Oh, Grow Up! Generational Grumbling and the New Life Stage of Emerging Adulthood—Commentary on Trzesniewski & Donnellan (2010)

In this commentary on the article by Trzesniewski and Donnellan (2010, this issue), I focus on the question of why young people today are viewed so negatively, despite the lack of evidence that they are worse (or worse off) now than they were in decades past. I propose that an important reason is the rise of emerging adulthood as a new life stage in between adolescence and young adulthood. Emerging adulthood developed in part because young people enter adult roles of stable work, marriage, and parenthood later now than they did in the past, leading many older people to view them as “late” or selfish, and the new features of this new life stage are frequently misunderstood and misinterpreted. I emphasize that the rise emerging adulthood is not merely generational but is likely to be a permanent addition to the life course.