Literature Review 1

    A literature piece that will give me further insight into my topic of college no longer being the rite of passage toward maturity is "Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties" by Jeffry Jensen Arnett. Jeffry Jensen Arnett has a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. His primary field of study is the age of emerging adulthood, where he concentrates on a wide array of topics such as ethnicity. He also studied emerging adulthood in Denmark as a Fullbright Scholar in 2005. His research on emerging adulthood gives him the right credibility for the use of my research paper.
    I chose this book because Arnett writes about the lives of young adults and how their transition into adulthood has dramatically changed when comparing its status now to how it used to me. He has given a name to this change, which is emerging adulthood, another stage in itself. This is when young adults delay starting a family and settling down due to "self-focused exploration" (Arnett 8). This is the age of independence and separation from the dependence of family. This concept is now delayed through one specific way. Arnett writes how this is one of the reasons why this stage has developed between adolescence and adulthood. Marriage used to be the determining factor of whether an individual has entered adulthood or not, but in today's time, that understanding has changed. "It is meaningful in in other important ways, of course, but its status as a marker of adult status has passed (Arnett 208). This is due to the reason that marriage is no longer a strong dramatic transaction like it used to be. Divorce rate has risen to 50% in America, which explains how it is taken less seriously. As said by Chalantra, a 20 year old woman, "When I decided to get divorced, I made that decision on my own, and I feel like that makes you an adult" (Arnett 211). She went on to say that balancing out the pros and cons and making the decision of whether to stay or leave is the new meaning of adulthood. The concept very accurately defines current day adulthood. This idea of dropping out of a committed relationship due to understanding of oneself shows the new adulthood. It is the ability to make life changing decisions according to personal likes and dislikes. Adulthood is now knowing who you are and what you prefer. Since fully understanding yourself takes so much time, adulthood, in that sense, is obviously delayed.

Arnett, Jeffery Jensen. Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens 
          Through the Twentie. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Print