Eighteen. Twenty-one. Sixty-five. In America today, we recognize these numbers as key transitions in our lives-precise moments when our rights and opportunities change-when we become eligible to cast ...a vote, buy a drink, or enroll in Medicare.This volume brings together scholars of childhood, adulthood, and old age to explore how and why particular ages have come to define the rights and obligations of American citizens.
Since the founding of the nation, Americans have relied on chronological age to determine matters as diverse as who can marry, work, be enslaved, drive a car, or qualify for a pension. Contributors to this volume explore what meanings people in the past ascribed to specific ages and whether or not earlier Americans believed the same things about particular ages as we do. The means by which Americans imposed chronological boundaries upon the variable process of growing up and growing old offers a paradigmatic example of how people construct cultural meaning and social hierarchy from embodied experience. Further, chronological age always intersects with other socially constructed categories such as gender, race, and sexuality. Ranging from the seventeenth century to the present, taking up a variety of distinct subcultures-from frontier children and antebellum slaves to twentieth-century Latinas-Age in America makes a powerful case that age has always been a key index of citizenship.
Background
Quantifying the impact on COVID‐19 transmission from a single event has been difficult due to the virus transmission dynamics, such as lag from exposure to reported infection, ...non‐linearity arising from the person‐to‐person transmission, and the modifying effects of non‐pharmaceutical interventions over time. To address these issues, we aimed to estimate the COVID‐19 transmission risk of social events focusing on the Japanese Coming‐of‐Age Day and Coming‐of‐Age ceremony in which “new adults” practice risky behavior on that particular day.
Methods
Using national surveillance data in Japan in 2021 and 2022, we conducted difference‐in‐differences regression against COVID‐19 incidences by setting “new adults” cases as the treatment group and the cases 1 year younger or older than these “new adults” as the control group. In addition, we employed a triple differences approach to estimate the risk of holding the Coming‐Age ceremony by using a binary variable regarding the presence or absence of the ceremony in each municipality.
Results
We estimated the relative risks (RRs) of the Coming‐of‐Age Day as 1.27 (95% confidence interval CI 1.02–1.57) in 2021 and 3.22 (95% CI 2.68–3.86) in 2022. The RR of the Coming‐of‐Age ceremony was also large, estimated as 2.83 (1.81–4.43) in 2022.
Conclusions
When planning large social events, it is important to be aware of the unique risks associated with these gatherings, along with effective public health messages to best communicate these risks.
This article examines the transition to adulthood among 1.5-generation undocumented Latino young adults. For them, the transition to adulthood involves exiting the legally protected status of K to 12 ...students and entering into adult roles that require legal status as the basis for participation. This collision among contexts makes for a turbulent transition and has profound implications for identity formation, friendship patterns, aspirations and expectations, and social and economic mobility. Undocumented children move from protected to unprotected, from inclusion to exclusion, from de facto legal to illegal. In the process, they must learn to be illegal, a transformation that involves the almost complete retooling of daily routines, survival skills, aspirations, and social patterns. These findings have important implications for studies of the 1.5- and second-generations and the specific and complex ways in which legal status intervenes in their coming of age. The article draws on 150 interviews with undocumented 1.5-generation young adult Latinos in Southern California.
Over the decades, the lines separating young- middle-aged-, and older adults have blurred, as indicated by a broadening of the appropriate years for making life decisions. Not only are many people ...marrying later, but some are marrying earlier than ever. Overall, women giving birth later, but some are having children earlier in their lives. Older people are retiring later, but some are retiring at a younger age. The spread or variability (standard deviation) of age-based decisions has increased substantially, giving adults greater freedom from the traditional constraints of age. With these relaxed age norms has come a host of related social problems. The relaxation of age norms for adult decision-making has inadvertently blurred the boundaries between adults and teenagers, between teenagers and children. This generalization of the phenomenon throughout the life cycle is responsible for the adultification of childhood.
Eight year old girls are, to an increasing extent, being treated as sexual objects; bullying peaks in the 6th grade; larger numbers of girls are having oral sex or sexual intercourse by the age of 15; the pregnancy rate for girls 13-15 is on the rise; we are in the process of dismantling the juvenile justice system in favor of adult forms of punishment; and more and more children are left without adult supervision in the afternoons, as though they were miniature adults who are capable of raising themselves.
Jack Levin is the American Sociological Association's 2009 Winner of the "Public Understanding of Sociology" Award. This short book communicates the power and importance of sociological thinking to major, worldwide social trends. Ideal for use in undergraduate courses such as introductory sociology, social problems, and social change as well as more advanced courses in population, or sociology of aging.
In the realm of music, especially within the K-pop genre, songs serve as dynamic mediums for addressing social issues. This research focuses on the `song "Haze" by LUCY. The selection of this song is ...emphasized due to its rich meanings capable of representing life, especially regarding individual journey from childhood to adulthood, resonating with universal themes of resilience, self-discovery, and social challenges in its lyrics. Additionally, "Haze" serves as a primary message about readiness for adulthood. This study utilizes semiotics, drawing from Charles S. Peirce's method, to uncover layers of meaning within the song's lyrics. Findings reveal a profound journey marked by fear, growth, and identity exploration. Through semiotic analysis, the study illuminates how individuals navigate internal struggles, overcome obstacles, and foster resilience. The lyrics capture emotional complexities, emphasizing the significance of self-identity and interpersonal relationships in navigating life's trials. Ultimately, maturity is depicted as the embrace of authenticity and inner strength amidst uncertainty.Di ranah musik, khususnya dalam genre K-pop, lagu-lagu berfungsi sebagai media dinamis untuk mengatasi isu-isu sosial. Penelitian ini berfokus pada lagu "Haze" oleh LUCY. Pemilihan lagu ini dalam penelitian ditekankan karena lagu ini kaya akan makna yang mampu merepresentasikan kehidupan, terutama tentang penggambarannya pada perjalanan individu dari masa kanak-kanak menuju dewasa, yang beresonansi dengan tema-tema universal tentang ketahanan, penemuan diri, dan tantangan-tantangan sosial dalam liriknya. Selain itu, "Haze" dapat dijadikan sebuah pesan utama tentang kesiapan diri menuju kedewasaan. Penelitian ini menggunakan semiotika, mengambil metode dari Charles S. Peirce, untuk mengungkap lapisan lapisan makna dalam lirik lagu tersebut. Temuan menunjukkan perjalanan yang mendalam yang ditandai dengan ketakutan, pertumbuhan, dan eksplorasi identitas. Melalui analisis semiotik, penelitian ini menemukan bagaimana individu menghadapi perjuangan internal, mengatasi rintangan, dan membangun ketahanan. Lirik-lirik tersebut menangkap kompleksitas emosional, menekankan pentingnya identitas diri dan hubungan interpersonal dalam menghadapi ujian kehidupan. Pada akhirnya, kedewasaan digambarkan sebagai pelukan atas keaslian dan kekuatan batin di tengah ketidakpastian.
This work employs the basic narrative structure of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey to analyse female protagonists in various menopause narratives found in both fiction and non-fiction books. The ...article focuses on the study of four texts: Darcey Steinke’s Flash Count Diary (2019), Colette's Break of Day (1928), Dana Spiotta’s Wayward (2021), and Deborah Levy’s Living Autobiography Series (2018-2021). In his classic work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell outlines three major stages of the hero’s journey: departure from the familiar daily world, initiation in a new, challenging world, and return to the former world with the gains obtained during the initiation. I argue that this framework is a useful tool for interpreting female characters dealing with menopause and its consequences. The daily known world of these protagonists is shaped by their pre-menopause lives and their bodies. Menopause can be viewed as the “other world” where the heroine’s initiation takes place. There, she confronts unknown forces that transform her, as she returns, changed, to her body and her daily life. I propose that in these works, this change marks both a new beginning and a continuity that the protagonists confront with a sense of rage, new places to inhabit, and fresh approaches to their bodies.
This work employs the basic narrative structure of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey to analyse female protagonists in various menopause narratives found in both fiction and non-fiction books. The ...article focuses on the study of four texts: Darcey Steinke’s Flash Count Diary (2019), Colette's Break of Day (1928), Dana Spiotta’s Wayward (2021), and Deborah Levy’s Living Autobiography Series (2018-2021). In his classic work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Campbell outlines three major stages of the hero’s journey: departure from the familiar daily world, initiation in a new, challenging world, and return to the former world with the gains obtained during the initiation. I argue that this framework is a useful tool for interpreting female characters dealing with menopause and its consequences. The daily known world of these protagonists is shaped by their pre-menopause lives and their bodies. Menopause can be viewed as the “other world” where the heroine’s initiation takes place. There, she confronts unknown forces that transform her, as she returns, changed, to her body and her daily life. I propose that in these works, this change marks both a new beginning and a continuity that the protagonists confront with a sense of rage, new places to inhabit, and fresh approaches to their bodies.
This article proposes a reading of How Beautiful We We Were, a timely novel about intergenerational justice and politics published in 2021 by Cameroonian-American author Imbolo Mbue. The first part ...of the article introduces the field of postcolonial ecocriticism and examines the historical and contemporary impacts of colonialism on the environment as represented in the novel. My reading then foregrounds the voices of resistance and activism of How Beautiful We Were’s young protagonists and their coming-of-age as postcolonial eco-citizens, and finally moves to highlight the urgency for environmental justice and decolonization in the face of ongoing global environmental challenges.
Queer Arab life writing, especially in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic, is scarce. In my three-part auto-ethnographic essay, I explore the overarching relationship between illness and ...queerness, given that in many spaces the latter still falls under the umbrella of the former - especially in the Middle East where I reside. In the first part, set in 2018, I tackle the idea of wanting to have a terminal disease, cancer, and try to work out why exactly I feel that way. To do so, I revisit scenes that juxtapose this 'real' sickness with the 'perceived' sickness of being queer in Lebanon. The second part examines the relationship between queerness and a specific illness, COVID-19, as I experienced it in 2020. The third part elaborates on the prolonged, still roiling, impact of this illness, on queer life particularly, and possible positive aspects of the pandemic. While the essay starts with my point of view as someone who has recently come out as queer and moved to Beirut, the rest is written after living there two years as an openly LGBT person. I reflect on the evolution of my relationship with illness and queerness through this coming-out, and ultimately coming-of-age, transition.
