Lucas deMey 9/13/17
English 110H6 Emmerson
Adopting Emerging Adulthood
Today we live in a rapidly changing world New technologies are being invented daily but surprisingly it’s our social atmosphere that is stuck in the past. Our parents and grandparents both led the same social narrative (childhood,adolescence,teenage,go to college, get a job,get married, have a kid,…Etc) but if the world has changed so much since then why are we being held by the same exact social narrative.What we fail to realize. Is that like our ancestors we too must evolve to better society not physically but socially. So much in our society is powered by social norms like the way we dress the foods we eat the ways we talk and finally the way we view life our parents train us from the day we are born to follow the social narrative. They tell us all of these fairy tales about how life will be when you “grow up big and strong” but sadly our parents can’t predict the future meaning that they are preparing us for the world today instead of allowing us to prepare for the world of today. And this is where we can benefit from emerging adulthood.
One way we can all benefit from society accepting emerging adult as a part of the social narrative is that the “extra time” will allow young adults to prepare for jobs in an emerging field king mentions this when he makes all of his bold predictions for the future. With claims like “⅔ of our population will live in cities”. All of these people moving to cities means that there would be a ton of rapid expansion going on which means we would need a whole new wave of urban planners which is something we may not need right now. But with the freedom with emerging adulthood we are no longer under the social constraints to get a job immediately after graduation we can use the time to educate ourselves to better fit the needs of society. Also we use this time to find ourselves and find the passion hennig says “young adults will usually have seven different jobs in multiple fields”. Some might say this is young people just being lazy and not having any commitment but to me this is just an example of young adults experimenting and finding their passion a key staple of emerging adulthood.
Divorce rates in the united states in the united states are at an all time high at fifty percent that means half of all marriages will fail. I believe that without the social pressure to get married people will be much happier. henig says that “young adults live with at least one romantic partner they have not yet married” i think this is a start to finding oneself and finding what one truly wants out of a relationship without making a full on commitment to someone. this will benefit everyone because it will help lessen ugly expensive and sometimes outright hostilities of divorce and in all will hopefully make our population happier as a whole.
A third reason why emerging adulthood will benefit us moving forward is that it will help all of the impoverished people of our world have a second chance to change their life for the bette.r henig mentions this when she talks about nicole who escaped her dysfunctional family in order to follow her own dreams. This all goes back to the main idea that we need emerging adulthood in order to find ourselves and become something greater than we ever believed possible. nicole grew up in the projects of new york city and at the age of 6 she became the head of the house after her mother became mentally il.l a lot of people could have used this as a cop out and just found themselves living a life that few would envy .but eventually after many grueling years nicole managed to graduate high school and move out she needed freedom and began working and going to school at night. with her new found freedom began excelling in the classroom to nicole emerging adulthood was a chance for a fresh start which is exactly what many people are waiting and praying for each and every day .
In the rapidly changing world of today things are quickly being replaced and left behind so finally i believe it’s time for our current socially narrative should be amended. or replaced in order to make one that includes emerging adulthood so that we may finally stop preparing for the past and start forging ahead to the future. we musnt continue to just keep pushing blindly ahead or else we’ll never reach or full potential. We must believe in second chances that this life stage brings. We must believe in ourselves in order to find our passion which is truly what this stage of life is about. finding one’s self and insuring we know exactly what we’re getting into before just blunder in like a bunch of blind elephants. so in conclusion in order to obtain the benefits and proceeds that come from adopting emerging adulthood as a way of life we we must first adopt it as a part of our social narrative and treat it as any other so called part of life.
Works cited
Hennig, Robin. “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia, www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/magazine/22Adulthood-t.html?pagewanted=all& cubz
king , thomas. “Adults it’s time to talk” ted talk.
