Coming of Age in Times of Uncertainty

"Impatient with popular and academic hand-wringing over 'prolonged adolescence' (or young people's unwillingness to grow up), Blatterer in this overdue sociological treatise on the changing nature of adulthood in Western society counters that such judgments unfairly draw on obsolete norms of adulthood... Blatterer's writing is eloquent...his arguments are well considered, important, and thought-provoking."- Choice

Adulthood is taken for granted. It connotes the end of childhood, the resolution to the "storm and stress" period of adolescence. This conception is strongly entrenched in the sociology of youth and the sociology of the life course as well as in the policy arena. At the same time, adulthood itself remains unarticulated; journey's end remains conceptually fixed and theoretically uncontested. Adulthood, then, is both central to the social imagination and neglected as an area of sociological investigation, something that has been noted by sociologists over the last four decades. Going beyond the overwhelmingly psychological literature, this book draws on original qualitative research and theories of social recognition and thus presents a first step towards filling an important gap in our understanding of the meaning of adulthood.

Harry Blatterer is Lecturer in Sociology at Macquarie University where he teaches introductory sociology, social theory and courses on the life course, generations and intimacy.