| The main objective of this project is to examine how young adults make sense of adulthood despite an increasingly prolonged, destandardized, and deconcentrated transition to adulthood. Relying on over qualitative data from 28 in-depth interviews with college-educated young adults in New York City, I explore the connections between gender, relationships with parents, partnership, traditional adult roles, and subjective feelings of adulthood. This study has three main aims: (1) defining independence and understanding its relationship to adulthood; (2) exploring the connection between traditional adult roles and subjective feelings of adulthood; and (3) examining gender differences in subjective feelings of adulthood.;First, I explore meanings of adulthood, by unpacking the concept of independence and its complex relationship to feelings of adulthood. On the one hand, independence can refer to self-sufficiency and a shift from dependence on parents. On the other hand, it can signify independence of spirit, freedom from responsibility, and self-involvement. In conflating the two types of independence, young adults face a paradox in the connection between independence and adulthood. Participants often equate independence with adulthood in that they no longer rely on parental support. However, the narratives reveal incompatibility between independence as freedom and cooperation involved in traditionally adult roles, such as parent, spouse, or caretaker.;Second, I investigate experiences of adulthood, in connection to relationships with parents and partners, with an emphasis on gender differences. In examining relationships with parents, I find that financial and emotional dependence on parents can hinder subjective feelings adulthood. But I also find that different types of financial support have differing degrees of repercussions on subjective feelings of adulthood. For instance, regular subsidies that inflate young adults' standard of living are connected to feelings of indebtedness, guilt, and low feelings of adulthood, whereas sporadic economic support as a bridge or safety net does not hinder feelings of adulthood. I also find that important differences in the feelings young men and women attach to relationships with parents. The women in my study tended to reveal much more ambivalence.;I also examine the role of partnership in shifting understandings and experiences of adulthood for the young men and women in my study. I find that partnership shifts the meaning from independence to interdependence, a relationship based on mutual dependence, responsibility and accountability. While the partnered men and women in my study tend to define adulthood similarly, I find gender differences in their pathway to interdependence and feelings of adulthood. I find that partnership remains instrumental for many of the women in my study. In other words, women in my study often adopted feelings of adulthood through partnership. In entering a relationship of interdependence, they were able to sever ties of dependence on their parents and adopt feelings of adulthood. |
