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INTRODUCTION

Exploring Adulthood

Working nine to five, dinner parties, jury duty, and voting; marriages, mortgages, and children; the family sedan, adultery, and divorce; investment portfolios, nest eggs, life insurance, writing a will—these are things we do, strive for or object to, hold dear, or consider commonplace. None of these words are associated with childhood or adolescence; all of them connote in one way or another the responsibilities, commitments, and autonomy of adulthood. And just as these words describe ordinary possessions, practices, and relationships, so adulthood too has something less than remarkable about it. In fact, for most people today who consider themselves grown up, adulthood is no mystery. For them, it is the middle period of life that follows adolescence. Consequently, the need to inquire into its meaning does not arise. Yet, for an increasing number of others things are less clear-cut. As soon as they reflect and ask themselves whether or not they are actually grown up, they begin to doubt and question their adulthood. These may include 29-year-olds who “still” live with their parents; 35-year-olds in tertiary education; those in their mid thirties and beyond who are not prepared to commit to a partner, let alone a family. Add to this that in today's society statements such as “kids grow up too soon these days,” or “young people just won't grow up,” live side by side.

The meaning of adulthood is further unsettled by the fact that modern societies do not provide definite answers as to when it begins. This is so with respect to officialdom as well as everyday life. Even a cursory glance at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)—Australia's equivalent of Britain's National Statistics and the U.S. Census—confirms that there is no official agreement as to what age marks the beginning of adulthood. Definitions and delimitations vary according to specific areas of analysis and their relevant publications. Thus the ABS differentiates between “young people (15–24),” “population 25–64,” and “older persons (65+),” while at the same time referring to those under 35 as “young people” and labeling “adult” all those 15 and over (ABS 2001a; 2003; 2004a). Similarly, the U.S. Census Bureau may refer to “adult population 18+” (USCB 2004a) just as well as to “adults age 15 and over” (J. Hess 2001).

In everyday life too we may wonder what marks the beginning of adulthood. Is it the twenty-first birthday in Anglophone societies, or perhaps reaching the age of majority at 18, 19, or 21? Is it a process of development rather than crossing one threshold or another? Perhaps self-perception is the key? Or perhaps it is marriage, parenthood, work, independent living? Taken together, these uncertainties are signs that adulthood is becoming less ordinary, that it is losing its taken-for-granted status, and that as a result the meaning of adulthood is becoming increasingly ambiguous and contingent. This contingency and ambiguity invite us to explore the social realities and experiences they suffuse.

We judge our adulthood as well as that of others in reference to institutions and practices, mentalities, worldviews, and sensibilities that are quasi outside of ourselves. These “social facts,” as Emile Durkheim (1966) called them, exist prior to and beyond our lives, and yet it is we who reproduce and transform them through our actions. As lay participants in everyday life we evaluate, mostly by reflex, individuals' attainment or nonattainment of adult status according to objective achievements such as stable fulltime work, stable relationships, independent living, and parenthood. That is, although we experience them as personal circumstances we usually do not personally create these benchmarks in order specifically to mark our adulthood. These benchmarks are deeply ingrained in the culture as part of a preexisting assembly of representations and achievements that denote adult status. This is also where the seeming banality of the word “adulthood” ends.

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 perspectives” (Luhmann 1986: 8). I trace the shifts in the meaning of a word by focusing attention on the practices and perceptions that underpin its social manifestations.

Approach and Method

I explore ways in which adulthood can be adequately conceptualized against the background of current forms of social life. I do not argue against psychologically oriented approaches, but seek to draw attention to the need for a complementary, sociological perspective from which social trends can be viewed in a larger context, and in a different light. To this end, my approach is to consider modalities of social integration in a time of advanced individualization and to reveal the affinities between culture and individuals' practices. Because little has been written about adulthood from a social-theoretical perspective, this study is skewed toward theory building. But even where the book is at its most abstract and ostensibly at considerable distance from social reality, its questions and considerations are always cast against the background of lived experience. It thus pays attention to the principal protagonists—“new adults”—throughout.³ That is, even though their voices are heard in two specific chapters only, the active progenitors of change are present from the first page to the last. This fact, I hope, makes for good theory and thus also for good reading.

My interpretation of qualitative data is the result of conversations with twelve individuals. These conversations do not aim at the kind of scope that representative, enumerative studies may provide, but at depth (Crouch and McKenzie 2006). That is to say, I seek to identify perceptions, experiences, and attitudes in order to gain insights into contemporary adulthood as lived experience. The respondents' stories are invaluable guideposts toward a better understanding of a research area particularly when, as in the present case, that area is relatively underexplored. One of the very valuable aspects to “the logic of small samples in qualitative research” is that earlier conversations remain present as a frame of reference while new material is being offered, allowing a continuous revisiting of one interview interpretation against others (Crouch and McKenzie 2006). And so, taken together, juxtaposed against one another, and projected against a conceptual background assembled through an intensive study of relevant scholarly and nonacademic materials, thematic strands emerge that help give shape to a picture of adulthood that challenges commonsense assumptions. As a theory-building project the book investigates emerging social trends rather than analyzing specific social situations in a given milieu.

The history I sketch, and from which I draw, is the history of economically advanced, pluralist, secular societies that share the liberal-democratic tradition. The adage “Western” is thus no more than a summary concept. In fact, many of the social trends discussed here are also social realities in societies that fall outside the boundaries of what is commonly understood by the term. If not on a nationwide basis, this nevertheless pertains to more affluent milieus inside less developed or developing countries. In light of current globalizing tendencies, Eduardo Galeano's (2000: 26) distinction of “global North” and “global South” is apposite here—and points to further research possibilities. My writing about the decades following the Second World War—the time when the common-sense model of adulthood came into its own—is in no way intended as a comprehensive, differentiated exegesis of the social conditions that framed growing up during that time. This would unnecessarily stretch the limits of this volume as well as the conceptual apparatus required to reveal the emerging redefinition of adulthood. Rather, I selectively highlight some widely researched key themes that lend themselves well to comparison.

Australia is where the research is situated; its social, political, and economic conditions frame the perceptions, views, and experiences of the interviewees and thus the conceptual innovations of the text as a whole. Yet, there are benefits to an international readership that flow from this very fact. The U.S. reader will be reminded of some salient national similarities: both Australia and the U.S. are relatively new settler societies; they are part of the same linguistic community; and they share the Common Law heritage of their respective justice systems. Further, having gone through thoroughgoing economic reforms from about the middle of the 1980s, Australia is, today, firmly in the grip of a neoliberal dispensation. Under the leadership of John Howard the country has moved ever closer to the U.S. in matters of environmental, economic, and foreign policy. Like many North Americans, many Australians are familiar with the “dark side of economic reform” (Pusey 2003), just as they are familiar with terrorism's real and imagined threats. The uncertainties with which this book deals have clear—and for that reason not always articulated—links to changes in the sociopolitical environment. For example, at the time of writing, the Australian Industrial Relations system is at the brink of a transformation that could well further undermine working people's ability to envisage a coherent, long-term biographical trajectory. This particularly affects young people. U.S. citizens are no strangers to these issues, and some Europeans would do well to learn advance lessons before their governments too embark on further economic deregulation, privatization, and the inexorable, near-total individualization of all of life's responsibilities. In other words, Australia is both a typical and an extraordinary case, and as such it is well placed to give clues to an increasingly global redefinition of contemporary adulthood.

Structure of the Book

The volume proceeds from the discussion of general, conceptual questions to an exploration of personal experiences. How is adulthood culturally represented? What is the productive connection between our commonsense understanding of adulthood and its social scientific representations? What is the relationship between age norms, notions of maturity, and adulthood? How is the prevailing model of adulthood deployed in current perspectives on contemporary young adults, and how is it reproduced? These are some of the questions addressed in chapter 1. Their elaboration leads to a critique of a current orthodoxy, which I term the “delayed adulthood thesis.” It examines the image of adulthood this approach uses, and by situating it in its historical context sets the scene for an alternative conceptualization developed in subsequent chapters.

The burdens as well as the opportunities of choosing from a plethora of seemingly proliferating options in what has been called “individualized society” (Bauman 2001a) and the imperative to turn one's life into a project are central moments of contemporary modernity which affect the transformation of adulthood. Chapter 2 shows that negotiating these contingencies means, in practice, to negotiate some fundamental shifts in the contemporary life course. Biographies are losing footholds of old; temporal guarantees of long standing are diminishing; uncertainty is becoming normalized, particularly for a generation that has known no different. This chapter brings into focus some of the most salient aspects of the social conditions that frame our understanding as well as the experiences of contemporary adulthood.

The following chapters are dedicated to a reconceptualization of adulthood that encompasses the social changes of the recent past as well as emerging forms of sociability. Adhering to a perspective that sees self-perception of one's adult or nonadult status as ultimately socially grounded, I elaborate this point in chapter 3 by way of Axel Honneth's theory of social recognition. Here I address our cultural association of adulthood with full personhood.This semantic cannot, however, be divorced from shifts in Western perceptions of youth—an idea that is at least as difficult to make tangible as the idea of adulthood. Youth is sometimes vaguely circumscribed as a desirable attribute, sometimes precisely delimited as a phase of life for statistical purposes. Chapter 4 discusses youth in terms of an ideology in the broad sense of the word. I trace the historical transformation and the subsequent expansion of youth as an ideal across the life course, and I connect this with dynamics of social recognition that are specific to advanced capitalist societies.

This study is an exploration of the redefinition of social norms. At the same time it is a study in social recognition. To be sure, the emergence of new norms and the changing relations of recognition are inseparable from one another. These processes unfold as a consequence of people's ordinary, everyday actions. There is perhaps no better way to illuminate changes in society than to ask those who are most directly implicated in these changes. Thus, chapters 5 and 6 turn to the experience of contemporary adulthood. I analyze material gathered in interviews in order to fathom how the respondents configure their adulthood today; how they negotiate a fragmented life course; how they deal with an all-pervasive uncertainty. By way of summary, I conclude with reflections concerning the affinities between social conditions and contemporary adulthood in the final chapter.

To seek to grasp the here and now—with one eye on the past and the other on the future, while the present shifts underfoot—is something that by its very nature can never be completely mastered. In this endeavor I have taken my lead from Zygmunt Bauman (2001a: 13), who reminds us that “close engagement with the ongoing effort to rearticulate the changing human condition under which the ‘increasingly individualized individuals’ find themselves as they struggle to invest sense and purpose in their lives is…the paramount task of sociology.” This, then, is an effort to do justice to that vision and to the promise it contains.