5: Emerging Adulthood: Short Answer

These questions will require more advanced thinking and consideration to earn full credit. Make sure to support your answers with detail, data and facts presented in the resources, along with ties to cultural and societal influences. You should also include theoretical perspectives as appropriate. You should NOT quote anything directly from any resources. Instead, you should paraphrase using your own words, and cite the source appropriately (APA citation preferred, but other citation methods will be accepted). When paraphrasing, think about how you would explain the concept or idea to a classmate or parent. Show me through your writing that you understand the ideas, not just that you can locate the concept in a reading.

In the module resources, various reasons were offered for why emerging adulthood is now considered a separate stage of development. Using what you have learned (including course concepts and info), explain the idea of emerging adulthood as though you were talking to your great uncle at a family reunion. Keep in mind the following:

Your uncle is describing his own young adulthood as the ideal and seems to negatively stereotype this generation of emerging adults as “lazy, unfocused wanderers with no real responsibilities”.

You are using appropriate terminology to legitimize your knowledge to your uncle, but remember to explain these terms since he will not be familiar with them.

Your goal is to convince your uncle that these are indeed different times (back this up with concrete info) and emerging adulthood is a valid developmental stage.

Be sure to discuss how different populations have different ways of experiencing emerging adulthood (or skipping it entirely). Why is this stage relevant to you personal (or not) in comparison to other groups?