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Relationships with teens and parents can be difficult, but significant changes often take place during emerging adulthood as well. How do emerging adults relationships with their parents develop? Are they better or worse than their teenage years?

The post Parent relationships: perspectives from emerging adults appeared first on OUPblog.

Is this what they call the dog days? Not for me! This is my first summer living in Boston instead of Tucson, and I’m soaking up the beautiful high-80s temps they call “hot” around here and spending as much time outside as possible. But I did manage to go inside and find a few interesting tidbits for your personal interest and professional usefulness.

• Have you ever tried to explain to someone why their offhand comment that “that’s gay” offends you? Or been annoyed when you offer to help carry something heavy and you’re refused because you’re female? Maybe someone made a rude joke about Middle Easterners not knowing you are of Saudi descent? These are called “microaggressions,” and the Microaggressions Project, a collective blog made up of submissions from anyone who wants to share an experience of feeling belittled, ignored, or just frustrated, whether because of their religious beliefs, gender identity, race, victim status, or a variety of other factors. Without resorting to hate speech or angry tirades (and no specific names, locations, or other identifying information is in any of the submissions), this blog would not only be a great resource for teens who feel like their voices aren’t being heard, but you could talk with your advisory group and possibly start your own project, with something as easy as index cards and a locked jar or box.
• Do you do any prevention programs in your library regarding tobacco, alcohol, or substance abuse? Not that you aren’t doing a good job, but you might want to think about asking teens themselves to develop an engaging, innovative program. In a paper published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, researchers found that teenagers were most receptive to anti-smoking ads when they were delivered by peers, not adults, and they were more interested in those ads that stressed the lifelong effects of smoking, particularly the negative ones like money spent on packs per week. Maybe sometimes negativity isn’t such a bad thing.
  Latimer, A.E., et al. (2012). Targeted smoking cessation messages for adolescents. Journal of Adolescent Health, 50(1): 47-53.
• I hope it isn’t wishful thinking when I propose this next topic for your thousands of patrons who will be coming in in the next few weeks before heading off to college, maybe to return one last pile of books and DVDs or just to say goodbye and thanks to you, their ally. Make sure your collegebound patrons (as well as those who will be entering the workforce or alternative programs) know that reading doesn’t stop after high school. While the publishing industry makes up its mind on whether or not New Adult is a viable new category, plenty of bloggers are gathering resources for writers and readers who want to graduate from YA but not jump straight into books about 40something divorce(e)s. And the Book Report Network, a set of linked book review sites, recently launched 20Something Reads, a special branch dedicated to that same group. Slowly but surely, books are trickling out that deal with post-high school confusion to post-college drama.
• Weeding a bunch of old magazines? Before tossing them in the recycling bin, check out Ben Heine’s Pencil Vs. Camera Project. First, be wowed. Look up and count how many hours you’ve been at your computer. Then consider tearing out interesting pictures from magazines, printing out or Pinning some of your favorites of Heine’s, and encouraging your patrons to do the same. As someone whose stance on fine art is to enjoy but never partake, I recall a similar assignment in fifth grade art class, and I’m so proud of my drawing of deer that I still have it, more than a decade later. There’s somethin
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Recently the New York Times published a major story featuring Jeffrey Arnett’s research on “emerging adulthood,” his term for the age period from 18 to 29. The article received tremendous attention (boosting it to the position of top emailed story) and Arnett was soon asked to appear on the Today Show, among other major media outlets around the world. In the original post below, he expands on the ideas previously presented and responds to stereotypes about emerging adults.

By Jeffrey Arnett

How do you know when you’ve reached adulthood? This is one of the first questions I asked when I began my research on people in their twenties, and it remains among the most fascinating to me. I expected that people would mostly respond in terms of the traditional transition events that take place for most people in the 18-29 age period: moving out of parents’ household, finishing education, marriage, and parenthood. To my surprise, none of these transition events turned out to hold much importance as markers of adulthood. In fact, finishing education, marriage, and having at least one child have consistently ended up near the bottom in importance in the many surveys that I and others have done in the United States and around the world over the past decade.

Consistently, across countries, ethnic groups, gender, and social classes, the “Big Three” criteria for reaching adulthood are these: 1) Accept responsibility for yourself, 2) Make independent decisions, 3) Become financially independent.

What the Big Three have in common is that they all denote self-sufficiency. For emerging adults, adulthood means learning to stand on your own as a self-sufficient person. Only when you have attained self-sufficiency are you ready to take on the obligations of marriage and parenthood. Because the Big Three all occur gradually rather than as one-time events, most emerging adults feel in-between until at least their mid-twenties, on the way to adulthood but not there yet.

There are negative stereotypes that have sprung up with regard to emerging adults: that they are lazy, spoiled, selfish, and never want to grow up. These stereotypes are common and extremely unfair. Lazy? Have you noticed lately who is pouring your coffee, working the retail counter, mowing the lawns? It’s mostly emerging adults who are doing the crummy, low-paying, no-benefits jobs older adults try to avoid. Emerging adults often hold one or more of these jobs and combining them with going to school as they try to work their way up to something better. Spoiled and selfish? Who is it that is applying in record numbers to Teach for America, Americorps, and the Peace Corps, among other volunteer organizations? Not their Baby-Boomer critics, but emerging adults. Never want to grow up? By age 30 most people are married, have at least one child, and are committed to a stable career path. Why begrudge them the freedom of their twenties to try to make the best possible adult lives for themselves, and to have fun and adventures that they will not be able to have later?

Whatever older adults think of it, emerging adulthood is here to stay as a stage of the life course. Instead of tearing them down, as parents and as a society we should be building them up and giving them the support they need to enjoy their twenties and have a successful entry into the responsibilities of adult life.

Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Ph.D. is a Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at 0 Comments on 20-somethings: NOT lazy, spoiled, or selfish as of 1/1/1900