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Growing up in the shadow of the women’s movement dramatically influences how young
women think about their life course transitions. Although prior research has examined the
objective markers of adulthood, we know little about how young women themselves per-
ceive these markers. This article examines the subjective meanings of the transition to
adulthood among 42 young women who were part of the Youth Development Study. While
interviewees saw becoming a parent and becoming financially independent as reflecting
an adult orientation, completing schooling was tied to class-differentiated views of grow-
ing up. In addition, respondents did not see beginning full-time work and getting married
as associated with growing up. Three key themes emerged as young women discussed their
lives: independence/self-reliance, self-development, and uncertainty. These themes suggest
that young women are partially “living feminism” (bringing aspects of feminist ideology
and attitudes into their lives) as they make the transition to adulthood.
Grow up? Not so fast. Meet the twixters. They’re not kids anymore, but
they’re not adults either. Why a new breed of young people won’t—or
can’t?—settle down.
Grossman, 2005
56
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Aronson / YOUNG WOMEN’S TRANSITION FROM ADOLESCENCE TO ADULTHOOD 57
LITERATURE REVIEW
Young women’s life course decisions today take place in the context of
increased opportunities yet continuing discrimination, a wide range of
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This research was supported by a National Research Service Award
from the National Institute of Mental Health (Training Program in Identity, Self, Role, and
Mental Health—PHST 32 MH 14588, Sheldon Stryker, principal investigator), the
National Institute of Mental Health (MH 42843, Jeylan T. Mortimer, principal investiga-
tor), the Personal Narratives Award from the Center for Advanced Feminist Studies,
University of Minnesota, and a Graduate School Block Grant Stipend Award from the
Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota. The author thanks Ronald Aronson,
Dana Britton, Barbara Laslett, Jane McLeod, Jeylan T. Mortimer, Sheldon Stryker, and
several anonymous reviewers who provided comments and suggestions on earlier versions
of this article. The author also thanks a University of Michigan–Dearborn writing group,
including Bill DeGenaro, Ilir Miteza, Diane Oliver, and Elizabeth Rohan, for providing
feedback for revision. This article was formerly titled “Blurring Life Course Stages: Young
Women’s Transition From Adolescence to Adulthood in the Contemporary Era.”
choices yet a lack of social and political support for those choices, and a
backlash against feminism yet the incorporation of feminist principles into
people’s lives (Stacey 1991). While some have suggested that the women’s
movement as an active social movement is in “abeyance,” feminist atti-
tudes and ideology are not (Taylor and Rupp 1993). Although many young
women (especially those from disadvantaged life pathways and back-
grounds) are ambivalent about the label feminist, they support feminist
ideologies (Aronson 2003).
According to Stacey (1991, 265), feminism has “unwittingly” colluded
with a postindustrial economy to produce complex “postmodern gender
strategies.” These “strategies” include women’s appropriation of feminist
ideology for their own purposes. Stacey pinpoints several key ideologies
expressed by her interviewees that have been borrowed from the women’s
movement: support for alternatives to marriage, women’s rejection of sub-
servience, entrance into male-dominated occupations and competition for
economic rewards, men’s participation in domestic work, self-reliance
and autonomy, and self-respect. Although not all women fully embrace
these ideologies, many bring aspects of feminism into their everyday
lives. As Stacey (1991, 16) puts it, “Even those seemingly hostile to fem-
inism have been selectively appropriating feminist principles and prac-
tices and fusing these, patchwork style, with old and new gender, kinship,
and cultural patterns.” In fact, feminist themes of women’s independence
and self-development have infused nearly every aspect of our culture
(Stacy 1991) and young women define their identities in ways that defy
traditional gender expectations (Gerson 2002). For young women grow-
ing up after the women’s movement, “feminism is the whole climate of
their lives, the air they breathe” (Jong 1998, xv). This article examines the
ways young women incorporate some of these feminist principles into
their lives during the transition to adulthood in such areas as work, marriage,
and parenthood.
While the women’s movement has influenced the realm of employ-
ment, the transformation of young women’s work lives remains incom-
plete. The majority of women now work outside of the home (U.S.
Census Bureau 2002), providing the benefits of multiple life possibilities
(Giele and Holst 2004). Adolescent girls have higher educational expecta-
tions than do boys (Mahaffy and Ward 2002) and a “have it all” approach
to work and family (Sidel 1990). At the same time, employment often fails
to alter the traditional responsibilities associated with being a wife and
mother (Hochschild 1989). Because most workplaces and work–family
policies do not adequately accommodate family responsibilities, many
young women to incorporate ideas from the women’s movement into their
lives? What does it mean to become an adult woman in the shadow of the
women’s movement? This article brings together feminist and life course
theories to examine these very questions.
Studies of the transition to adulthood typically focus on the timing and
sequencing of five transitions that have together been considered to be
“markers” of an adult status: completing schooling, beginning full-time
work, financial independence, getting married, and becoming a parent. Yet
these markers do not capture the complexity of the present era. While
these markers might have existed in a stable, reliable way through the
middle of the twentieth century, movement into adulthood has become
extended (Arnett 2000), more variable in sequencing (Shanahan 2000),
and more “individualized” (Buchmann 1989). A rapidly changing global
economy has resulted in an insecure employment market, deteriorating
opportunities (Hill and Yeung 1999), a decline in lifelong occupations,
career instability (Buchmann 1989), and difficulty establishing career
paths (Mortimer 2003).
Recent research has challenged the assumption that young people
themselves view the five objective life course markers as representing the
achievement of adulthood. Arnett (1997) demonstrated that respondents
viewed only financial and residential independence as necessary for an
adult status. Instead of seeing the other objective transitions in this way,
they embrace intangible, psychological, and individualistic orientations as
indicative of adulthood (e.g., the ability to “decide on own beliefs and val-
ues independently of parents or other influences”; Arnett 1997, 10).
Another study found that the completion of family transition markers,
especially parenthood, was related to feeling like an adult (Shanahan et al.
2005). Benson and Furstenberg (2007) found that parenthood was signif-
icant for women but not for men, while cohabiting and getting married
were not associated with feeling like an adult. The combination of transi-
tions also mattered: Full-time employment was not enough in itself to lead
to feeling like an adult—it had to be coupled with residential indepen-
dence (Benson and Furstenberg 2007). Johnson, Berg, and Sirotzki (2007)
found racial and class differences in whether young people felt like adults,
suggesting that delaying adult feelings may be a luxury of more advan-
taged youth.
Several interview studies have recently examined this topic, but they
have not theorized the unique experiences of young women, nor have they
examined class differences. Hartmann and Swartz (2007) found that
young people define adulthood in terms of a constellation or accumulation
METHOD
Percentage of
Percentage in Interviewees in
Group YDS Sample n Interviewed Each Group
Racial Background
African
Class Background 3 White American Asian Biracial Hispanic Total
Working 7 2 1 2 1 13
Middle 13 3 2 2 0 20
Upper-middle 8 0 1 0 0 9
Total 28 5 4 4 1 42
Financial Independence
In earlier eras, young women’s financial independence from their par-
ents was often associated with connections to men, including marriage
(Modell 1989). Yet for the women I interviewed, achieving independence
along this dimension was much more likely to be an individual accom-
plishment. One-third of the interviewees lived with their parents at the
time of the interview, and a total of one-half of the interviewees consid-
ered themselves to be financially dependent on their parents. The middle-
and upper-middle-class interviewees and those who had pursued postsec-
ondary education were somewhat more likely than their counterparts to
significantly rely on their parents for financial assistance. The women of
color were evenly distributed between seeing themselves as financially
dependent and independent. Whether or not they felt that they had
achieved financial independence, these women considered it an important
feature of growing up.
Those who were financially independent emphasized the self-sufficiency
and competence of being on their “own”: having their own apartment or
house, car, and money. For example, one middle-class biracial (African
American and white) woman told me that she was proud of “living on
my own, taking care of myself, [and] earning my own money.” A work-
ing-class Korean American woman said: “It’s a good feeling” to be able
to take “responsibility for all my own finances.” As is common during this
life phase, this process was often wrought with struggle. For one working-
class Hispanic woman, this struggle included bankruptcy. Similarly, a
middle-class white interviewee moved into her own apartment at age 20
when she was working full-time yet acquired a great deal of credit card
debt, resulting in “stress” and “anxiety attacks.” By the time of the inter-
view, she felt that she had overcome what she called a “disease”:
Although they often felt “ready to move out” (in the words of a working-
class white single mother), many lacked the necessary resources as a
result of the combination of debt (from credit cards and school loans) and
low-wage jobs. One white middle-class single mother, who lived with her
parents and worked full-time but lived just above the poverty line, told me
that she did not want to “be struggling forever.” A working-class white
college graduate who earned “a decent salary” was in debt as a result of
school loans. She was “not thrilled” about living with her parents and
wanted her age to move a little “faster”: She wished she could “bypass the
20s, and just get to 30, because that’s when all of your hard work starts
paying off.”
Regardless of whether they were able to become financially indepen-
dent, it is striking that the desire to do so on their own is strongly linked
with growing up for these young women. Interviewees did not see mar-
riage or reliance on men as a way to obtain financial independence. For
example, one upper-middle-class white interviewee described the experi-
ences of women of previous generations as follows: “You have to get mar-
ried because you have to have a man that’s going to support you
financially, and that’s the only way you can survive.” She characterized
her generation as much more independent from the financial need to get
married: “There are many women [who] . . . marry out of love and com-
panionship and would feel very independent having [their] own career and
being able to support themselves.”
Although most of the women discussed the expectation of financial
independence in terms of opportunities for women’s independence from
men, a few women recognized the strains associated with financial inde-
pendence. For example, one upper-middle-class white woman told me that
the obstacles and opportunities that young women face today are “the
same”:
Becoming a Parent
Previous research has established parenthood as one of the most impor-
tant objective markers of becoming an adult for heterosexual women.
One-third (14) of my interview sample were mothers, with only two mar-
ried prior to parenthood. None of the mothers were cohabiting, although
a few were involved in romantic relationships. Although the working-class
women were equally likely to be parents, only one-fourth of the women
who were middle class or higher had become parents. Women of color and
white women had similar experiences: About one-third of each group had
become parents. Thus, becoming a parent was a class-differentiated, but
not a race-differentiated, transition. As I explain below, the subjective
understandings of becoming a parent reveal that both mothers and non-
mothers are “living feminism,” although in very different ways.
The majority of the mothers got pregnant accidentally, typically during
high school. Although they viewed their unplanned pregnancies as the
result of immature behavior, they believed the process of becoming a par-
ent made them become responsible. They used words such as mature and
grown-up to describe the impact of becoming a parent and said they
devoted their lives to parenting “24 [hours a day], 7 [days a week].” For
example, one working-class white woman described how motherhood
changed her plans to go away to college and ended her “carefree” teenage
years. As she put it, “Having my son was a major turning point in my
life. . . . It changed my entire life. It changed all the plans that I ever had
had for myself. It really made me more mature, made me grow up a lot.”
A white upper-middle-class woman who had been a teen mother experi-
enced a transformation as a result of becoming a parent:
I was doing really bad in school. I was ditching [school]. . . . Before I got
pregnant . . . I was having a lot of problems with drugs, like, cocaine and
marijuana and drinking a lot. . . . The day I found out [about the pregnancy]
I said, “I’m not doing this anymore.” . . . And I quit, that was it. . . . From
that day forward, it’s like I grew up.
Quite powerfully, she said that if she had not gotten pregnant, “I’d be
dead. . . . Either that or dying.” Thus, becoming a mother changed her life
from its self-destructive path (see also Edin and Kafalas 2005).
For these women, becoming a single mother was associated with inde-
pendence from the men in their lives, who were often ambivalent about
fatherhood. The 14 mothers accepted sole responsibility and account-
ability for their pregnancies and their children; only two saw marriage or
serious commitment to the baby’s father as a serious alternative. For
example, one middle-class white single mother said that her son “was
very much wanted by me. Which, not so much by his father. . . . He had
his choice. I told him to go, then, if he wanted to. I was going to have a
baby, and he could go away, and that would be the end of it for him.” A
working-class white single mother described her decision-making
process as follows:
I knew exactly what I was going to do. . . . I was going to keep [the
baby]. . . . I had to talk to his father, and at that time we were both very
young. And the first thing he wanted to do was have an abortion. And I told
him that would not be the right thing. . . . So I decided to have [the baby],
and I didn’t know if he would be around or not, but I knew that was the right
thing for me. And I thought, that’s fine if he doesn’t want to have anything
to do with the child, then he doesn’t.
Here, we see that young women’s parenting decisions are made indepen-
dently from men.
Although most parents did not consciously recognize that their inde-
pendence from men in single parenthood is connected to the legacy of the
women’s movement, some did recognize that the ability to become a par-
ent on their own represents new gender norms. For example, a middle-
class African American single mother described experiences with
unplanned pregnancies in earlier eras as follows:
If you got pregnant, whoever [the father] was, by God you got married,
and that was the end of it. I don’t care if you hated him. I don’t care if you
didn’t even know his last name. You know, if you got pregnant, you got
married, you had a family, and you so-called lived happily ever after, even
if you were never happy with him in the first place.
In contrast, she described many of the choices women have today in the
following quote:
I think now a days more women are realizing that, “I do have the option to
direct my life in the way that I want to.” Just because I’m a woman does not
mean that I have to have kids and I have to be a housewife. . . . I can go out
and if I want, I could have children, and be a part of the working force, and
be the breadwinner in my household. It’s okay for me to do that. It’s okay
if I choose not to be married. Or if I do choose to be married, it’s still okay
for me to make more [money] than my husband.
The interviewees who were not yet parents also viewed parenthood as
a key marker of growing up. In fact, these women used phrases such as not
ready, too young, and not grown up enough to describe their reasons for
not having children. For example, one upper-middle-class white woman
said, “I feel that I need a more solid foundation for myself before I can
think of providing for somebody else.” As another middle-class white
woman put it, “I’m not old enough to have children. I’m only 23. I can
barely take care of me.” For those who planned to be parents, delay was
linked to finding the right partner, feeling secure in their current relation-
ship, getting married, completing schooling, establishing their careers,
and/or having their finances in order. One middle-class white woman who
was applying to medical school at the time of the interview revealed a
“close call” with an unplanned pregnancy when she was in college. This
incident made her subsequently more careful about birth control, as she
thought that an unplanned pregnancy would have drastically altered her
educational and career trajectory.
Thus, both the parents and non-parents are “living feminism,” although
they do so in different ways. The women who were parents, disproportion-
ately single mothers from working-class backgrounds, emphasized their
independence and self-sufficiency in the childrearing process. This
approach reflects cultural changes in how women think about marriage and
parenthood (Edin and Kefalas 2005). As women have absorbed the idea
that they can and should live independently from men, they unconsciously
apply this perspective to many areas of their lives. Those who were not yet
mothers, disproportionately from advantaged backgrounds, did not view
parenthood as the only important route of self-development. At the same
time, both mothers and non-mothers viewed becoming a parent as an
important turning point toward growing up. Thus, although motherhood is
not the only avenue available to women, it does remain an important sub-
jective developmental milestone to heterosexual women.
COMPLETING EDUCATION:
CLASS-BASED DIFFERENCES IN GROWING UP
education included two primary themes, with roughly equal numbers tak-
ing each approach: One group of women emphasized the ways that their
schooling provided a credential and prepared them for their subsequent
full-time work, whereas the other group focused on identity exploration
during college. The credential-oriented women disproportionately attended
two-year (or shorter) programs and were more likely than the other group
to be mothers and full-time workers. Nearly half were from working-class
backgrounds, and about 40 percent were women of color. In contrast,
reflecting the theme of self-development, identity-exploration-oriented
women disproportionately attended four-year colleges. Only two in this
group were already parents. Nearly all were from at least a middle-class
background, and 30 percent were women of color.
When the first group of interviewees talked about their postsecondary
education, they focused on gaining specific skills that would move them
into the work world and provide credentials that would help them make
specific advancements in their jobs. For example, one working-class
Hispanic woman who attended a secretarial program at a business college
said that her school “really prepared you for what it was going to be like
once you started working full-time.” She contrasted this approach with
identity exploration: “I don’t want to go to school and be one of those
people [who] . . . takes 15 classes and still doesn’t know what they want
to do.” Similarly, a working-class white mother emphasized the credential
aspect of education: “I like school. I like it a lot. But I also don’t have the
money or the time to waste doing something that is not going to work out
for me.” For this group, graduations were often significant events. One
working-class African American woman, for example, dropped out of
high school at age 16, but later received her GED. She described her feel-
ings about graduation as follows: “Everybody was preparing for me to
graduate. And it was a big deal to everybody in my whole house. . . . It
was wonderful.” School completion was a significant achievement par-
tially because it led to work skills. As a middle-class white woman said of
her 18-month retail training program, “I was eager to get back out in the
work force and start doing what I had learned at school.”
In contrast, identity exploration, self-development, and uncertainty were
themes disproportionately expressed by middle-class interviewees who
had attended four-year colleges. Reflecting normative middle-class ideol-
ogy, these women never made what one interviewee called “a conscious
decision” to go to college—they assumed that it was the appropriate path
for them. Once in college, they focused on self-development through the
exploration of their interests, talents, and identities. As a middle-class
Vietnamese American woman put it,
This quote suggests that young women are deeply influenced by the career
opportunities that were opened up by the women’s movement. In contrast
to the limited occupations available to women previously, these intervie-
wees are “living feminism” as they embrace their choices. As a middle-
class white woman put it: “Nowadays, you can go out and become anything
you want.” Another middle-class white woman emphasized the impor-
tance of women’s employment traditionally male fields when she said,
So many women are doing things . . . that a couple years ago they might
have thought was impossible. But now they’re like, “Oh, I can fly to the
moon, and . . . I can mix chemicals just as well as the next guy. Or I can run
a whole entire city just as well as the next guy can. Or I can run a whole
company and be a CEO just as well as the next guy.”
Getting Married
Although marriage has operated as a signifier of the transition to adult-
hood for women in many previous eras (Modell 1989), the women in this
study emphasized the importance of establishing their own identities,
regardless of relationship status. Half of the interviewees were involved in
committed relationships (10 of these women were married, nine of whom
were white and one of whom was Hispanic), while the remaining half
were single. Although none directly labeled themselves as lesbians, one
woman was questioning her sexuality, and another (who had been in
prison since she was a teenager) suggested that her relationships had been
with women. Although marriage is discussed in the life course literature
as a universal marker of adulthood, it is generally not accessible to les-
bians. My conclusions about the marker of marriage are thus based on my
heterosexual interviewees and do not address how lesbian or bisexual
women perceive marriage. As the heterosexual interviewees emphasized
the themes of self-development and independence in their relationships,
they reflected an appropriation of feminism into their lives.
The married interviewees expressed generally positive views about
their relationships. For example, an upper-middle-class white woman
described her decision to get married as follows: “We’ve been together for
a very long time. It was kind of like the next step. . . . I just knew he was the
one.” Although marriage was seen as a turning point in their lives, it was
not a turning point by itself but was instead connected to other adult tran-
sitions, such as establishing an independent residence, financial indepen-
dence, and parenthood (also see Hartmann and Swartz 2007). For
example, a middle-class white woman said that in “the past seven months,
I’ve just become an adult.” She elaborated,
Since I got married, it seems like all these adult things are happening to me.
I’m an aunt. I’ll be a godmother. I bought a house. It’s like I’m not at that
middle stage anymore between teenage and adult years. I feel much more
mature. And because of those turning points, they’ve made me mature. . . .
Now I actually feel like an adult in this world. Where before when I was
just 20 [or] 21, it was like I was stuck in between. Like I was almost in
limbo. . . . And I almost felt like I didn’t know where I belonged in this world.
dated her boyfriend since high school said that, as a result of witnessing
her parents’ divorce, she was “waiting to get married” until she was
“ready.” The “irresponsible” actions of her children’s father prompted a
working-class African American single mother to avoid relationships alto-
gether. As she put it, “I don’t blame men or anything like that, but I just
don’t trust them, point blank. And I live alone. . . . Men are not a priority.” A
middle-class white woman alluded to changing gender practices as a
result of the women’s movement yet was concerned about persisting gen-
der inequalities in parenting when she said that women, “no matter how
liberated [they] think [they] are, bear [their] children’s responsibility.”
In sum, self-development and self-reliance were present for these inter-
viewees regardless of marital or relationship status. “Living feminism” in
this sphere means that those young women who want to get married also
want to live their married lives on their own terms. Those who delay mar-
riage do so in favor of self-development or to avoid such problems as
divorce or gender inequality in parenting.
CONCLUSION
This article has turned up a number of complex themes that call out for
future research. Future research should examine the subjective transition
to adulthood with larger and more representative samples of young adults,
with special attention to gender, class, and racial differences. In particular,
we need to know more about subjective similarities and differences
between young women and men. Future research would also benefit from
intergenerational comparisons. These areas could help disentangle the
influence of economic and demographic change from the legacy of the
women’s movement on people’s lives. In addition, it would be useful to
examine the process by which feminist principles get absorbed in people’s
everyday lives. That is, under what circumstances do they select particu-
lar “strategies”? (Stacey 1991). Which “strategies” are not selected and
why? To what extent are people consciously “living feminism”? Are there
class and racial differences in the conscious appropriation of women’s
movement ideology? As researchers continue to examine these questions,
we should give further attention to the three subjective themes uncovered
here. Self-development, independence/self-reliance, and uncertainty may
be especially important to fully understand the unique experiences of
young women today.
NOTES
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