Arrested Adulthood: The Changing Nature of Maturity and Identity (review)

However students of adolescence decry the old adage about storm and stress, their implicit message is often doom and gloom. In the U.S., adolescents have been viewed with pronounced suspicions regarding—depending on the historical period—their immorality and irreligiousness, their unhygienic and sexually charged constitutions, or their lack of connections with social institutions and the status quo. This tradition of negativism continues today, fueled by scientific studies of the many and varied maladies of youth. Yet the overall impression created by this body of research may not represent a balanced account, and it also runs the risk of stigmatizing a phase of the life course. In turn, these considerations suggest a healthy dose of skepticism when the alarm is sounded yet again that youth are not up to the challenges posed by generational replacement.

James Côté's Arrested Adulthood represents an ambitious, synthetic account of contemporary American adolescents by a major figure in the sociological study of youth, and it is sounding the alarm. Côté merges insights from mass society theory and a neo-Eriksonian model of ego development to argue that the individualization of the life course has prevented many (perhaps most) youth from achieving true adulthood.

According to his analysis of social change, corporate capitalism has, through the prodigious use of the media, encouraged mass consumption patterns that have stratified American society into "age-based, undifferentiated masses" and, at the same time, destroyed traditional culture. As a consequence of this latter development, the significance of the social markers that indicated entry into adulthood (particularly marriage and parenthood) has greatly diminished, placing the onus on the individual to negotiate a pathway into "psychological adulthood," which is a balance between individualism and concern for others. This challenge to youth is complicated by adults' capitulation of their parenting responsibilities, which deprives youth of much-needed support. According to the neo-Eriksonian analysis, in choosing a path out of adolescence, youth either adopt a developmental form of individualization — characterized by an extensive deliberation of alternatives and opportunities that leads to psychological adulthood — or, far more likely, fall into a default mode. The default mode represents an uncritical acquiescence to corporate America's "vast market in superficial . . . forms of 'individuality'" that discourages adulthood by providing endless entertainment that is "cool," and, ironically given its mass consumption, "against the mainstream."

Because of the loss of role structure, traditional meaning, and parental guidance, most youth fall prey to corporate capitalism's manipulations, land in the default mode, and fail to find psychological adulthood. Like Riesman's other-directed self, youth in default mode look to others for guidance about their identity, and, in today's society, this results in identities based on consumption patterns. Like Lasch's cultural narcissist, they are self-centered, with little interest in responsibilities to others. They are neither adolescents nor adults, but rather they remain mired in a potentially permanent "youthhood," a new phase of the life course characterized by a pernicious feedback cycle between consumption to produce an antiestablishment, "hip" identity and disenfranchisement from society's institutions. Unfortunately, as each successive cohort is raised by a greater percentage of parents in youthhood, and as the captains of industry are increasingly replaced by occupants of youthhood, fewer meaningful investments are made in youth, raising the specter of a society of self-involved, immature citizens with little interest in the common good.

Written with concern and lively conviction, Arrested Adulthood has the sprawling argument and bold, threatening prophecy found in many classics of the behavioral sciences. (One is reminded, for example, of Putnam's Bowling Alone, which Côté cites with approval.) There is much to admire here, particularly a serious attempt to integrate macro- and micro-analyses, and the formulation of an overarching frame that can be used to explain major facets of contemporary adolescence. At least two generic criticisms apply...