The Long Road to Adulthood

It is June again, graduation time, a time of transition for high school seniors. For many  parents, it is a time for wondering: What lies ahead for these young people? 

One theory of change identifies three stages: An end, a transition stage and a new beginning. The graduation from high school, a diploma, a prom and  the emergence of a legal self at 18 marks the end of adolescence. Graduates enter the transition phase, but when comes a new beginning, when do they emerge as adults? For most of human history,  civilizations offered young people fairly clear definitions of adulthood and, while not necessarily painless and free of risk, pre-modern civilizations offered quick initiations into adulthood.

Modern civilization is a break from past patterns of civilization. It does not offer youth a quick initiation into adulthood. The transition stage to adulthood seems to be getting longer and longer. It begins with graduation from high school at 18 but might not end until the age of 26, 28 or later.   

How does one know he or she has reached adulthood? A definition of adulthood might  include achievements such as finishing school, leaving home, being self sufficient, independent, establishing a meaningful career, getting married and having kids. The problem is many of these achievements are no longer realized in a predictable manner.    Obtaining a college degree often takes more than four years. Poor job prospects see many college graduates staying in school as long as possible. Establishing a career is a challenge and having a good job today doesn’t mean one will have it tomorrow.

Many twentysomethings are finding it harder to establish the self-sufficient lifestyles of adulthood. Sociologists have coined a new term, the boomerang generation, to describe the large numbers of 18- to 29-year-olds forced to return to their parents homes to live.  Receiving financial aid from parents after college is not unusual either. Ever more young people are postponing marriage, and the number of couples choosing to postpone starting a family or deciding not to have kids at all, is on the rise. In short, if a stable family life and a secure career represent adulthood the transition to adulthood isn’t going to be easy for this year’s high school graduating class. 

Maybe what we need is an adult initiation ritual like the bullet ant glove ritual. According to Alexander Bouffard, the sting from a bullet ant is excruciatingly painful and to be avoided if possible. However, to become a man in the Satere-Mawe tribe of the Brazilian Amazon, a boy has to put on gloves filled with these ants and keep those gloves on for 10 minutes without yelling out in pain. How painful is the experience? One Satere-Mawe man described the pain as having your hands on fire. That’s the downside of the ritual. The upside of the bullet ant ritual is once a Satere-Mawe boy completes this ritual, he is  recognized as an adult and takes on the privileges and responsibilities of manhood.  

Bouffard doesn’t say anything about what the girls go through to become women, but I suspect that in the Satere-Mawe society women marry early. From what my wife says   giving birth ranks up there close to bullet ant bites. Producing babies is a pretty impressive initiation rite, I would say. 

Except for tribal-like street gangs and Yale, Harvard secret societies that go back generations, modern American society doesn’t have anything like a bullet ant ritual to get our youth through the transition to adulthood.   

Neither an adolescence nor an adult, how do these young people make sense of their lives and how do they come to eventually make the transition to adulthood? Society seems to  have abandoned them to a cultural limbo where they are deprived of the social roles that give adults purpose and meaning, a sense of their value to society and self esteem. Left on their own, young people turn to each other to find ways to address vital social and psychological needs.

What we are seeing is that young people turn to peer groups as substitutes for adulthood.   Peer groups of all kinds abound. Many are small groups of friends that meet regularly to socialize. Some peer groups are organized around music, a subculture lifestyle, a sport, an online computer game, a religious belief system. Failure to find a peer group leaves a person dangerously isolated and painfully alone. I doubt it an exaggeration to say finding a youth culture, real or virtual, that defines oneself is a matter of psychological life or death for many young people. One indication of how significant these peer groups are for these not yet adults, is the exclusion of adults. 

Unable to find belonging within a peer group, a person can descend into isolation and self absorption, a social, psychological state in which a person can begin to harbor paranoid  ideations, fantasies of revenge, religious and political obsessions, illusions of grandeur and power. These are some of the extremes, but for many, isolation simply means long periods of loneliness and depression.

What should concern us is this: Increasing numbers of twentysomethings are finding that this transitional period is no longer a bridge to an adult lifestyle but a difficult barrier to maturity. Life becomes a series of frantic moves toward adulthood and retreats back into the security of one’s  peer group or social isolation. Recall the popular TV sitcom,  “Friends.” These young people seemed caught in a web of friendship with every effort to move on to adulthood aborted. 

What must one do to become an adult in contemporary society? For most of human history, a civilization could give younger generations a clear answer to this question. In our civilization, perhaps the best we can offer younger generations are some basic guidelines for finding an answer to what it means to be an adult and how to become one.   Here are some thoughts on what these guidelines might be.

The transition to adulthood requires a person to confront peer pressure and master the ability to create a self that is neither a flight into conformity nor an escape into detached,  self absorbed individuality. Studies reveal that these two polarities are characteristically American. We swing between two extremes, conformity and a self-absorbed individuality. (For an insightful examination of individualism and commitment in American life, read Habits of the Heart.)

Maturity as an adult requires the same courage, endurance and willful commitment that a Satere-Mawe boy requires to endure bullet ant bites and to achieve manhood. What the Satere-Mawe boy may have that contemporary youth lack is a connection to a traditional belief system that gives him a sense that he need not rely totally on his own powers. His will to be courageous, to endure, to face the anxiety, fear, pain and risk of failure comes from within and from without.

The source of  “outer-in” strength might be a spirit guide, one’s ancestors, a wise mentor, a connection to a holy place, a commitment to an important social role, an ideal of excellence. This “outer-in” strength requires an “inner-out” strength as well: Courage, fortitude, will, commitment. Adulthood is not simply an external, social role nor is it only an internal psychological set of attitudes. 

Perhaps a key insight is that the self is defined by a relationship between one’s inner power, limited and insufficient as it might be, and an external source of strength that  complements one’s inner strength. I believe (the) link between this inner strength and outer power  is a defining commitment that is specific, concrete, practical and personal. I am not talking about some abstract, universal principle, a timeless good, the eternally  beautiful, a truth for all people and all places. This defining commitment is very much  within one’s own time, this here and now place, a person or persons, a cause, a faith, a task, a vocation that influences the way I relate to life and others in deeply personal ways.  An initiation ritual like the bullet ant gloves can be understood as a graphic, concrete  depiction of a defining commitment that requires an exercise of will, courage, endurance, a  tangible risk and actual responsibilities.  

The social and psychological dead ends of peer group conformity and self absorbed isolation exist all around us but often go unnoticed. Our civilization has perfected modes of distraction that dull our sense of being alive. The zombie movies play out this theme.  All those walking dead, out to make us one of them, represent the dehumanizing forces of modern, technological society. It is so easy to live a life full of pleasant superficialities,  vicarious emotions and virtual experiences.

Jean Baudrillard, a French sociologist, philosopher, and cultural theorist, calls this hyperreality. Hyperreality is the inability to  distinguish reality from fantasy. A trip to Venice in Las Vegas  is more real than a trip to Venice in Italy. The Iraq war on CNN is more real than the actual war with the smells, the  blood, crushed bones, fatigue, fear, rage, boredom. Real life is not like a movie with a music sound track.  Real human beings are not avatars or cartoon superheroes. 

Let me end with some questions. I'll leave you to provide the answers. Am I on the road to adulthood? Does my peer group offer me the opportunity to find a defining commitment, something really worth living for or must I look elsewhere? Am I aware of an inner strength that is a source of courage, endurance? Am I able to exercise my will to choose  and to act? Do I mobilize these inner strengths in the service of a calling, other people,  personal ideals? Do the sources of  a power beyond me evoke, affirm, and complement my inner strengths? Does my defining commitment embody risk? Is it concrete, linked to a place, a time, a community? Does my way of living evoke a sense of awe and dread. In other words, do I experience the beauty and ugliness of life, the opportunities and threats, the joys and the sorrows, the ends and beginnings? Am I living a life I'd be willing to live again?