A New Stage of Life
As I have mentioned in at least one other blog, I am interested in the age group of 18-30 years old. For the most part, they have disappeared from the church. What to make of this and how to address this is worthy of our attention and concern.
In an article, "Getting a Life," in the most recent issue of Books & Culture the author, sociologist Christian Smith, reviews some recent books about this cohort of young people. The name to describe this new stage of life is "emerging adulthood." As adolescence became a distinct stage of life in the 20th century, so emerging adulthood has become a distinct stage of life in the 21st century.
Smith delineates four very important social forces that have combined to create this new stage of life.
1. The growth in higher education. After the GI bill after WWII, the number of people attending college skyrocketed. Now many young people feel that they need masters degrees and Ph.D.s to prepare themselves for their vocation and so extend formal schooling well into the 20's and early 30's.
2. The delay of marriage. The median age of marriage for women rose from 20 to 25 and for men rose from 22 to 27 between 1950 and 2000, with the sharpest rise occurring after 1970.
3. The American global economy that destabilizes lifelong careers and replaces these with many job changes with much less security.
4. In part because of the above, parents are more willing to offer financial support to the emerging adulthood generation. Research indicates that parents on average spend $38,340 of material assistance on each child from ages 18-34. This helps give this age group freedom before settling down.
Jeffrey Arnett in Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the late Teens through the Twenties, one of the books reviewed by Smith, writes about the loosening connection between this group and the faith of their families. He writes,
In an article, "Getting a Life," in the most recent issue of Books & Culture the author, sociologist Christian Smith, reviews some recent books about this cohort of young people. The name to describe this new stage of life is "emerging adulthood." As adolescence became a distinct stage of life in the 20th century, so emerging adulthood has become a distinct stage of life in the 21st century.
Smith delineates four very important social forces that have combined to create this new stage of life.
1. The growth in higher education. After the GI bill after WWII, the number of people attending college skyrocketed. Now many young people feel that they need masters degrees and Ph.D.s to prepare themselves for their vocation and so extend formal schooling well into the 20's and early 30's.
2. The delay of marriage. The median age of marriage for women rose from 20 to 25 and for men rose from 22 to 27 between 1950 and 2000, with the sharpest rise occurring after 1970.
3. The American global economy that destabilizes lifelong careers and replaces these with many job changes with much less security.
4. In part because of the above, parents are more willing to offer financial support to the emerging adulthood generation. Research indicates that parents on average spend $38,340 of material assistance on each child from ages 18-34. This helps give this age group freedom before settling down.
Jeffrey Arnett in Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the late Teens through the Twenties, one of the books reviewed by Smith, writes about the loosening connection between this group and the faith of their families. He writes,
The most interesting and surprising feature of emerging adults' religious beliefs is how little relationship there is between the religious training they received throughout childhood and the religious beliefs they hold at the time they reach emerging adulthood...In statistical analyses [of interview subjects' answers], there was no relationship between exposure to religious training in childhood and any aspect of their religious beliefs as emerging adults...This is a different pattern than is found in adolescence [which reflects greater continuity]...Evidently something changes between adolescence and emerging adulthood that dissolves the link between the religious beliefs of parents and the beliefs of their children.This ought to give us pause. The question I have is, why the disconnect?
posted by UCC Medfield at 8:06 AM
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