Is Adulthood Passé?
“Now that twentysomethings cling on to adolescence and adults live in perpetual kidulthood, Susie Mesure finds sociologists need a new lexicology for adults.”
“What with twentysomethings clinging to adolescence and sixtysomethings refusing to move gracefully to pensioner status, the new ages look very different from even a generation ago. The changes, which have seen women delaying motherhood and men postponing leaving home, have prompted sociologists to draw up a new adulthood timetable—provided they make it: increasingly, it seems, people jump from childhood to kidulthood and progress no further. A US-based developmental psychologist, who is leading efforts to analyse the new age groups, believes the twenties should be viewed as the new life stage of ’emerging adulthood’.”
