Part of this pupose is intellectual: Smith describes in this new category of "emerging adults" the deep institutionalizing of intellectual trends (and vice versa) that have formed 18-23 (or 29) year olds in North American culture. It thereby gives a wonderful summary of the "given" cognitive formations by the American culture as the "baseline" in which people live their lives. It helps understand the "filtering down" effect of the intellectual convictions of the past 30-40 years.

But more than this, the purpose is pastoral. If there has been a sociological phenomenon that has (over)determined the life at Mid-City, it is "emerging adulthood" -- a new phenomena that we had no idea was occuring when we planted the church. Moreover, those who have been or are my students are deeply shaped by these dynamics. It seems to me that bringing these sociological dynamics to light both renders the past more intelligible, but also allows us to be more intentional about the concrete environment in which our lives are lived. By bringing to light, one is no longer trapped under what seems necessary. Ironically, sociological study can undercut sociological determination (to a degree) and learn to ask the write questions, not as a means of conformity to them as in the church growth movement and the baby boomers, but as a means of acceptance and resistance, of moving beyond generational experiences to ask what is genuinely true, good, and beautiful -- questions that the study shows cannot be supressed, even if a language no longer exists to ask them.

Smith recognizes that "emerging adulthood" is a new developmental phase that has been institutionally formed by American culture: "it is encessary to realize that life stages are not naturally given as immutable phases of existence. Rather, they are cultural constructions that interact with biology and material productrion, and are profoundly shpaed y the social and institutional conditions that generate and sustain them" (p. 6).

He lists several background factors: (1) "the dramatic growth of higher education;" (2) "the delay of marriage by American youth over the last decades;" (3) changes in the American and global economy that undermine stable lifelong careers and replace them instead with careers with lower security, more frequent job changes, and an ongoing need for new training and education"; and (4) "partly as a respnse to all of the foregoing, parents of today's youth, aware of the resources it often takes to succeed, seem increasingly willing to extend financial and other support to their children, well into their twenties and perhaps early thirties . . . These resources help to subsidize the freedom that emerging adults enjoy to take a good, long tiem before settling down into full adulthood, culturally defined as the end of schooling, a stable career job, financial independence, and new family formation " (p. 5).

I think that there is one other factor, at least, that Smith does not describe -- the influence of mass media that has formed and reinforced this lifestyle in order to capture more "disposable income" of this age group. It thereby in the long term impoverishes these persons by forming this "transitional" phase defined by experiment that has strong economic implications -- experience, whether it is travel, relationships, education, media, costs money. In earlier times this would have been spent on building financial and social equity in the United States; now it must be spent on "experience" and "experiment" so that when equity time comes, it is supposedly insured (whether in relationships or jobs or personal 'values'). Of course, the empirical data in many areas suggests that such "experiment" actually has an inverse affect on long term ability -- those who cohabit before marriage have higher degrees of divorce, for instance. Instead, it seems to me that the formation of "emerging adulthood" exhausts persons of the financial and social capitalthat they need for the long-term stability that persons rightfully seek.

This is a new phase or cultural that I never directly lived. I was married at age 20 years, 11 months (the average male age of marriage in the US is not 27 years, 6 months, I believe). I ran from educational institution to educational institution with as much intensity that I could. Yet I have lived my life surrounded by this phenomenon, often sensing it, never able to articulate it fully. Smith helps put this together. Maybe by uncovering what is obscured, Smith can help us be a pilgrim people vowed to care for a pilgrimage way-station more faithfully and minimize the cultural, institutional fall-outs that can happen by letting the culture uncritically drive us.