Arrested Adulthood: The Changing Nature of Maturity and Identity

by James E. Côté

An examination into the social influences that have prolonged youth in today's adults

Why are today's adults more like adolescents, in their dress and personal tastes, than ever before? Why do so many adults seem to drift and avoid responsibilities such as work and family? As the traditional family breaks down and marriage and child rearing are delayed, what makes a person an adult?Many people in the industrial West are simply not "growing up" in the traditional sense. Instead, they pursue personal, individual fulfillment and emerge from a vague and prolonged youth into a vague and insecure adulthood. The transition to adulthood is becoming more hazardous, and the destination is becoming more difficult to reach, if it is reached at all. Arrested Adulthood examines the variety of young people's responses to this new situation. James E. Côté shows us adults who allow the profit-driven industries of mass culture to provide the structure that is missing, as their lives become more individualistic and atomized. He also shows adults who resist anomie and build their world around their sense of personal connectedness to others. Finally, Côté provides a vision of a truly progressive society in which all members can develop their potentials apart from the influence of the market. In so doing, he gives us a clearer vision of what it means to be an adult and makes sense of the longest, but least understood period of the life course.

Genres: Sociology, Nonfiction

224 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2000

Reviews

[Stephen Adkison · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is peak “the problems are bad, but their causes are good.” To steal and twist an analogy the author uses to complain about feminists being too radical, he kind of correctly identifies the illness (500 years of capitalism, but he ignores how it came about and the way it is racialized), but doesn’t know the actual symptoms (alienation from labor and exploitation), and has no clue what the cure would be (communism).

There’s a whole chapter dedicated to rants about how kids these days watch too much TV and don’t read the newspaper. I’m not kidding. He is so in love with tradition that, given his dissatisfaction with capitalism and his love of traditional formative structures like the Catholic church, that I legitimately think he may be a monarchist/feudalist.

[Megan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought this was going to be awesome. It was not. The problem was that I was expecting a scathing indictment of today's irresponsible, overly-entitled and thoroughly shiftless young people. Instead, it was a series of studies addressed in book format that proved that it's hard to grow up in Generation Me. Yeah, whatever. Where's the cattiness, the shocking totally-true stories of juvenile excess? Maybe I should have just bought a Cosmo.

Read? Negative.