The aim of this study was to build a detailed, integrative profile of the correlates of young adults' feelings of loneliness, in terms of their current health and functioning and their childhood ...experiences and circumstances.
Data were drawn from the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, a birth cohort of 2232 individuals born in England and Wales in 1994 and 1995. Loneliness was measured when participants were aged 18. Regression analyses were used to test concurrent associations between loneliness and health and functioning in young adulthood. Longitudinal analyses were conducted to examine childhood factors associated with young adult loneliness.
Lonelier young adults were more likely to experience mental health problems, to engage in physical health risk behaviours, and to use more negative strategies to cope with stress. They were less confident in their employment prospects and were more likely to be out of work. Lonelier young adults were, as children, more likely to have had mental health difficulties and to have experienced bullying and social isolation. Loneliness was evenly distributed across genders and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Young adults' experience of loneliness co-occurs with a diverse range of problems, with potential implications for health in later life. The findings underscore the importance of early intervention to prevent lonely young adults from being trapped in loneliness as they age.
Abstract
In this study, we integrate diverse structural, social psychological, and relational perspectives to develop and test a comprehensive framework of the processes that make early pregnancy a ...socially stratified phenomenon. Drawing on rich panel data collected among a sample of 940 18- to 20-year-old women from a county in Michigan, we estimate nested hazard models and formal mediation analyses to simultaneously elucidate the extent to which different mechanisms explain disparities in early pregnancy rates across maternal education levels—a key indicator of socioeconomic status. Together, our distal mechanisms explain 53 and 31 percent of the difference in pregnancy rates between young women whose mothers graduated college and young women whose mothers graduated and did not graduate high school, respectively. Reproductive desires, norms, and attitudes, relationship contexts, and educational opportunities and environment each link maternal education to young women’s odds of pregnancy. Self-efficacy, however, plays only a modest role; while contraceptive affordability and knowledge are not significant pathways. These findings bring into focus the most prominent intervening mechanisms through which socioeconomic circumstances shape young women’s likelihood of becoming pregnant during the transition to adulthood.
Emotional abuse and neglect are among the most common forms of psychological trauma. It is known that individuals exposed to emotional abuse and neglect during childhood are at a higher risk of ...developing psychopathology in adulthood and experience various difficulties in interpersonal relationships. This research investigates the mediating role of resilience in the relationship between childhood emotional abuse and emotional neglect and codependency in young adults. The research group included 401 participants, aged between 18 and 45, with 305 females (71.6%) and 96 males (23.9%), reflecting various aspects of young adulthood, as defined by Levinson’s theory of individual life structure. The data were collected using the Spann-Fischer Codependency Scale, the Emotional Abuse and Emotional Neglect subscales of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, and the Adult Resilience Measure. The results showed that childhood emotional abuse and neglect were positively related to relationship addiction and negatively related to resilience. Furthermore, resilience was found to be a partial mediating variable in the relationship between childhood emotional abuse and codependency. However, the established model of the mediating role of resilience in the relationship between childhood emotional neglect and codependency was not statistically significant. These results suggest that childhood emotional abuse and neglect are significant predictors of codependencyand can help understand the impact of emotional abuse on codependency and resilience in young adults.
Abstract
Objective
Drawing upon family systems theory, Burton's childhood adultification model, and Johnson's typology of domestic violence (DV), the objective of this qualitative study was to ...understand the adultification experiences of young adults who were exposed to DV while growing up.
Background
Exposure to DV negatively impacts familial dynamics, disrupting healthy boundaries between caregivers and children. Often associated with families experiencing poverty, adultification is a type of boundary infringement that places children in adult‐like roles to execute essential family tasks with potentially dangerous and developmentally harmful effects. A growing body of literature documents how youth are agentic in navigating their family dynamics and how abusive partners use children as abuse tools. However, adultification in a DV context remains understudied.
Method
Using a qualitative study design, the research team interviewed 23 college‐attending young adults with father‐mother‐perpetrated DV exposure histories who resided in the Southeastern United States. The qualitative data were analyzed using theoretical thematic analysis.
Findings
We identified five distinct yet interrelated ways in which young adults with DV exposure histories experienced adultification: intervening to protect mothers from violence, serving as mothers' emotional support system, shielding siblings from violence and conflict, caring for siblings' daily needs, and managing parents' health and well‐being. The young adults categorized as exposed to coercive controlling violence described more extensive adultification.
Conclusion
Centering adultification in the context of family violence provides a lens through which researchers, practitioners, and other professionals can understand how DV impacts family dynamics, including adultified children.
Proactive personality, i.e., individuals' disposition to take personal initiative and to initiate change, is a personality characteristic that is related to many favorable outcomes in the work domain ...and beyond. Yet, the conditions that promote its development amongst young adults have barely been researched. As international student mobility (ISM) has become an essential part of higher education in many countries, we assessed how proactive personality related to ISM experiences by self-selection, socialization and anticipation effects. We further explored if behavioural exploration served as a mediator of ISM socialization effects. We carried out a longitudinal study (N = 2163) with two measurement occasions and three study groups, i.e., control students who stayed at home, present sojourners who engaged in ISM and a waiting group of future sojourners. Latent change analyses indicated that all sojourners showed higher levels of proactive personality than control students before their departure abroad. Moreover, present sojourners increased in proactive personality as compared to the other two groups. This effect could partly be explained by sojourners' more frequent exploration of new behaviours. There was no indication that future sojourns affected proactivity development by anticipation effects. Implications of these findings for the understanding of adaptive personality development are discussed.
•Proactive personality positively predicted ISM engagement.•Present sojourners increased in proactive personality compared to control students.•The ISM socialization effect was mediated by increased behavioural exploration.•Future sojourns did not affect proactive personality development by anticipation.
Vaping and smoking are common modes of using cannabis (THC) among young adults, but little is known about how patterns of cannabis vaping and smoking unfold over time or how using one or both types ...of products may differently affect mental and physical well-being. This study examines parallel processes of cannabis vaping and smoking over 5 years and mental and physical outcomes in a sample of young adults.
Annual surveys were conducted between 2016 and 2022 with a mostly California-based cohort of 2428 young adults. Parallel process growth mixture models examined trajectories of past-month frequency of cannabis vaping and smoking from ages 20 – 25. Classes were extracted based on parallel trajectories of vaped and smoked product use. Models assessed differences in self-reported mental (anxiety, depression) and physical (ailments, subjective overall) well-being outcomes in young adulthood across classes, adjusting for demographic characteristics and mental and physical well-being at pre-baseline (average age 19).
Four cannabis vaping/smoking classes emerged: low use of cannabis (84.7%), decreasing smoking, low-moderate vaping (7.1%), stable moderate smoking, decreasing vaping (4.6%), and rapid increasing dual use (3.4%). Classes were similar on physical well-being indicators in young adulthood. The rapid increasing dual use class showed higher anxiety and depressive symptoms compared to other classes.
Progression to higher frequency of both vaping and smoking cannabis in young adulthood may contribute to poorer mental well-being compared to other use patterns. Targeted efforts to reduce dual vaping and smoking in young people who use cannabis may be needed.
•Vaping and smoking are common modes of cannabis use in young adults.•This study modeled parallel trajectories of vaping and smoking from ages 20–25.•Four cannabis vaping and smoking trajectory classes emerged.•Classes differed on anxiety and depression symptoms by later young adulthood.•More frequent “dual” vaping and smoking correlated with poorer mental well-being.
Social investment theory (SIT) proposes that the transition to parenthood triggers positive personality trait change in early adulthood. Using data from a representative sample of first-time parents ...compared to nonparents, the results of rigorous tests do not support the propositions of SIT. Specifically, we found no evidence for the proposition that parents show more pronounced mean-level increases in emotional stability, agreeableness, and conscientiousness compared to nonparents. We did find that agreeableness and openness changed depending on how long someone was in the parent role. Finally, our results suggest that high extraversion and low openness in both genders and high conscientiousness in females predict the likelihood to enter into parenthood. Discussion focuses on why this transition seems to be unrelated to mean-level personality trait change and the implications of these results for SIT.
ABSTRACT—
This article asserts that the theory of emerging adulthood is a useful way of conceptualizing the lives of people from their late teens to their mid‐ to late 20s in industrialized ...societies. The place of emerging adulthood within the adult life course is discussed. The weaknesses of previous terms for this age period are examined, and emerging adulthood is argued to be preferable as a new term for a new phenomenon. With respect to the question of whether emerging adulthood is experienced positively or negatively by most people, it is argued that it is positive for most people but entails developmental challenges that may be difficult and there is great heterogeneity, with some emerging adults experiencing serious problems. With respect to the question of whether or not emerging adulthood is good for society, it is argued that claims of the dangers of emerging adulthood are overblown, but emerging adulthood is probably a mixed blessing for society.
Blood pressure (BP) and cholesterol are major modifiable risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD), but effects of exposures during young adulthood on later life CVD risk have not been well ...quantified.
The authors sought to evaluate the independent associations between young adult exposures to risk factors and later life CVD risk, accounting for later life exposures.
The authors pooled data from 6 U.S. cohorts with observations spanning the life course from young adulthood to later life, and imputed risk factor trajectories for low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and high-density lipoprotein cholesterols, systolic and diastolic BP starting from age 18 years for every participant. Time-weighted average exposures to each risk factor during young (age 18 to 39 years) and later adulthood (age ≥40 years) were calculated and linked to subsequent risks of coronary heart disease (CHD), heart failure (HF), or stroke.
A total of 36,030 participants were included. During a median follow-up of 17 years, there were 4,570 CHD, 5,119 HF, and 2,862 stroke events. When young and later adult risk factors were considered jointly in the model, young adult LDL ≥100 mg/dl (compared with <100 mg/dl) was associated with a 64% increased risk for CHD, independent of later adult exposures. Similarly, young adult SBP ≥130 mm Hg (compared with <120 mm Hg) was associated with a 37% increased risk for HF, and young adult DBP ≥80 mm Hg (compared with <80 mm Hg) was associated with a 21% increased risk.
Cumulative young adult exposures to elevated systolic BP, diastolic BP and LDL were associated with increased CVD risks in later life, independent of later adult exposures.
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Several recent studies have illustrated a general increase in self-esteem from after adolescence until midlife. However, the specific pattern and possible conditions of self-esteem development from ...the important transition out of high school into young adulthood are still not well understood. In a longitudinal study (Transformation of the Secondary School System and Academic Careers; TOSCA), German students were interviewed 4 times beginning with their senior high school year (at Time 1 T1: N = 4,532; age: M = 19.6 years, SD = 0.9; 55% female). Conditional latent change models were applied and established 3 main findings. First, self-esteem showed a gradual increase across the transition, with both the self-esteem intercept and slope indicating substantial interindividual variability in the transition to young adulthood. Second, structural (having a partnership) as well as personality (Big Five) characteristics were substantially related to self-esteem development in emerging adulthood. Third, there were gender-specific associations between self-esteem and partnership status as well as between self-esteem and neuroticism and agreeableness. Findings point to a general upward development of self-esteem yet show interdependencies with the accomplishment of age-specific challenges in the transition to young adulthood.
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