehy's Passages (1976). Since then there has been no shortage of psychological writings on the midlife period (e.g., B.L. Neugarten 1964; Kimmel 1974; Bischof 1976; Gould 1978; Colarusso and Nemiroff 1981; Allman 1982; Stevens-Long 1988; Commons et al. 1989; Turner and Helms 1989). In fact, the psychological approach to adulthood dominates the social scientific purview and is the main influence on sociologists dealing with the subject. In the few relevant works with a sociological bent—particularly in recent writing—adulthood is seen as dependent on individuals' self-understanding or is conceived as primarily a psychological state. By and large, these views are underpinned by a longstanding belief that adulthood lies at the end of a journey of basic psychosocial development and identity formation. As this book shows, there are historical reasons for the dominance of this view. What is of particular interest is the fact that sociologists still use this conventional, teleological model of adulthood as the template for the evaluation of young people's practices and orientations. When social trends, such as prolonged stays in the parental home, relatively late or forfeited marriage and family formation, and short-term goals are compared with this template, the conclusion is a fait accompli: an increasing number of individuals take longer to reach adulthood than was the case for previous generations. This is the standard view; it spans more than a half-century of social science discourse on the young generation and is, I suspect, not easily dislodged from its settled position. Often social scientists evaluate the trends negatively. What they perceive as particularly problematic is the transition to adulthood, rather than the nature of this presumed destination. That is to say, as far as adulthood is the focus of sociological analysis at all, it is its alleged postponement that overwhelmingly attracts attention. The meaning of adulthood remains by and large unarticulated. As a consequence, the possibility that what is understood to lie at journey's end is itself undergoing profound changes is rarely vetted.
Discourse in the media does no better. Although young people's alleged refusal to grow up is high on the agenda, reports rarely proffer opinions that go beyond a generation's supposed attitudes and consumer behavior. A good measure of crossfertilization between social-scientific and media views ensures the reproduction of everyday assumptions about what adulthood is, and what adults ought to do or refrain from doing. As such, adulthood is a salient example of the resilience of ideas, not least because social scientists and commentators cling to their understanding of what it means to be an adult—something that is in all probability connected to their own, historically contingent experiences of growing up. But of course meanings do change, even if they change slowly: “In the course of…evolutionary transformations, word forms, set phrases, adages and precepts may very well continue to be handed down over the generations; however, their meaning changes and with it the way in which they pinpoint a specific referent, encapsulate specific experiences and open up new