Christian Smith, Kari Christofferson, Hilary Davidson, and Patricial Snell Herzog, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood. Zondervan, 2011.
Prequels:
Referenced in: Generational Issues
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
This builds on the extensive research of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) that spawned the prequels to this book. Here, the authors focus on 18-23 year old Americans. It is expressly not a comprehensive picture of this sub-generation, but instead looks at the darker side of emerging adulthood. This should be balanced by the fact that many emerging adults’ lives are “full of fun, freedom, new growth, and promising opportunities,” and that many are “interesting, creative, and sometimes very impressive people.” Nevertheless, the book conveys the haunting conclusion that although they have more freedom, opportunities, and personal growth than any in this life stage before them, the result is a transition to adulthood that is challengingly complex, disjointed, and confusing.
The authors try not to “obsess about the negative for its own sake, nor to sound some kind of alarmist knell of cultural doom.” Instead they seek to “expand our understanding of emerging adulthood,” toward reconsidering “our cultural priorities and practices in ways that might enhance the well-being of emerging adults.” They engage a kind of “sociological imagination,” which
seeks to understand the personal experience of individual people, on the one hand, and larger social cultural trends, forces, and powers, on the other by explaining each in terms of the other. The larger social world, it recognizes, is constructed and shaped by all of the life activities of its people that part is not hard to grasp. But the sociological imagination additionaly helps us to see that the experiences and outcomes of people’s lives are also powerfully shaped by the trends, forces, and powers of larger social institutions and cultural meaning systems.
As applied to the lives of emerging adults, the authors claim a kind of “realistic care” in which
We do not simply describe their lives. We also seek to understand and explain their lives sociologically, but viewing them in the larger context of culture and society in which they are lived.
The authors stress that these larger cultural stressors should not be seen fundamentally as belonging only to EAs, because “most of the problems in the lives of youth have their origins in the larger adult world into which the youth are being socialized.” In this respect, they highlight six “macro” sociocultural transformations that were especially formative for young Americans between the ages of 18 and 30.
- The dramatic growth of higher education, resulting in fewer youth extending their formal schooling well into their 20s, and an increasing number continuing in graduate- and professional-school programs often up until their 30s.
- The delay of marriage, such that from 1950-2006, the median age of first marriage for women rose from 20.3 to 25.9, and for men from 22.8 to 27.5. Many of today’s youth “spend almost a decade between high school graduation and marriage exploing life’s many options as singles, in unprecedented freedom.”
- Changes in the American and global economy undermine stable, lifelong careers and replace them insted with careers with lower security, more frequent job changes, and an ongoing need for new training and education. This pushces youth toward extended schooling, delayed marriage, and a general psychological orientation toward maximizing options and postponing commitments.
- Parents of today’s youth are aware of the resources it often takes to succeed, and are increasingly willing to extend financial support to their children well into their 20s and perhaps 30s. This subsidizes emerging adults’ freedom to enter more slowly and thoughtfully into adulthood.
- The variety, reliability, ease, and accessibility of birth control methods which disconnected sexual intercourse from procreation in the minds of many Americans. This made sex an increasingly recreational activity.
- Poststructuralism and postmodernism – which shook the modern foundations of empistemology, certainty, reason, universalism, the self, authorial voice, the nation state, colonialsm, the Word, etc.
From there, the writers explain five areas where these and other trends have most negatively influenced emerging adults:
- Chapter 1 – Morally Adrift: Addresses an inability to think coherently about moral beliefs and problems, to where everything as simply a matter of individual choice.
- Chapter 2 – Captive to Consumerism: Discusses an obsession on the good life as defined by consumption and materialism, and the idea that people should feel free to exercise their right to spend as much as they wish on material goods.
- Chapter 3 – Intoxication’s “Fake Feeling of Happiness”: Explains the prevalence of routine intoxication and drug abuse.
- Chapter 4 – Shadow Side of sexual Liberation: Describes the accepted practice of casual sex divorced from the concerns of physical, mental, and moral health, which leads to deeper existential regrets.
- Chapter 5 – Civil and Political Disengagement: Chronicles the widespread disengagement from civic and political life.
This is a very sobering look at EA culture. It should not be used by ministers to point out the faults, but to form the backdrop of a message of hope and the recovering of God’s gracious intent for life that transcends moral confusion, consumerism, intoxication, sexual freedom, and political wrangling. You may also want to read the insightful review from an emerging adult, Megan Scherrier, as well as the New York Times’ David Brooks opinion piece in the New York Times.
From the Publisher
Life for emerging adults is vastly different today than it was for their counterparts even a generation ago. Young people are waiting longer to marry, to have children, and to choose a career direction. As a result, they enjoy more freedom, opportunities, and personal growth than ever before. But the transition to adulthood is also more complex, disjointed, and confusing.
In Lost in Transition, Christian Smith and his collaborators draw on 230 in-depth interviews with a broad cross-section of emerging adults (ages 18-23) to investigate the difficulties young people face today, the underlying causes of those difficulties, and the consequences both for individuals and for American society as a whole. Rampant consumer capitalism, ongoing failures in education, hyper-individualism, postmodernist moral relativism, and other aspects of American culture are all contributing to the chaotic terrain that emerging adults must cross. Smith identifies five major problems facing very many young people today: confused moral reasoning, routine intoxication, materialistic life goals, regrettable sexual experiences, and disengagement from civic and political life. The trouble does not lie only with the emerging adults or their poor individual decisions but has much deeper roots in mainstream American culture—a culture which emerging adults have largely inherited rather than created. Older adults, Smith argues, must recognize that much of the responsibility for the pain and confusion young people face lies with them. Rejecting both sky-is-falling alarmism on the one hand and complacent disregard on the other, Smith suggests the need for what he calls “realistic concern”—and a reconsideration of our cultural priorities and practices—that will help emerging adults more skillfully engage unique challenges they face.
Even-handed, engagingly written, and based on comprehensive research, Lost in Transition brings much needed attention to the darker side of the transition to adulthood.
About the Authors
Christian Smith is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society, Director of the Notre Dame Center for Social Research, Principal Investigator of the National Study of Youth and Religion, and Principal Investigator of the Science of Generosity Initiative. His books include Souls in Transition (with P. Snell); Moral, Believing Animals; and Soul Searching (with M.L. Denton).
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