About the Book
What is it like to become an adult in twenty-first-century America? This book takes us to four very different places—New York City, San Diego, rural Iowa, and Saint Paul, Minnesota—to explore the dramatic shifts in coming-of-age experiences across the country. Drawing from in-depth interviews with people in their twenties and early thirties, it probes experiences and decisions surrounding education, work, marriage, parenthood, and housing. The first study to systematically explore this phenomenon from a qualitative perspective, Coming of Age in America offers a clear view of how traditional patterns and expectations are changing, of the range of forces that are shaping these changes, and of how young people themselves view their lives.
About the Author
Mary C. Waters is M.E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. She is author most recently of The Next Generation: Immigrant Youth in Comparative Perspective, and of Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (UC Press), among other books. Patrick J. Carr is Associate Professor at Rutgers University. He is the author of Clean Streets: Controlling Crimes, Maintaining Order, and Building Community Activism and Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What it Means for America. Maria J. Kefalas, Professor in the Department of Sociology at Saint Joseph’s University, is the author of Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage (UC Press) among other books. Jennifer Holdaway is Program Director and China Representative at the Social Science Research Council. She is the author most recently of Environment and Health in China: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives.
Table of Contents
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Mary C. Waters, Patrick J. Carr, and Maria J. Kefalas
1. Straight from the Heartland: Coming of Age in Ellis, Iowa
Patrick J. Carr and Maria J. Kefalas
2. Transitions to Adulthood in the Land of Lake Wobegon
Teresa Toguchi Swartz, Douglas Hartmann, and Jeylan T. Mortimer
3. If You Can Make It There . . . : The Transition to Adulthood in New York City
Jennifer Holdaway
4. Coming of Age in “America’s Finest City”: Transitions to Adulthood Among Children
of Immigrants in San Diego
Linda Borgen and Rubén G. Rumbaut
5. Becoming Adult: Meanings and Markers for Young Americans
Richard A. Settersten Jr.
6. Conclusion
Maria J. Kefalas and Patrick J. Carr
Appendix: Methods
References
Contributors
Index
