Lost in transition: the dark side of emerging adulthood

Abstract

Reviews the book, "Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood" by Christian Smith, Kari Christoffersen, Hilary Davison & Patricia Snell Herzog (2011). Is there a clear threshold between adolescence and adulthood? Young adults who have just graduated from high school and either entered college or the workforce are living in this transitional period. On the one hand, they have the freedom to shape their future lives. On the other hand, they are usually not fully independent of their parents, because they may lack stable social or economic status. They experience aspects of both adolescence and adulthood, making it difficult to classify their experience according to these traditional categories. The book addresses this issue. The authors start the book with a description of their methodology. To achieve a more sophisticated understanding of the period, they approach young adults through sociology. Topics treated in the four subsequent sections include consumerism, drug abuse, sexual liberation and civic and political disengagement. The book shows that the goal of most of the emerging adults is to achieve material affluence. This book is mainly concerned with the sociological investigation of the phenomena and their causes, it does not propose concrete educational methods. The authors emphasize the role of the older generation as an agent of socialization. The key solutions suggested by the book are the reformation of social institutions and the efforts of older adults to establish firm relationship with emerging adults. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)