1 Introduction

This article explores how widespread changes in the transition to adulthood throughout North America and Western Europe have altered the terrain of early adult life; how these changes pose both new risks and opportunities for individuals, families, and societies; and some of the psychological capacities and social skills that may now be especially helpful in navigating the early adult years.

Most demographic research on the transition to adulthood has concentrated on five traditional experiences—leaving home, completing school, entering the workforce, getting married, and having children—and, to some extent, on the relationships among these statuses. Where this bundle of experiences is concerned, recent research has yielded several important themes that provide critical context for the specific concerns of this article. First, entry into adulthood has become more ambiguous and occurs in a more gradual and variable fashion than half a century ago. Evidence of this theme has emerged in research in America and many European countries (e.g., Billari and Wilson 2001; Blossfeld et al. 2005; Chisholm and Kovacheva 2002; Furstenberg 2002; Corijn and Klijzing 2001; Settersten et al. 2005; Shavit and Mueller 1998). Social timetables that were widely observed a half century ago have crumbled. It no longer seems possible—or as possible—for most young people to achieve economic and psychological autonomy as early as they once did (e.g., Bell et al. 2007; Côté 2000; Danziger and Rouse 2007; Furstenberg et al. 2005; Klijzing 2005). Education and training are now even more valuable than before because jobs are less permanent, work careers have become more fluid, and the economic returns to education have increased. A declining fraction of young adults enters full-time work before their early 20s and an increasing number do so only toward the end of their 20s. Societies have not yet begun to address the significant ramifications of the economic and social changes that have resulted from the extension of schooling, the delay of work, and the postponement of marriage and childbearing.

Second, families in some societies are overburdened in extending support to young adults as they make their way. This theme has been especially apparent in the United States, where evidence shows sizable downward material and emotional support from parents to children through their late 20s and into their early 30s (e.g., Schoeni and Ross 2005). Such flows are to be expected in more privileged families, but what is now striking are the significant flows—and associated strains—in middle-class families at a time when families themselves have become increasingly fractured. The increased reliance on families in many countries raises special concerns about the plight of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, whose skills and resources may be less adequate or relevant going into the transition, whose families may be more fragile or simply cannot afford to help their children, or who have been attached to foster care, special education, or juvenile justice systems and are abruptly cut off from support when they reach the legal ages of adulthood, which in most countries is 18 or 21 (for American illustrations, see Osgood et al. 2005). The theme of overburdened families is tied to cultural ideas about independence and about where the new risks and costs associated with these changes are to be absorbed (e.g., markets, families, or governments).

Third, the transition to adulthood is in many countries overlaid with a fragmented patchwork of often disconnected institutions: residential colleges and universities, community colleges, military and national service programs, work settings, and other environments (for cross-national illustrations, see Settersten 2005a). This fragmentation has been emphasized in American and European literature alike and has been the subject of deliberation in working groups of the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (e.g., OECD 1999, 2000). Of course, the degree of fragmentation also depends on the provisions of the welfare state and the organization of the institutions through which young people move. At an institutional level, significant mismatches exist between the varied pathways now taken into adulthood, on the one hand, and the policies, programs, and institutions that affect young people, on the other.

Together, these themes point to the significant need to both strengthen the capacities of young people as they navigate the terrain of early adult life as well as the institutions they inhabit, which I have discussed elsewhere (Settersten 2005a). This article explores: (1) some of the new hallmarks of the transition to adulthood, (2) some of the psychological capacities and social skills that may serve young people well as they make their way, (3) families and welfare states as sources of developmental exploration or drift, and (4) the potentials of a stronger partnership between the fields of demography and human development.

2 New and Possible Hallmarks of Early Adult Life

2.1 Managing Uncertainty and Delay

Given the changes noted above, the early adult years may now be characterized by several new or possible hallmarks. Perhaps the most relevant hallmark, especially from an international perspective, is that young people must live with significant uncertainty and manage delay, whether actively chosen or forced by circumstance. In such a climate, personal characteristics, and resources (e.g., psychological and physical health; family socioeconomic status) may become increasingly important in determining how young people fare in the face of changing opportunity structures and the absence of institutional supports, normative controls, and clear life scripts. This is consistent with themes of recent social theories that depict the modern world as unpredictable and full of risks that must be assumed and negotiated by individuals (e.g., Beck 2000; Giddens 2002; Heinz 2003a). Highly individualized routes into adulthood not only leave individuals feeling as if their experiences are unique, but in reality have uncertain outcomes.

The ambiguity of the early adult years brings new freedom and flexibility to live life in greater accordance with one’s interests and wishes than in the past. But it also brings a host of new risks, many of which are not known in advance. When individuals choose or find themselves on pathways that are not widely shared by others or reinforced in institutions or policies, they may lose important sources of support (informal or formal) and find that their pathways—indeed, their very development and well-being—may be more prone to breakdown. Atypical pathways leave individuals vulnerable as they move through social institutions or are subject to social policies that are based on models of life that no longer reflect the realities of the contemporary world (Settersten 2005a). For young people, these risks are exacerbated by the fact that the world they know differs dramatically from that of previous generations, and this gap may be fertile ground for family tensions, as the expectations or understandings of parents are out of touch with the desires or actual opportunities of children.

One must ask, however, whether it is the level of uncertainty that is potentially greater today or instead the types of uncertainty that are different—as well as whether certain populations are more or less vulnerable to these potentially new levels or sources of uncertainty. This is an important and open empirical question. For example, the lives of cohorts born in early in the 20th century, and across the globe, were especially marked by dramatic economic depressions and upheaval caused by wartime, including significant records of military service for large portions of the population (Settersten 2006). In many countries, those born after World War II, in particular, led lives of relative security and prosperity; this generally remains the case, despite the significant challenges faced by vulnerable groups. Similarly, the transition to adulthood in the United States today in some respects resembles the era prior to industrialization, when most families earned a living from the land and attaining self-sufficiency was a gradual process (Furstenberg et al. 2005). One major difference is that early adulthood is now shaped much more by social institutions outside the family, particularly higher education. Finally, globalization has for recent cohorts increased competition as markets have become internationalized and grown in importance, and as the spread of networks and knowledge has quickened through new technologies (Mills and Blossfeld 2005). These changes have created new economic and employment uncertainties which, in turn, affect decisions about educational investments, marriage, and parenting. These examples suggest that the “new” uncertainties of the early adult years are as much about types as they are about levels of uncertainty.

In fact, one could also argue that young people today—or at least large numbers of young people in developed countries—face lives with far greater predictability and choice than ever before. That is, dramatic improvement in mortality and morbidity, along with the reduction and postponement of fertility, in the past century make it possible to plan and control the long and healthy lives that can now be counted on. This does not reflect, of course, the serious social changes that many young people across the globe have experienced and will continue to experience—especially in countries that have been characterized by political and economic instability, war, and violence (e.g., Nurmi 1998). It also does not reflect the plight of young people in developing countries who face dramatically different health conditions and mortality, particularly within the context of HIV/AIDS; sex, reproductive health, and fertility; and levels of poverty (e.g., Lloyd 2005; Lloyd et al. 2005). Some evidence from developing countries points to a convergence of experiences of young people around the world (e.g., increases in school participation and attainment, decreases in child labor, rising rates of labor force participation, narrowing gender gaps in education, and work), while other evidence points to a divergence of experiences (e.g., economies and health statuses rapidly improving in some places, but rapidly deteriorating in others) (for cross-national evidence, see Lloyd 2005; Lloyd et al. 2005). Either way, the turmoil of life in places such as these creates great uncertainty—both in level and type—and serves as a reminder that the very notion of “choice” is a privileged one.

Explanations for the growing individualization of the life course are themselves varied and the subject of controversy. What is most important to note here is that growing individualization carries implications for the kinds of competencies and skills that are needed for successful adult transitions. The trend toward individualization means that young people are increasingly left to their own devices in determining the directions their lives will take. Young people from advantaged backgrounds or statuses seem faced with many choices, while others seem faced with few options. The most vulnerable of young people will not only have fewer choices, but they will also have fewer capacities and resources on which to draw as they make those choices, exacerbating still further their existing vulnerabilities.

These kinds of factors rarely enter the scope of demographic research, which has focused on documenting large-scale behavioral patterns more than explaining the sources and consequences of these patterns, especially at familial and individual levels. This gap is also reflected in the limited range of theories in demography that are brought to bear on these phenomena. This is also true of developmental perspectives, which seldom address variables beyond the intra-psychic and family relationship realms (Diewald 2001; Settersten 2005b). This is why the active combination of demographic and developmental perspectives promises to yield fresh and innovative insights.

2.2 Becoming Interdependent, Rather than Independent

In many countries, achieving “independence” (financial or otherwise) has been a, if not the, central marker of adulthood. But in light of prolonged and variable patterns of entry into adult life today, one wonders whether a more relevant milestone might be the achievement of “interdependence.” That is, to compensate for uncertainties and the often weak scaffolding provided by some families and welfare states, an especially effective strategy for young people is to build wider and stronger webs of relationships with other adults. These interdependent ties can foster development and provide a set of supports that can be activated as needed. At a deep level, mentoring is a primary example of the power that positive ties to adults can play in the lives of young people. Meaningful relationships with adults other than parents can have significant effects on a wide array of young adult outcomes, including improvements in relationships with parents and friends and performance in school, and lower rates of substance abuse and recidivism (Rhodes 2004). Mentoring relationships have been shown to be particularly helpful in buffering disadvantaged young people from risks inherent in their environments and early trajectories. At a more superficial level, interdependence can also powerfully affect outcomes via the “strength of weak ties,” to use Granovotter’s classic (1983) phrase, in which wide networks of loosely connected acquaintances provide access to precious opportunities and resources.

Unlike dependence, the notion advanced here with respect to interdependence is that it is not about completely relying on others for your own welfare, but is instead about both making and maintaining positive, healthy, reciprocal relationships. A mature perspective on relationships also demands that individuals accept the obligations and expectations that such social relationships entail. These relationship skills would seem to be increasingly important as both peer groups and institutional environments become more diffuse as individuals move beyond adolescence and high school. These social competencies, if they were established early, would also serve individuals well throughout life and reap their cumulative benefits over time.

Yet if interdependence is now a necessary factor for success during this period, especially because institutional supports are fewer, then the most vulnerable of young people remain vulnerable. This is not only because disadvantaged young people have fewer resources to mobilize and because these kinds of skills are not likely be reinforced in the contexts in which they exist. (For example, young people who already have decent social capital are likely to have parents who know how to navigate educational institutions and job markets, access to other adults who can serve as mentors, and social networks that can connect them to opportunities and resources). It is also because creating such interdependencies may simply not be an option if cultural norms emphasize the need to prove that one can make it without the help of others. For example, African-American youth may see the need to rely on others as weakness, whereas white middle-class youth may readily seek and even expect family support (V. C. McLoyd, personal communication, November 10, 2006). In contrast, young adult children of first- and second-generation immigrants feel strong filial obligations to reciprocate instrumental and emotional support to their parents (e.g., Mollenkopf et al. 2005; Portes and Rumbaut 2006).

For many young people, it is also not rational to expect or even pursue economic independence. This is particularly true of leaving homing which, in some nations, is not at all a sound strategy for getting ahead, but one which is associated with youth poverty (for evidence across the European Union, see Aassve et al. 2006). Young people across Western Europe, North America, and Japan are responding to high housing costs, less stable jobs, and higher unemployment by living at home longer, and the negative effects on life satisfaction are moderated by how pervasive the practice is becoming (for evidence, see Newman and Aptekar 2007; Yelowitz 2007).

This leads to a central challenge of the early adult years: how to reconcile or even balance the tension between autonomy and responsibility (Flanagan 2004). As Flanagan (2004) notes, the struggle for autonomy is a salient concern of adolescence. Autonomy suggests that actions are internally motivated, volitional, and authentic. In early adulthood, autonomy is coupled with responsibility, which suggests that individuals are aware of how their actions affect other people, are concerned about respecting the rights of others, and are fully accountable for their actions. Responsibility also comes with the important realization that commitments to others place constraints on individual freedom and choice. Young adulthood is a time when people begin to sort out commitments to persons, jobs, values, and ideologies. The realization that these commitments not only matter, but that they can actually be associated with happiness and life satisfaction even when they limit autonomy, is a symbol of maturity (e.g., Kasser 2002; Schwartz 2004).

A growing challenge of prolonged entry into adult statuses and reliance on others, then, is that these may make it difficult to achieve a sense of both autonomy and responsibility. Life-course scholarship has often emphasized the ways in which the interdependence of lives constrains individual options and choices, as in the case of how much women’s work careers are conditioned by family and caregiving demands (e.g., Moen and Roehling 2005). But it is important to remember that social relationships can also promote options and choices for individuals and protect them from risks they encounter.

2.3 Striving for Fluid Rather than Stable Self-Definitions

Questions such as “Who am I?” “What do I want?” “How can I get there?” must be actively confronted during the early adult years, and the challenges they bring are likely heightened by the increasingly protracted and variable transition to adulthood. Recent research has emphasized that identity is fluid, multiply determined, and revised throughout life. Adaptation in early adulthood, in particular, may be facilitated by being open and committed to the exploration of a range of “possible selves” and to experimentation of many kinds, as long as it is not too deviant or unconventional (Oyserman et al. 2004).

The new climate of the early adult years may make it advantageous and even necessary for individuals to actively strive for fluid and dynamic self-definitions. That is, those individuals who can package themselves in multiple ways, and for multiple settings and people, will be in the best possible position to maximize their opportunities during a formative and risk-laden juncture in life. This is an open hypothesis for which empirical data are needed. Of course, in being so instrumental and self-serving, it also results in an unpleasant view of human relationships. It also raises questions about the authenticity of the self and carries dilemmas related to loyalty and commitment: If identity is understood to be so fluid, then what is at the core of the self? How can individuals manage to build “authentic” selves, in which actions are consistent with self-images and definitions, against climates that promote instrumentality? And what might instrumentality and questionable authenticity mean for the nature of social attachments, loyalties, and commitments? These are also important open questions and hypotheses for future research. These challenges, for example, are reflected in recent data from an American survey on loyalty, which suggests that young adults, relative to older age groups, consistently feel less loyal toward virtually every institution and group considered (e.g., military, religion, ethnic/racial group, high school/college, country), and with high levels of loyalty to family alone (John Templeton Foundation 2005). Similarly, recent cohorts of young Americans have become more cynical about other people, institutions, and society at large, but not more cynical about their own lives (Smith 2005).

2.4 Getting Harder to Achieve Solid Identities as Adults

Success in early adulthood may not only require more fluid identities, but the long delay in the attainment of traditional markers may also make it difficult for young people to achieve solid identities as adults (see also Arnett 2000). This theme is borne out in intensive interviews conducted with young people in their 20s and early 30s in five American sites (New York City, San Diego, Minneapolis, Detroit, and rural Iowa) as part of our MacArthur-funded Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood and Public Policy. Several themes related to the subjective experience of the transition to adulthood are highlighted here. For a more complete discussion of these and other themes, see Settersten (in press); for a description of each sample, see Carr et al. (in press).

Most young people in the MacArthur study do not feel completely adult, even into their 30s. In some spheres and ways they do, and in some spheres and ways they do not. Other research has similarly shown that young people are more likely to report feeling like adults when they are at work, with romantic partners or spouses, or with children, but are less likely to feel like adults when they are with their parents and some of their friends, depending on whether activities with friends reinforce adult identities or are instead more similar to adolescent pursuits (for the United States, see Shanahan et al. 2005; for Germany, see Reitzle in press).

Young Americans can sort in complex ways a wide range of possible markers of adulthood, judge the relative importance of these markers, and evaluate their own progress with respect to them. Surprisingly, what might be called the “Big 5” traditional markers of adulthood—leaving home, finishing school, finding work, finding getting married or finding a partner, and having children—remain important to most young people, despite the fact that they are conscious of the fact that their own experiences will happen (or have already happened) later and in a more “disorderly” way than their parents. In addition, young people often reference other alternative markers of adulthood—atypical and unexpected experiences, and subtle shifts in everyday life and in the mind, such as sitting at the “grown up” table at grandmother’s house for holidays, being let in on family secrets, or knowing the difference between what one can and what one should do. Such markers are rarely considered in most dominant theories and research on the transition to adulthood, and they are far outside the lenses of demography. In many cases, these types of markers may be more important to individuals than the traditional markers on which demography has focused. This is not to minimize the importance of demographic markers, which matter more to societies than these alternative subjective markers. For example, whether young people see partnership or fertility as the most salient indicators of whether an individual feels or is defined as an adult is a trivial matter when the future of a society is determined by these demographic markers. And if individuals begin to devalue or abandon these traditional markers—not just delay or sequence them in new ways—this carries tremendous consequences for a society.

For most young Americans in our study, it is a cluster of events, and the gradual accumulation of experiences that come with these events, that eventually renders one an adult. This can be contrasted with much demographic research, which instead looks at the traditional transitions in isolation or in pairs—rather than, for example, at the timing, sequencing, spacing, duration, and density of a larger set of experiences. From the perspective of individuals, decoupling and delaying some of these traditional experiences are strategies for tackling them more effectively. Many young Americans say that they intend to postpone (or have actively postponed) marriage and parenthood precisely because they want to be ready for and do well in these roles, not because they are fearful of or devalue these roles. Indeed, marriage and parenting have a strong presence in the minds of young people as the most transformational of adult experiences, especially once these events have been experienced.

Still, wanting to be ready is different from being ready, and the bottom line is that many young people in the United States and elsewhere do not seem in a hurry to get married or become parents. In addition, recent American public opinion data show that marriage and parenting are now largely disassociated from definitions of adulthood, with financial independence, completing schooling, being able to support a family, and, to a lesser extent, leaving home, most often endorsed as important indicators of adult status (Furstenberg et al. 2004). Given that marriage and fertility often do not occur until the late 20s or 30s, it becomes difficult to say that people of this age are not adults simply because they have not yet partnered or parented. The same may be true in other national contexts in which marriage and parenting have been delayed.

Given postponements in marriage and parenting, traditional markers related to education and work seem to be the minimal and earliest set of transitions that young people experience as they navigate the early adult years. Patterns and opportunities in education and work, however, are also changing dramatically, and often differentially for men and women, as work life becomes increasingly “contingent” and as educational experiences become increasingly intertwined with family and work roles (for comprehensive reviews, see Heinz 2003b; Pallas 2003). It is important to recognize, however, that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in most countries will generally have fewer opportunities in education and work than those from more privileged backgrounds. These opportunities will also be heavily conditioned by local markets related to jobs, education, housing, or marriage. The naturally large scope of demographic research on the transition to adulthood cannot do justice to the ways in which experiences are conditioned by national, regional, city, and community-level dynamics. This instead requires views that “drill down” into successively more local worlds.

Much remains to be learned about cross-national variability in the milestones of the transition to adulthood, as well as the institutional arrangements within which the transition occurs. Describing variability in such milestones and institutional arrangements is a central strength of the demographic perspective, but it can do little to unearth the cultural or individual subjective meanings attached to such events and the consequences that arise because the event was arrived at one way versus another, or at one time or in one order versus another, or never arrived at (see also Cook and Furstenberg 2002). From an international perspective, there is much to learn about how young people plan this transition, set goals, develop strategies for meeting them, and make investments.

Some of these findings may be specifically American, but many seem relevant internationally, given the pervasiveness of prolonged and variable entry into adulthood. In fact, a new study of East and West Germans reveals some similar patterns (Reitzle 2006). These highlights are offered as examples of the need for international scholarship on the transition to adulthood to take a perspective that is now largely missing: that is, to understand the meanings and markers of adulthood, and the processes by which adult identities are built, from the vantage point of young people themselves. Evaluating these subjective states, as well as variation in cultural “frames” for understanding movement out of adolescence and into adulthood, holds great potential to both broaden and deepen the view provided thus far in demographic research.

Demographic realities and subjective worlds are also intimately connected—for example, demographic realities shape what it means to be an adult and the things that members of a nation or culture value, expect, or try to attain. The reverse is also true, as these subjective phenomena bubble up to affect demographic realities. Such interactions are true of every age, of course. But the sheer number and density of experiences that accompany the transition to adulthood, and the degree to which this juncture also involves movement into and out of multiple social institutions, leave it unparalleled in its significance relative to other life periods—and in its power to shape the subsequent life course. Understanding the connections between demographic and subjective states is fertile new ground for generative creative theories and research on the transition to adulthood.

3 Psychological Capacities and Social Skills for Navigating the Early Adult Years

The global trend toward the individualization of transition patterns noted earlier means that young people are increasingly on their own to determine the directions their lives will take. This, inturn, means that the psychological capacities and social skills of individuals are likely to become even more important in determining the life course than heretofore. Several capacities and skills may have relatively widespread applicability—as alternative and additional forms of “capital”—in negotiating the passage to adulthood, and especially in light of the new and possible hallmarks described earlier. A few examples are offered here. Of course, some capacities and skills may be more or less relevant depending on the specific nation, setting, or population at hand. These are important open empirical questions for future scholarship.

3.1 Planfulness, Coupled with Flexibility

Personal goals and “identity projects” typically become clearer and more differentiated in the transition to adulthood, as independence and autonomy gain in importance. This process requires knowing one’s strengths, limitations, and interests; knowing what options are available and how to take advantage of them; and being able to set goals that are a good match—but also having a high degree of flexibility (e.g., Clausen 1991). Planfulness is certainly shaped by the input of others, such as parents, teachers, adult mentors, and peers. Research suggests that parenting styles and family socioeconomic status are especially associated with whether, what, and how individuals plan. As one moves further into adulthood, these processes are also heavily contingent on the other people with whom one’s life is intertwined (e.g., spouse or partner, children).

Given uncertainty and delay in the transition to adulthood, flexibility in plans and openness to new experiences seem especially pertinent—and precisely because of the vast social change that has occurred or is ongoing in many nations. Times of rapid social change can suddenly alter the landscape that young people are navigating and the possibilities that lay in front of them. Against such turmoil, even the best laid plans may not come to fruition, which may make their dissolution difficult for those who have planned in ways that are too rigid or restrictive.

The ability to plan hinges on having a future that is relatively certain, which itself rests on demographic parameters that are, in the larger historical picture, relatively recent phenomena. In the early part of the last century, conditions of high mortality, morbidity, and fertility, made it much less possible and profitable to plan. Contemporary conditions in many countries, in contrast, now render life more predictable and potentially controllable than ever before. One could even argue that careful planning is all the more necessary when time and options seem more plentiful, making it important to “canalize” decisions and efforts over time. One could also argue the reverse: that planning is less necessary precisely because time and options seem plentiful, bringing new flexibility and ample chances to revise life projects along the way. Still, it is important to remember that the very ability to plan is a great privilege, as demographic parameters continue to render life highly fragile in some places.

3.2 Capacity for Intimacy and Close Social Relationships

A central task of the early adult years is also to be able to build intimate personal relationships characterized by trust, self-disclosure, closeness, commitment, and concern (e.g., Roisman et al. 2004; Scharf et al. 2004). In some ways, achieving intimacy in relationships is often viewed as the gateway to adult development. During the transition to adulthood the focus in relationships shifts from dating as recreation to having or seeking relationships that are more emotionally and physically intimate. The capacity for intimacy is not only relevant to romantic relationships, but is important for both forming and maintaining all types of relationships. This capacity is crucial for strengthening interdependence with others, as noted earlier, and it would also seem to facilitate many other essential capacities or skills, including those below.

3.3 Inter-Group Relationships

Creating and maintaining healthy relationships with others would also seem to hinge on a capacity for inter-group relationships. That is, individuals must be able to understand and relate to their own “group” as just one subgroup in the larger society and, more importantly, to be open to and have relationships with members of other groups (e.g., Pettigrew and Tropp 2006). This involves processes that challenge, and ideally enlarge, one’s attitudes and feelings, as well as cultural knowledge. Given pressing social issues related to immigration and social inequality in many societies, the most important of these “others” are often people from different nations, of different races and/or ethnicities, and from different social classes. Being able to interact and build relationships with people who are different seems an increasingly necessary set of skills to acquire in early adulthood, especially in diverse and global environments. These skills would seem to facilitate individual outcomes in many domains (e.g., work, education, relationships with peers and friends) and percolate up to create more harmonious and stable group relationships in society.

3.4 Reflective Capacity

Reflective capacity is about having good self-awareness and an ability to take the perspectives of others. It permits individuals to understand how their feelings and behaviors affect those of other people and involves taking these things into account before they act. These skills are central to forming healthy relationships of all kinds. These skills are also important to personal development in that individuals must critically analyze their own motives and experiences and extract lessons to shape future goals, decisions, and behaviors. As such, this ability should also underlie the ability to manage emotions and control impulses (e.g., Fonagy and Target 1997).

3.5 Developmental Regulation

Related to reflective capacity and planning are dynamics of “developmental regulation,” which involve both the ability and need to harness one’s resources and exert control over the environment in the pursuit of developmental goals, and to exercise self-control and restrain one’s impulses in accordance with social norms (e.g., Heckhausen 2000). These processes are necessary for successful performance in multiple adult roles, as individuals must acquire, allocate, or refine internal and external resources in targeted domains and take “compensatory” actions when resources are lost or decline.

Models of “selective optimization with compensation” (SOC), developed for understanding successful aging (e.g., Baltes 1997) can be fruitfully extended to the transition to adulthood. Such models will yield insights into what young people decide to do and how they do it (processes of goal selection), as well as how they attempt to stay the course and/or identify alternative routes in face of failure, loss, or other hurdles (e.g., processes of optimization and compensation). Some have suggested that processes related to compensation may be especially challenging for young adults because they find it difficult to recognize that they have to compensate or because they get into trouble by failing to compensate—especially if they believe that needing to compensate is a sign of failure (Lerner et al. 2001).

3.6 Self-efficacy

Another important capacity that would seem to interact with those already described is self-efficacy (e.g., Bandura 1997; Lewis et al. 1999). This involves the individual’s evaluation of their ability to organize and control their functioning and manage future situations. Self-efficacy seems especially important in early adulthood because it intimately shapes aspirations, expectations, and achievements in education, work, social relationships, and other domains. Self-efficacy also seems important for handling disappointment in the face of foreclosed opportunities or failure, and it may increase tolerance for and foster persistence with setbacks. High levels of self-efficacy in education, work, relationships, or other spheres may also increase the investments and attachments that other people in those spheres make or have in the individual, and low levels may bring the reverse. Low levels of self-efficacy may also result when individuals lack opportunities to gain mastery in various life domains, or from a history of experiences that have prevented or discouraged its growth, which seems likely for many of the most vulnerable populations, such as those who have been attached to foster care, special education, or juvenile justice systems, or those from fragmented economically disadvantaged families.

3.7 Implications

The capacities and skills described above are just a few examples of those that would seem to have broad relevance across nations, settings, or populations, especially set against demographic change in the transition to adulthood highlighted in the contributions to this special issue. Taken together, these capacities and skills would seem to foster adaptation and resilience in the face of uncertainty, delay, changing opportunity structures, and difficult experiences. There are, of course, many other capacities and skills that might and should also be considered.Footnote 1 Some may have greater relevance in specific nations and settings, for specific populations, or for specific outcomes. For example, some of these may be very important in protecting the most vulnerable of youth who have few other social resources on which to draw or with which they can be buffered. Yet young people from more privileged backgrounds will have higher levels of these capacities and skills because most seem facilitated by socioeconomic status and by education in particular. As a result, these capacities and skills become additional types of “capital” that complement and further protect those who already have access to other kinds of resources.

One should ask, of course, whether capacities and skills such as these were any less important in the past, and whether they are any less important during other life periods—or whether it is that their forms that are different today or in later periods of life. These are important open empirical questions for future scholarship. But one strong hypothesis is that these things matter more now, given new social and economic climates, and that they matter more at this time in life, given that what happens here determines subsequent success in so many domains. One could also argue that many of these capacities and skills will naturally improve as young people mature and gain increased knowledge of themselves and their environments. However, to the degree that these capacities and skills can be developed early on, individuals can presumably reap their benefits over lifetime. In this way, the early adult years become a central juncture for understanding the accumulation of advantage and disadvantage over the life course (e.g., Dannefer 2003). And to the degree that the capacities and skills described here are connected to socioeconomic status, dynamics related to social class and the acquisition of social capital become a critical lens for understanding what happens in the decade of the 20s and thereafter. Indeed, in the future, it is highly likely that social class, and its intersections with other social dimensions (e.g., gender, race, and ethnicity), will become the most powerful factor in determining life-course patterns and outcomes in post-industrial societies (Furstenberg 2003). The power of social inequalities in determining early adult experiences, and their cumulative effects throughout life, will grow or diminish in direct response to resources that are permitted or denied by families and the welfare state, addressed below.

4 Families as Sources of Developmental Risk and Resilience

In Western societies, the most pressing issues related to the transition to adulthood are about social inequalities: namely, that what on the surface may appear as prolonged and individualized transition patterns is likely driven by two distinct sets of processes: exploration versus drift, both of which are rooted in family and welfare-state dynamics. For young people from relatively privileged backgrounds, highly variable patterns may be created by the luxury of exploration—to take an extended “moratorium” to pursue higher education, try out jobs, experiment in romantic relationships, and pursue activities aimed at personal growth and development. Such patterns are actively chosen and permitted by personal resources. In contrast, for young people from underprivileged backgrounds, prolonged and fragmented patterns may be generated by limited options and opportunities, fewer resources and protections via the welfare state, struggling families, and restricted or fractured networks. Such patterns of drift may be largely forced, generated by structural circumstances and processes and/or very limited personal resources. These two subsets of experiences also likely result in different outcomes over time, with those who are well-positioned being buffered by their resources and those who are less well-positioned being at risk not only as they move into adulthood but also through the subsequent life course.

As the period of early adulthood has become more protracted, the family is often the primary institution that is called upon to carry the costs of new risks. For example, recent American data show that parents spend about 1/3 of the costs of raising a child to the age of 18 again between 18 and 34, providing material assistance (in the form of housing, food, educational expenses) and direct cash assistance—though in reality, support diminishes as the child grows older (Schoeni and Ross 2005). These outlays have risen dramatically in the past three decades and bring brand new meaning to the notion of “childcare.” What is even more striking is that children in the top quarter of the income distribution receive at least 70% more in material assistance than children in the bottom quarter. This general trend is echoed in new international evidence, which shows significant declines in economic self-sufficiency among youth in Belgium, Canada, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States from the mid-1980s through 2000, with Americans losing less and women gaining more but also starting at lower points (Bell et al. 2007).

The ability of families to manage this long and complex period clearly varies greatly by the resources they possess or those they can access through formal or informal ties. If young people from middle and upper class families require—or are permitted—such large downward investments in order to make it through, societies must be concerned about the plight of the sizable proportions of young people whose parents are largely absent from their lives or are simply unable to provide these levels of support (e.g., Foster and Gifford 2005). The degree to which families absorb or can manage the risks of the early adult years is also tied to the provisions of welfare states, addressed below.

5 Welfare States as Sources of Developmental Risk and Resilience

Welfare states, like families, serve as sources of exploration or drift, of resilience or risk, depending on their provisions. The transition to adulthood must be understood within the contexts of welfare-state “regimes” and political economies. These contexts are particularly important in understanding variability both within and across societies. They significantly affect the organization of the life course, the degree to which the life course is heterogeneous or homogeneous, and the kinds of opportunities and protections provided in work, education, family, or leisure (Mayer 2001; Settersten 2003). In the second half of the 20th century, welfare states emerged as a, if not the, major creator of life-course markers in many countries via mandatory and universal programs and legal entitlements (e.g., Leisering 2003). Welfare states are an especially critical support system for populations that historically have had difficulty making the transition to full adulthood (e.g., hard-to-employ individuals, those with mental health and substance abuse problems).

Yet in some cases, support to even the most vulnerable of populations is minimal and temporary. This is true of “Liberal Market States,” such as the United States and the United Kingdom, in which the life course is characterized by significant discontinuity. That discontinuity is produced by the fact that individuals must largely rely on personal resources to navigate life, and there is significant inequality in the resources to which individuals have access (e.g., Mayer 2001; see also Esping-Anderson 2002). As Mayer (2001) notes, universal and comprehensive secondary education results in a fairly standardized age of school-leaving. Entry into the labor market is early, but the time between the completion of education and full integration into the labor market is characterized by a series of “stop-gap jobs.” Among young workers, low paid or marginal employment is common; and among workers more generally, commitments to firms are low, as are firms’ commitments to workers. Women’s work trajectories are rather continuous, but women’s work is also necessary for families to make ends meet. Divorce rates are high, but so are remarriage rates. Family allowances and services in these countries are minimal. Discontinuities in the life course, and disparities in resources, are also tied to “unequal and dualistic” access to social and health insurance, with those who can afford private insurance having good coverage, and those who cannot do so assuming significant risks in many life domains. At the opposite end of the pole are “Scandinavian Social Democratic Welfare States,” which provide a high degree of social protection and support across life, but which also come with an expensive price tag. These states also tend to standardize the life course, which goes against the prevailing ethos of autonomy and individuality in many Western societies.

These examples illustrate the fact that welfare states are powerful forces in determining the transition to adulthood, providing different packages of resources that create stronger or weaker scaffolding for young people as they navigate entry into adult life. There is much greater sensitivity to these forces in demographic than in developmental research. It is also important to note that welfare states rarely address the life course as a whole and instead are designed to provide spot coverage around specific periods of vulnerability and risk or specific transitions. The first and last few decades of life are heavily defined and structured by social policy systems (for illustrations, see Settersten 2005a). As a result, a policy that affects the life course is not the same as a life-course policy designed with the whole of life in mind and connecting and integrating different life periods (Leisering 2003). It is life-course policies that will be the focus of political debate and social attention in years to come, especially in light of the dramatic changes in demographic parameters noted earlier. New variability in life-course experiences—by race/ethnicity, gender, and especially social class (Furstenberg 2003)—will eventually demand that outdated institutions and policies be recreated in fresh ways throughout the world (Settersten 2005a; Weymann 2003). In this way, life-course policies at the “meso” level—whether relatively institutionalized or in significant flux—become central to understanding connections between macro-level (e.g., economic, political) structures and micro-level (biographical) action.

I earlier argued that researchers turn attention to psychological capacities and social skills that would serve young people well at the threshold of adulthood. The goal of then using that knowledge to find ways to actively strengthen those capacities and skills is consistent with the emergent emphasis of modern welfare states on equipping individuals and families to actively manage their own lives through their own actions (Esping-Anderson et al. 2002). It is also consistent with human and social capital perspectives, in which investments in human capital (e.g., education and training) and social services (e.g., assistance with child and elder care) are primary means for achieving this because they facilitate participation in the market (see also Mouw 2006; Raffo and Reeves 2000). Once these investments have been made—if they have been or can be made—young people will be better equipped to navigate markets for education, jobs, and partners (Cook and Furstenberg 2002; Settersten 2005a).

At the same time, this strategy alone can be dangerous because investments often are not or cannot be made, and it is simultaneously necessary to protect individuals and families from risks. Strategies that equip rather than protect place a high premium on autonomy and self-reliance, and they leave it up to individuals to take advantage of whatever opportunities they encounter or can create. These strategies create highly competitive, risk-prone, individualistic climates, and these climates produce larger share of young people who encounter problems in making the transition for which little support is then provided (Breen and Buchmann 2002). In addition, an inability to achieve positive outcomes is culturally coded as personal failure, which means that young people may be more likely to engage in risky behaviors in an effort to pursue highly valued goals or achieve some sort of success. One could also argue the reverse: that the heightened societal insecurities of modern times may lead individuals to perceive their own futures as uncertain and leave them hesitant to take as many risks (see also Esping-Andersen 2002). Either way, many of the psychological capacities and social skills described earlier, such as planfulness and decision-making processes, seem critical to achieving positive adult outcomes against such climates.

6 Linking Demography, Human Development, and the Transition to Adulthood: The Promise

Demography and human development have natural, mutual attractions. Yet despite some common goals, the gulf between these perspectives is wide, given the different levels of analysis, domains and outcomes, and explanatory factors on which they are focused. This gulf is problematic if human development is to be genuinely conceived as the interplay between species, social, and individual influences (Settersten 2005b). Each perspective has much to gain by more explicitly incorporating the other.

In analyzing the transition to adulthood, it is important to not only document behavioral patterns, but also to more comprehensively consider the sources and the consequences of population-level phenomena, whether related to mortality, morbidity, fertility, partnership, migration and immigration, or population aging. This requires enlarging the demographic view by not only better treating the macro-level sources and consequences of population dynamics, but also by considering how phenomena at lower levels of analysis (especially in families and other social settings) are affected by and interact with population dynamics. Similarly, developmental views can be transformed by looking beyond preferred micro-level sources and consequences to broader social forces, especially welfare states and aspects of “the new demographic regime,” to use Macura et al.’s (2005) phrase. These forces powerfully shape social settings and experiences—and, indeed, the very structure and content of the life course—yet they are seldom in view in developmental scholarship.

Strengthening developmental and demographic imaginations, respectively, and growing attention to the intersections between them, will result in more complex and comprehensive theories and models. Reflexive theories and models, which travel from populations and welfare states down through various layers of the social environment to individuals, or which travel from individuals on upward, will prompt revolutionary advances in both demography and human development by better relating factors at multiple levels of analysis. Settings and processes at the intermediate “meso” level offer especially important lenses for bridging action across levels; social class and other dimensions of diversity (e.g., gender, race, and ethnicity), too, offer critical lenses for understanding the interfaces between human development and demography.

The scope of this article may be criticized for being too Western and American. In many instances, there is a dearth of cross-national evidence to bring to bear on these questions. But the issues raised here are nonetheless relevant to other nations. More systematic exploration of these matters will bring into clarity which parts and challenges of the transition to adulthood, which explanatory factors and consequences, which psychological capacities and social skills, and the like, are widely shared across many nations and which are unique. Explorations such as these are needed to advance the state of theories and knowledge. At present, little is actually known about the points of convergence and divergence in these portraits cross-nationally.

Demographic changes point to both new opportunities and new risks in moving into adulthood. Among the most pressing risks in Western nations are the challenges of balancing paid work and family responsibilities (especially child care), lacking the skills necessary to find adequately paid work, having skills and training become obsolete and being unable to upgrade them, and having an insufficient work history to qualify for social security (see also Taylor-Gooby 2004). Many of these risks are also bundled together, with alarming proportions of young people being “disconnected” from both schools and the labor market, and with little capital to reconnect them to these spaces in the future. For example, in 2000, 1 in 6 Americans between 18 and 24 were not enrolled in school, employed, or the military, and had no more than a high school diploma or equivalent; for black, non-Hispanic, Hispanic, and American Indians, that proportion is 1 in 4; for white non-Hispanics it is 1 in 10 (Jekielek and Brown 2005). The successful negotiation of new risks is especially important for young people not only because these risks are common, but because failure can have substantial implications for their future life chances and for the future of societies.

Many of the new risks considered here are more pronounced for young people from underprivileged socioeconomic backgrounds, as well as for individuals whose welfare was, as children and adolescents, attached to the state. Conversely, many of the opportunities posed by the new terrain of early adulthood are largely afforded by those who enter it in relatively privileged social positions. Similarly, many of the psychological capacities considered here are ultimately tied to having or acquiring human capital, not only educational attainment but also family income and other resources. In many nations, families are called upon to privately absorb many of the risks of the transition to adulthood. Where cross-national differences are concerned, welfare state “regimes” play a central role in determining how the transition is experienced. In some cases, the policies and programs of the state offer a set of protections that not only buffer individuals from new risks but even promote developmental exploration; in other cases, the state offers few or no protections, which ultimately promotes disconnection and drift. Either way, the first decade of adulthood becomes a critical juncture for understanding the accumulation of advantage and disadvantage over the entire life course. In the years to come, the transition to adulthood will only grow in its importance as a “public issue,” to use C. Wright Mills’s (1959) famous phrase, carrying serious social problems and requiring serious social investments, rather than as a “private trouble” to be managed with personal resources and strategies.