Wright, Megan and von Stumm, Sophie orcid.org/0000-0002-0447-5471 (2024) Perceptions of Adulthood:What Does it Mean to be Grown-Up? Journal of Adult Development. ISSN 1573-3440
Abstract
Adulthood has traditionally been defined by the attainment of socio-demographic milestones such as career, marriage, and parenthood, but these milestones are increasingly delayed or have become inaccessible for young people today. As a result, young people are likely to experience a discrepancy between their expectations for and their actual reality of adulthood, which can negatively affect their well-being and psychological development. To systematically study contemporary definitions of and attitudes towards adulthood, we assessed a sample of 722 UK adults with an age range from 18 to 77 years on: (a) subjective adult status, or the extent to which people feel like adults; (b) attitudes towards adulthood, or whether people think adulthood is a positive time of life; and (c) the characteristics that people use to define adulthood today. We found that most participants felt adult and had positive attitudes towards adulthood. Our participants defined adulthood predominantly through psychological characteristics, for example “Accepting responsibility for the consequences of my actions” (endorsed by 80% of the sample), rather than by socio-demographic milestones which were endorsed by only 22–40% of participants. Both subjective adult status and attitudes towards adulthood were significantly associated with older age and the attainment of the socio-demographic milestones of marriage and parenthood. Regression analyses revealed that having a positive attitude towards adulthood was the strongest psychological predictor of subjective adult status, accounting for 10% of the variance. This suggests that fostering positive attitudes towards adulthood may help improving the well-being of contemporary adults.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024 Funding Information: MW is recipient of a PhD stipend from Hogan Assessments. SvS was supported by a CRISP Fellowship from the Jacobs Foundation (2022–2027), a British Academy Mid-career Fellowship (2022–2023), and Fellowship from the Institute d’etudes advancees de Paris (2023–2024) during the writing of this paper. |
Keywords: | Adult development,Aging,Emerging adulthood,Grown-up,Maturity |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Social Sciences (York) > Education (York) |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 03 Apr 2024 09:10 |
Last Modified: | 16 Oct 2024 19:52 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1007/s10804-024-09477-8 |
Status: | Published |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10804-024-09477-8 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:211143 |