Debating Emerging Adulthood Stage or Process?

"This book is a real treat as advocates of emerging adulthood as a stage, present their evidence and then invite opponents to offer an economic-cultural argument with their data. A point-counter-point exchange follows as the adversaries collaborate in lively debate. Who wins? First, the reader whose intelligence is challenged with rich material worthy of emerging adulthood's complexity. And second, our discipline which comes of age when false attacks on 'straw men' are set aside so that a complex reality can be forthrightly considered from multiple perspectives."--James Youniss, Ph.D., Research Professor, Department of Psychology, Catholic University of America, and co-editor of Engaging Young People in Civic Life (Vanderbilt University Press 2009)"This multi-authored volume provides a much-needed, multi-perspective analysis of the model of emerging adulthood proposed by Jeffrey Arnett. While Arnett and Tanner present a useful description of the currently prolonged transition to adulthood, Hendry and Kloep show readers how to critically analyze Arnett's model, with an eye to discerning the limitations of that description as well as the error of the implicit prescriptions of the model regarding how young people ought to be negotiating this prolonged transition."--James Cote, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Western Ontario, Canada"Developmental science has a long and rich history regarding the philosophical, conceptual, and theoretical issues that must be addressed in order to successfully postulate the presence of a stage of human ontogeny. Accordingly, to advance developmental theory appropriately and, as well, to adequately use theory to frame research, it is necessary to embed ideas about the nature of the developmental process within both the long-understood issues about positing stages of development and, today, within the cutting-edge of contemporary developmental theory, that is, within developmental systems theoretic