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The Prime of Life: A History of Modern Adulthood
Adulthood today is undergoing profound transformations. Men and women wait until their thirties to marry, have children, and establish full-time careers, occupying a prolonged period in which they are no longer adolescents but still lack the traditional emblems of adult identity. People at midlife struggle to sustain relationships with friends and partners, to find employment and fulfilling careers, to raise their children successfully, and to resist the aging process.
The Prime of Life puts today’s challenges into new perspective by exploring how past generations navigated the passage to maturity, achieved intimacy and connection, raised children, sought meaning in work, and responded to loss. Coming of age has never been easy or predictable, Steven Mintz shows, and the process has always been shaped by gender and class. But whereas adulthood once meant culturally-prescribed roles and relationships, the social and economic convulsions of the last sixty years have transformed it fundamentally, tearing up these shared scripts and leaving adults to fashion meaning and coherence in an increasingly individualistic culture.
Mintz reconstructs the emotional interior of a life stage too often relegated to self-help books and domestic melodramas. Emphasizing adulthood’s joys and fulfillments as well as its frustrations and regrets, he shows how cultural and historical circumstances have consistently reshaped what it means to be a grown up in contemporary society. The Prime of Life urges us to confront adulthood’s realities with candor and determination and to value and embrace the responsibility, sensible judgment, wisdom, and compassionate understanding it can bring.
The Prime of Life puts today’s challenges into new perspective by exploring how past generations navigated the passage to maturity, achieved intimacy and connection, raised children, sought meaning in work, and responded to loss. Coming of age has never been easy or predictable, Steven Mintz shows, and the process has always been shaped by gender and class. But whereas adulthood once meant culturally-prescribed roles and relationships, the social and economic convulsions of the last sixty years have transformed it fundamentally, tearing up these shared scripts and leaving adults to fashion meaning and coherence in an increasingly individualistic culture.
Mintz reconstructs the emotional interior of a life stage too often relegated to self-help books and domestic melodramas. Emphasizing adulthood’s joys and fulfillments as well as its frustrations and regrets, he shows how cultural and historical circumstances have consistently reshaped what it means to be a grown up in contemporary society. The Prime of Life urges us to confront adulthood’s realities with candor and determination and to value and embrace the responsibility, sensible judgment, wisdom, and compassionate understanding it can bring.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2015
4 people are currently reading
308 people want to read
About the author
Steven Mintz
44 books8 followersSteven Mintz is an American historian at the University of Texas at Austin.
In addition to a commitment to pedagogy, interests on which he has published widely include the history of the American family and children, film and history, immigration and ethnic history.
A cultural historian trained in the methods of the new social history, he is the author and editor of 14 history books, focusing on such topics as families and children, antebellum reform, slavery and antislavery, ethnicity, and film.
In addition to a commitment to pedagogy, interests on which he has published widely include the history of the American family and children, film and history, immigration and ethnic history.
A cultural historian trained in the methods of the new social history, he is the author and editor of 14 history books, focusing on such topics as families and children, antebellum reform, slavery and antislavery, ethnicity, and film.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 12, 2016
"It was in that dark wood that I learned a most significant lesson: that true adulthood comes not with physical maturity, economic independence, marriage, childbirth, entry into a career, or having one's own home, but only from coping with life's vicissitudes and being strengthened by them." p. xv
--The Transition to Adulthood--
Henri Bergson: "To exist is to change; to change is to mature; to mature is to create oneself endlessly." p. 15
"At present, fewer than 20% of Americans in their late twenties have completed school, acquired a full-time job, moved away from their parental home, married, and had children, and only a third of 30-34 year olds have achieved these markers of adult status." p. 19
"Young people who maintain daily contact with their parents via cell phone, email, and social networking sites are less likely to perceive themselves as adults." p. 21
"As recently as 1970, half of all women were married by the age of 21 to husbands who tended to be about two years older." p 23
"In Italy, where 37% of thirty-year-old men have never lived away from home..." p. 22
"The people who are most likely to succeed are those who can rely on their parents to help them make their way through the costly process of completing their education and taking low-wage jobs or internships to improve their resume... Young adults increasingly depend on parents to support them as they learn advanced job skills and cope with the rising cost of housing." p 24
"Only 29% of those from the bottom economic quartile enter college, compared to 80% of those from the top... In addition, only 9% of those from the bottom quartile of the income groups who enter college actually complete it, compared to 54% of those from the top income group." p 35
"Harvard's entire faculty in 1800 consisted of the college president, a professor of theology, a professor of mathematics, a professor of Hebrew, and four tutors..." p 35
"Japan observes a holiday called Coming of Age Day, Seijin no Hi. On that day, those who turn twenty dress in a bright kimono or formal hakama, and a celebration ensues to welcome the youth into adulthood." p 59
Rites of passage into 'adulthood' in America are more private: first date, first kiss, first driving a car, drinking coffee/alcohol.
"The percentage of 15-19 year old females who had experienced coitus rose from 30 percent in 1971 to 43 percent in 1976, and from 50 percent in 1979 to 77 percent today." p 63
"According to one study, some 70% of young women express some regret over the timing or circumstances of sexual initiation." p 63
The fading away of the romantic date: "During the 1970s, dating as a ritualized experience declined and was replaced by socializing in packs and by partying." p 65
"Contrary to what many think, the history of adolescent and early adult sexuality is not simply a story of the steady liberalization of attitudes and behavior. In fact, even in recent years, rates of intercourse have varied widely. In 1991, 54% of high school students engaged in sexual intercourse; a decade later, the figure had fallen to 46%." p 64
"Young women are three times more likely to report same-sex attraction and activity as young men, but are less likely to describe themselves as homosexual and more likely to identify as bisexual." p 66
"About 1.5% of white men in their twenties serve time in prison, but the figure is 4 percent for Latinos and 10 percent for African Americans." p 67
--Intimacy--
Attitudes toward love: Unmei no hito - a Japanese phrase that translates as "destiny person"; Chinese word yuanfen which refers to a binding force that dicates a person's relationships and encounters; French speak of "la douleur exquisite" ( the heart-wrenting pain of wanting someone one cannot have); Forelsket is Nowegian for the euphoria that individuals experience when falling in love; Saudade, Portuguese for the longing for a lost love; Koi no yokan, Japanese premonitions of love. p 76
"During the 20th century, a commercial "love culture" emerged, directed primarily at women and girls... A define message conveyed by the love culture was that individuals' lives were incomplete unless they experienced romantic love, culminating in marriage." p 82
Cicero on friendship: "With the single exception of wisdom, I am inclined to regard it as the greatest of all gifts the gods have bestowed on mankind." p 84
"One study found that the average American had only two close friends in whom he or she would confide on important matters, down from an average of 3 in 1985." p 84
Ecclesiastes 6:16: A faithful friend is the medicine of life.
"It is during the twenties that many of the most lasting adult relationships form. The friends acquired during the twnties are self-consciously chosen in a way that earlier friends are not... Marriage, however, has often, but not always, led to a diminishing of friendship ties..." p 86
Katherine Philips in 1662: "We may generally conclude the marriage of a friend to be the funeral of a friendship."
Francis Bacon: "It is friendship, when a man can say to himself, I love this man without respect of utility."
Early literary friendships: Ruth and Naomi (one of the few early female friendships), Damon and Pythias, Achilles and Patroclus, Hamlet and Horatio
"Before the 1980s many believed that platonic friendships across gender lines were impossible. When Harry Met Sally line: "the sex part always gets in the way" p 93
"Fewer than half of American households are headed by married couples... Half of first marriages and nearly 2/3 of remarriages, end in divorce... wives initiate about 2/3s of divorces." p 99
Using "the word 'partner' signifies a growing emphasis on equality within marriage." p 105
It was during the early 19th century that the household economy began to gradually give way to a wage economy in which work took place outside of the household... Accompanying this fateful division between the household and the workplace came an extreme sentimentalization of the home as a "walled garden" or "haven in a heartless world." p 117
"The post-WWII era has been aptly called 'the age of mandatory marriage.' Companies expected white-collar employees to be married. The age of marriage fell to record low. In the late 1950s more women married at the age of seventeen than any other age, and fully half of women were married by the age of twenty." p 119
Concept of two marriages: hers and his, from Jesse Bernard's 1972 book The Future of Marriage. "By almost every measure, including physical health, psychological well-being, and career success, men's marriages were more beneficial than women's... Bernard concluded that the future of marriage was problematic if it failed to become a more attractive option for women. That would require men not only to share in housework and parenting, but to better meet women's emotional needs for intimacy, romance, and psychological succor and to become more supportive of women's aspirations for fulfillment." p 120
"By the late 1960s...feminism freed husbands from total responsibility for their family's economic well-being, liberated men to take a more active role in parenting, and released men from cultural constraints that inhibited disclosure of their emotions." p 122
"As a result of divorce, out-of-wedlock births, and short-term cohabiting relationships, fewer fathers are in touch with their biological offspring than at any other time in American history." p 122
"It turns out that nothing raises the marriage rate bettern than higher educational levels, which give young people an incentive to delay marriage and the skills necessary to sustain a marriage, as well as yielding higher incomes, which make marriage a more feasible and attractive proposition." p 186
--The Trials of Parenting--
"Anxiety is the hallmark of contemporary American parenting." p 187
"Parents spend much more money on children than in the past, provide them with many more store-bought toys, which are now given year round, and seek their children's affection, rather than expecting their children to earn their love." p 188
"2/3 of mothers of young children are in the paid labor force... By the early 21st century about 40 percent of children under four were cared for by a day care center or by a non relative." p 191
"Rather than viewing the recent history of childrearing as a history of decline, we would do better to see how the contemporary emphasis on intensive and intentional parenting, the self-conscious cultivation of certain traits within their children, arose." p 193
--Finding Fulfillment in Work--
In his 1974 book, Working, Studs Terkel interviewed a hundred everyday workers about their feelings about their jobs. "The vast majority were content in their work roles... and many expressed pride in their work. A bookbinder said that he loved repairing books because 'a book is a life'... Said a waitress, 'When I put a plate down, you don't hear a sound. If I drop a fork, there is a certain way I pick it up. I know they can see how delicately I can do it. I'm on stage.'" p 251
"The most surprising aspect of the interviews was the insistence that their jobs were meaningful. A garbage man, far from grousing over the stigma attached to his job, spoke about the pleasure he took in supporting his family and performing an essential task." p 251
"Most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us... have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people." - Nora Watson p 252
"In spite of an array of social programs, the problem of the homeless remains a pressing national issue. Its roots ultimately lie not in alcoholism, addiction or untreated mental illness, but in displacement, high housing costs, an inadequate social welfare system, irregular employment, and low wages for unskilled or casual workers. For the most part, the homeless turn out not to be demonstrably different from other low-income Americans, with the dividing line between the homeless and others living in poverty becoming more burred." p 274
--The Transition to Adulthood--
Henri Bergson: "To exist is to change; to change is to mature; to mature is to create oneself endlessly." p. 15
"At present, fewer than 20% of Americans in their late twenties have completed school, acquired a full-time job, moved away from their parental home, married, and had children, and only a third of 30-34 year olds have achieved these markers of adult status." p. 19
"Young people who maintain daily contact with their parents via cell phone, email, and social networking sites are less likely to perceive themselves as adults." p. 21
"As recently as 1970, half of all women were married by the age of 21 to husbands who tended to be about two years older." p 23
"In Italy, where 37% of thirty-year-old men have never lived away from home..." p. 22
"The people who are most likely to succeed are those who can rely on their parents to help them make their way through the costly process of completing their education and taking low-wage jobs or internships to improve their resume... Young adults increasingly depend on parents to support them as they learn advanced job skills and cope with the rising cost of housing." p 24
"Only 29% of those from the bottom economic quartile enter college, compared to 80% of those from the top... In addition, only 9% of those from the bottom quartile of the income groups who enter college actually complete it, compared to 54% of those from the top income group." p 35
"Harvard's entire faculty in 1800 consisted of the college president, a professor of theology, a professor of mathematics, a professor of Hebrew, and four tutors..." p 35
"Japan observes a holiday called Coming of Age Day, Seijin no Hi. On that day, those who turn twenty dress in a bright kimono or formal hakama, and a celebration ensues to welcome the youth into adulthood." p 59
Rites of passage into 'adulthood' in America are more private: first date, first kiss, first driving a car, drinking coffee/alcohol.
"The percentage of 15-19 year old females who had experienced coitus rose from 30 percent in 1971 to 43 percent in 1976, and from 50 percent in 1979 to 77 percent today." p 63
"According to one study, some 70% of young women express some regret over the timing or circumstances of sexual initiation." p 63
The fading away of the romantic date: "During the 1970s, dating as a ritualized experience declined and was replaced by socializing in packs and by partying." p 65
"Contrary to what many think, the history of adolescent and early adult sexuality is not simply a story of the steady liberalization of attitudes and behavior. In fact, even in recent years, rates of intercourse have varied widely. In 1991, 54% of high school students engaged in sexual intercourse; a decade later, the figure had fallen to 46%." p 64
"Young women are three times more likely to report same-sex attraction and activity as young men, but are less likely to describe themselves as homosexual and more likely to identify as bisexual." p 66
"About 1.5% of white men in their twenties serve time in prison, but the figure is 4 percent for Latinos and 10 percent for African Americans." p 67
--Intimacy--
Attitudes toward love: Unmei no hito - a Japanese phrase that translates as "destiny person"; Chinese word yuanfen which refers to a binding force that dicates a person's relationships and encounters; French speak of "la douleur exquisite" ( the heart-wrenting pain of wanting someone one cannot have); Forelsket is Nowegian for the euphoria that individuals experience when falling in love; Saudade, Portuguese for the longing for a lost love; Koi no yokan, Japanese premonitions of love. p 76
"During the 20th century, a commercial "love culture" emerged, directed primarily at women and girls... A define message conveyed by the love culture was that individuals' lives were incomplete unless they experienced romantic love, culminating in marriage." p 82
Cicero on friendship: "With the single exception of wisdom, I am inclined to regard it as the greatest of all gifts the gods have bestowed on mankind." p 84
"One study found that the average American had only two close friends in whom he or she would confide on important matters, down from an average of 3 in 1985." p 84
Ecclesiastes 6:16: A faithful friend is the medicine of life.
"It is during the twenties that many of the most lasting adult relationships form. The friends acquired during the twnties are self-consciously chosen in a way that earlier friends are not... Marriage, however, has often, but not always, led to a diminishing of friendship ties..." p 86
Katherine Philips in 1662: "We may generally conclude the marriage of a friend to be the funeral of a friendship."
Francis Bacon: "It is friendship, when a man can say to himself, I love this man without respect of utility."
Early literary friendships: Ruth and Naomi (one of the few early female friendships), Damon and Pythias, Achilles and Patroclus, Hamlet and Horatio
"Before the 1980s many believed that platonic friendships across gender lines were impossible. When Harry Met Sally line: "the sex part always gets in the way" p 93
"Fewer than half of American households are headed by married couples... Half of first marriages and nearly 2/3 of remarriages, end in divorce... wives initiate about 2/3s of divorces." p 99
Using "the word 'partner' signifies a growing emphasis on equality within marriage." p 105
It was during the early 19th century that the household economy began to gradually give way to a wage economy in which work took place outside of the household... Accompanying this fateful division between the household and the workplace came an extreme sentimentalization of the home as a "walled garden" or "haven in a heartless world." p 117
"The post-WWII era has been aptly called 'the age of mandatory marriage.' Companies expected white-collar employees to be married. The age of marriage fell to record low. In the late 1950s more women married at the age of seventeen than any other age, and fully half of women were married by the age of twenty." p 119
Concept of two marriages: hers and his, from Jesse Bernard's 1972 book The Future of Marriage. "By almost every measure, including physical health, psychological well-being, and career success, men's marriages were more beneficial than women's... Bernard concluded that the future of marriage was problematic if it failed to become a more attractive option for women. That would require men not only to share in housework and parenting, but to better meet women's emotional needs for intimacy, romance, and psychological succor and to become more supportive of women's aspirations for fulfillment." p 120
"By the late 1960s...feminism freed husbands from total responsibility for their family's economic well-being, liberated men to take a more active role in parenting, and released men from cultural constraints that inhibited disclosure of their emotions." p 122
"As a result of divorce, out-of-wedlock births, and short-term cohabiting relationships, fewer fathers are in touch with their biological offspring than at any other time in American history." p 122
"It turns out that nothing raises the marriage rate bettern than higher educational levels, which give young people an incentive to delay marriage and the skills necessary to sustain a marriage, as well as yielding higher incomes, which make marriage a more feasible and attractive proposition." p 186
--The Trials of Parenting--
"Anxiety is the hallmark of contemporary American parenting." p 187
"Parents spend much more money on children than in the past, provide them with many more store-bought toys, which are now given year round, and seek their children's affection, rather than expecting their children to earn their love." p 188
"2/3 of mothers of young children are in the paid labor force... By the early 21st century about 40 percent of children under four were cared for by a day care center or by a non relative." p 191
"Rather than viewing the recent history of childrearing as a history of decline, we would do better to see how the contemporary emphasis on intensive and intentional parenting, the self-conscious cultivation of certain traits within their children, arose." p 193
--Finding Fulfillment in Work--
In his 1974 book, Working, Studs Terkel interviewed a hundred everyday workers about their feelings about their jobs. "The vast majority were content in their work roles... and many expressed pride in their work. A bookbinder said that he loved repairing books because 'a book is a life'... Said a waitress, 'When I put a plate down, you don't hear a sound. If I drop a fork, there is a certain way I pick it up. I know they can see how delicately I can do it. I'm on stage.'" p 251
"The most surprising aspect of the interviews was the insistence that their jobs were meaningful. A garbage man, far from grousing over the stigma attached to his job, spoke about the pleasure he took in supporting his family and performing an essential task." p 251
"Most of us are looking for a calling, not a job. Most of us... have jobs that are too small for our spirit. Jobs are not big enough for people." - Nora Watson p 252
"In spite of an array of social programs, the problem of the homeless remains a pressing national issue. Its roots ultimately lie not in alcoholism, addiction or untreated mental illness, but in displacement, high housing costs, an inadequate social welfare system, irregular employment, and low wages for unskilled or casual workers. For the most part, the homeless turn out not to be demonstrably different from other low-income Americans, with the dividing line between the homeless and others living in poverty becoming more burred." p 274
May 18, 2016
Topic is maybe too big for full coverage in one book of manageable size, but he does put the current angst about seeming slowness of millenials to hit their marks (finishing education, moving out of family home, becoming financially independent, getting married, having children, buying a house) into perspective by showing how much the norms have changed throughout history as a function of economy, wars, social attitudes, divorce laws, etc.
Needed another round of editing -- repeats some stuff a lot, and a few bad errors remain in place -- ex. p. 124 in one paragraph he cites Michael Keaton as playing "Mr. Dad" [that would be "Mr. Mom"] and Al Bundy as a dad character in All in the Family [that would be Archie Bunker].
Some interesting snapshots of social and economic history that were new to me. He says for instance that "women began to be associated with office work during the Civil War" [p. 281], with gov't. agencies hiring female clerks. "The women received $600 a year, compared to the 1200 to 1800 for the men they replaced" [so I guess we're making progress on income inequality!]. "To secure a government job, a woman had to gain the support of a man of political power. Many applied directly to President Abraham Lincoln."
By the time I got my federal gov't. clerk-typist position in summer of 1978 at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin. [if by some chance you're reading this, Mr. Reeder, thanks for the job], it was customary to fill out paperwork and wait for a call rather than go straight to President Jimmy Carter. Then again, given that he was famously a micro-manager who personally handled scheduling the White House tennis court, maybe he would have taken an interest in my application.
Needed another round of editing -- repeats some stuff a lot, and a few bad errors remain in place -- ex. p. 124 in one paragraph he cites Michael Keaton as playing "Mr. Dad" [that would be "Mr. Mom"] and Al Bundy as a dad character in All in the Family [that would be Archie Bunker].
Some interesting snapshots of social and economic history that were new to me. He says for instance that "women began to be associated with office work during the Civil War" [p. 281], with gov't. agencies hiring female clerks. "The women received $600 a year, compared to the 1200 to 1800 for the men they replaced" [so I guess we're making progress on income inequality!]. "To secure a government job, a woman had to gain the support of a man of political power. Many applied directly to President Abraham Lincoln."
By the time I got my federal gov't. clerk-typist position in summer of 1978 at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin. [if by some chance you're reading this, Mr. Reeder, thanks for the job], it was customary to fill out paperwork and wait for a call rather than go straight to President Jimmy Carter. Then again, given that he was famously a micro-manager who personally handled scheduling the White House tennis court, maybe he would have taken an interest in my application.
July 12, 2015
A good synthesis.
December 11, 2018
It was very readable and insightful.
October 16, 2015
I wish I could have given this book three and a half stars. Overall, I learned a lot about adulthood and the various economic, social, and psychological pressures that go along with it. However, at times, the book seems to lose track of its goal and dither in topics unrelated to adulthood. Further, the book only lighted touched on the reasons 20 somethings are delaying adulthood. A further exploration of that concept would really accentuate the books overall ideas. Because if as Mintz claims adulthood is the Prime of Life, then why is the current generation so hesitant to enter it?!
December 27, 2025
I read this book in an attempt to better understand its author, whom I recently met. And found a bundle of contradictions. This book only cemented my impression of him being a bundle of contradictions. It’s a great topic, well researched, but also a rambling time that seems to want to indicate how “hip” he is (references to movies from the 1980s!) but also how well bred he is (the references to Henry James are not zero).
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews