This paper synthesizes the findings from 12 papers
that were commissioned for a conference on the transition to adulthood
in four countries: Italy, Germany, Sweden and the United States.
For each country, scholarly papers were written by a social historian,
a developmentalist from psychology or sociology, and a scholar
of public policy. Each paper used comparative data to summarize
how the transition to adulthood was unique in their country and
then to explain why this pattern of uniqueness occurred. The present
paper synthesizes these three papers on each country. It emphasizes
the role the nuclear family plays in Italy in facilitating the
very late household independence of young Italian adults, a role
that is slowly transforming traditional parent-child relations.
It also emphasizes the role the Swedish state plays in facilitating
a brief period of experimentation before it promotes young people
settling into higher education, relatively stable work, and cohabitation
or marriage. The paper also emphasizes changes that are occurring
in the German higher education and apprenticeship systems, especially
the latter in terms of pressures from the changing nature of work
and jobs and the desire of businesses for flexibility in hiring,
training, and firing. And finally, the paper emphasizes how variable
the transition to adulthood is in the United States, being especially
problematic for those who do not go into higher education or have
strong family links into the labor market. Prison, early childbirth,
and job churning are more characteristic of the United States
than elsewhere in the industrialized world, in part due to racial
beliefs and habits, to adherence to a market ideology, and to
a high school system that does not function well where there are
many poor minorities, especially African-Americans.
Thomas D. Cook, Department
of Sociology, Northwestern University Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., Department of Sociology,
University of Pennsylvania
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