Novita

Me and my path to adulthood

 

 

Even a few decades ago transitions to adulthood follow a certain general pattern:  childhood was embedded in a pre-school and early school period, a period of vocational training corresponded to youth, work period was characterized by adulthood (work and family), the age and retirement are followed by a period of withdrawal from the labor market. Since the eighties, however, this scheme began to collapse. This was particularly influenced by the labor market and changes in transitions from school to work. The policies in most developed countries have been forced to adapt and extend the transition from youth to adulthood. Due to many factors, especially lifelong learning, covering all generations of people, and due to different labour market requirements, the need for a division of a society on the young and old recently become less relevant. This process takes away the youth in a way that some important features of youth extends to all generations and all life . Among these at the first place, there is a need for continuing education and the creation of their own lifestyle. These features previously belonged mainly to young people. Today, however, anyone who wants to be successful in the modern (post-industrial) societies has to conquer.

 

In modern life, timing is everything. Everything is changing very fast. A transition from youth to adulthood are not more predictable than they were in the past. In some activities specific to adults, young people enter very early, already at the end of childhood, for example in consumerism. Surveys of young people in the last decade in Slovenia shows that young people decide on their appearance and act as active consumers at the end of childhood, while, for example creating your own family and the birth of children is moving deep into adulthood.

 

Life paths of young people and adults are increasingly intertwined. In every moment of your life you can "start over"; once again you can go back in education, re- start family life, re- start a career. In other words, even in adulthood, you decide on matters which are normal to decide when you're young . Typical job of "adults" and "young people" are becoming more mixed: more and more schoolchildren and students work while adults are returning to education processes. A period when young people look forward to work and adults were reminding themselves of their school days, is over. Now young people look back on their working days and adults to their continue schooling. Many young people work even longer hours than attend school.

 

There is therefore, the key change in the family, work and everyday life. The authority of parents has decreased, on the other hand, the authority of young people increased, particularly in terms of free time. Young people are getting married later, they longes stays single and prefer partnerships rather than marriages. En educational period was significantly lengthened and became lifelong. Work is becoming more flexible and more people want to show themselves in the profession. Young people and adults are not interested in politics to a large extent. Media in the field of fashion, sexuality and communication have a significant impact on everyday life.

 

Although young people are economically dependent on their parents, they are the most important consumers. Young people are the target group for the marketing of fashion, clothes, popular music, etc. Primarily in the U.S. youth represents a large market, which consumes almost 3 billion dollars a year. This consumption is triggered by pop culture, that is proclaimed by the mass media. Pop culture today is driven by industry of free time (music, fashion, cosmetics).

 

Late stepping into adulthood has both positive and negative effects. The positive effect is mainly that young people have time to experiment, what would they like to become in life. Of course, this has positive effects only for those who wish to do this and have the possibility to experiment. Those who do not want or can not do, have to wait and waiting often has negative consequences, for example, prolonged dependence on parents, uncertainty about the future, which can also lead to passivity.

 

The feature of today's society is, that young people postpone marriage because they live longer with their parents because they go to school. They go to school because all well-paid jobs require higher education. Not only they prolong education, but also study longer.

 

Sociologists have found that between adolescence and adulthood penetrated new interim period, that is called by some authors "pre-adulthood period" others call it (youthhood) or as "young adults". Typically for young adults is that these are people who otherwise have many signs of maturity, but no significant signs of maturity: either they are not economically independent, unemployed, they don't have their own family/children, but live like children in the family of origin (parents, siblings) and are economically supported by their parents or society.

 

Young adults have frequent transitions between different situations:

• leaving the parental home and return in a few months;

• leaving school and again include in over time;

• find work, that they can lose it in an instant;

• they live in uncertain partnership for which they do not know how long it will last;

• they change their career aspirations due to their personal preferences or because of the situation on the labor market.

 

In the past, transitions to adulthood were marked by a diploma, marriage, job or moving from the parents. With all these changes in of life processes that are characteristics of modern society, many young people and adults are wondering what it means to be an adult or I am an adult.