Heather Perkins and Dr. Brian Willoughby, School of Family Life

In the last 15 years, a new body of research has emerged looking specifically at the development of individuals between the ages of 18 to 25. Historically, this developmental period has been marked by the emergence of new responsibilities such as marriage and parenthood that are much less likely to occur for individuals of that age group today. Recent trends have shown that people are getting married and having children at later and later ages; using this time period instead as a time to gain an education, and form a self-identity (Arnett, 2010; Arnett, 2000; Arnett, 2007; Tanner book). Although researchers do not always agree on the importance and desirability of this developmental stage (Arnett, Taber, 1994; Arnett, 2000; Arnett, 2007; Côté, Bynner, 2008), they generally agree that significant differences exist. Research targeting „emerging adults,‟ (the term coined by Jeff Arnett that defines the new developmental period between the ages of 18-25) has found them to have characteristics that set them apart from other developmental groups, such as increased resilience in the face of adversity, increased risk taking, and an increased focus on self and identity formation. (Arnett, Taber, 1994; Arnett, 2000; Arnett, 2007; Gurevitz, 2004; Cardegna, 2007; Hendry, Kloep, 2007; Côté, Bynner, 2008).

As previously stated, most emerging adults today use this developmental stage as a time to focus on self improvement and identity formation. The introduction of a child during emerging adulthood could change its developmental outcomes in drastic ways. The transition to parenthood alone has been found to be a period marked by rapid parental identity formation and development (Delmore-Ko, 2001) but when combined with the changes emerging adults experience during the transition to adulthood, the impacts on both the parent and child could be decidedly different from those of other age groups. Some research has suggested that navigating the transition to parenthood can be made much more difficult for individuals experiencing multiple developmental changes, or increases in role overload (Perry-Jenkins, Goldberg, Pierce, Sayer, 2007; Palmer, 2004). Although the average age of parenting has increased (27 for men and 25 for women) there is still a significant amount of individuals who are becoming parents during emerging adulthood, yet virtually no research on the effects of emerging adulthood hood has previously be done. Due to this fact, it has been impossible to say what the effects would be.

An abundance of research exists on the characteristics, relationship patterns, and development of emerging adults, but little, is known about this group and parenting. Because most emerging adulthood literature has focused on the white, middle class, college attending emerging adult, our study also considered a unique new sample of emerging adults in those making the parental transition in “fragile families”, or families who made less than 30k a year, and who are generally viewed to be less stable, and more “high risk” families. we sought to answer the question:
Are there differences in child outcomes between emerging adults (age 18-25) and adults (25 and older) one year after the transition to parenthood?

With our project, we sought to narrow the gap in the emerging adulthood and parenting research by looking at potential differences in child health outcomes of parents of different age and development groups. Using data collected in the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study conducted by Princeton University, we divided parents into two groups: emerging adults (ages 18-25) and adults (ages 18+). We investigated several important variables including: age groups, Relationship quality, Religiosity, Income, Gender, race, child care, parenting stress, couple communication, parenting behavior, as our independent variables to see how they might affect our dependent variable: child outcomes.

One of the most exciting things we found in our research was that age differences did predict child health in that the children of the emerging adulthood parental group seemed to have better overall health than the children of the adult group, and that communication was more predictive of child outcomes in the emerging adult group. We posited that this could be due in part to the resiliency and adaptation that generally characterizes emerging adults. Something we were also very excited about was that the population we examined was a low-income population. One of the main arguments against classifying emerging adulthood as a developmental group is that all of the previous research has looked mainly at college students, or upper middle class individuals, and so the period couldn‟t be generalized to larger populations. Our findings open new doors, not only to research in the field of emerging adulthood, and new implications of this developmental period, but also to new domains of parenting research that up until now, have been completely unexplored. A summary of all our results can be found in the table I at the end of this report.

We are very excited about the impact our research will have in our field. I was able to present our research at the Mary Lou Fulton Poster conference, and we hope to see our article published within the next year, either in the Journal of Adolescent Research or Jeff Arnett‟s journal on emerging adulthood. I will also be presenting our findings at a national research conference in Minneapolis on November 8th. I want to thank the Office of Research and Creative Activities for giving me this opportunity. It support has benefitted not only me as an individual, but everyone who will be impacted for the better by the findings of our research. Today, as we have seen the depletion of morals, and the deterioration of the family, it is encouraging to participate in empirical research that will help families become stronger, more functional units of society.