In Defense of Emerging Adulthood as a Life Stage: Rejoinder to Kloep’s and Hendry’s Chapters 4 and 5
In response to the previous chapters by Kloep and Hendry, this chapter acknowledges the overreaching of previous stage theories while defending the value of the theory of emerging adulthood. Stage theories can be valuable as long as they are not presented as uniform and universal. Emerging adulthood theory has shown its value in how quickly it has become widely used across many disciplines. Kloep’s and Hendry’s focus on dynamic processes while rejecting stage theories is criticized as too vague to illuminate developmental changes and distinctions. Then Kloep’s and Hendry’s own case studies from Chapter 5 are used to show how themes of emerging adulthood appear even in those cases intended to refute the theory.
Keywords: emerging adulthood, stage theories, social class
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