Delayed Adulthood,Delayed Desistance? A Brief Report on Changing Age Schedules of Risky Behaviors

Abstract

Desistance from the risky behaviors associated with adolescence is linked to entry into adult roles like marriage and employment. Increases in the age of these transitions may delay desistance from risky behaviors. Using population data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Center for Health Statistics, and tabulated data from Monitoring the Future, we chart trends in six problem behaviors—arrests, marijuana use, binge drinking, suicides, homicides, and motor vehicle deaths—between 1975 and 2017. We find delays in desistance from some behaviors. For instance, binge drinking peaked at ages 19–22 in earlier birth cohorts but at ages 23–26 in later birth cohorts. However, other behaviors showed no change in the timing of desistance. Women’s rates approached men’s in binge drinking and suicide, but gender gaps persist across behaviors. Delayed transitions to adult roles have not produced a singular pattern of delayed desistance from problem behaviors.

Keywords

deviance life course gender transition to adulthood social change

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Arnett

J. J.

(2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens through the twenties. The American Psychologist, 55(5), 469–480.

Arnett

J. J.

(2016). Does emerging adulthood theory apply across social classes? National data on a persistent question. Emerging Adulthood, 4(4), 227–235. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167696815613000

Bachman

J. G.

Johnston

L. D.

O’Malley

P. M.

(2014). Monitoring the Future: Questionnaire responses from the nation’s high school seniors, 2012 (p. 382). Institute for Social Research.

Bachman

J. G.

O’Malley

P. M.

Schulenberg

J. E.

Johnston

L. D.

Bryant

A. L.

Merline

A. C.

(2014). The decline of substance use in young adulthood: Changes in social activities, roles, and beliefs. Psychology Press.

Croisant

S. A. P.

Haque laz

Rahman

Berenson

A. B.

(2013). Gender differences in risk behaviors among high school youth. Global Advances in Health and Medicine, 2(5), 16–22. https://doi.org/10.7453/gahmj.2013.045

Eickmeyer

K. J.

Payne

K. K.

Brown

S. L.

Manning

W. D.

(2017). Crossover in the median age at first marriage and first birth: Thirty-five years of change (Family profiles, FP-17-22). National Center for Family & Marriage Research. https://doi.org/10/25035/ncfmr/fp-17-22

Fry

(2017). It’s becoming more common for young adults to live at home—And for longer stretches. Pew Research Center. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/05/05/its-becoming-more-common-for-young-adults-to-live-at-home-and-for-longer-stretches/

Fussell

Furstenberg

F. F.

(2005). The transition to adulthood during the twentieth century: Race, nativity, and gender ( Settersten

R. A.

Jr Furstenberg

F. F.

Jr Rumbaut

R. G.

, Eds.). University of Chicago Press.

Hayford

S. R.

Furstenberg

F. F.

(2008). Delayed adulthood, delayed desistance? Trends in the age distribution of problem behaviors. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 18(2), 285–304.

10.

Hopfer

(2014). Implications of marijuana legalization for adolescent substance use. Substance Abuse, 35(4), 331–335. https://doi.org/10.1080/08897077.2014.943386

11.

Heuveline

(2002). An international comparison of adolescent and young adult mortality. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 580(1), 172–200. https://doi.org/10.1177/000271620258000108

12.

Keyes

K. M.

Grant

B. F.

Hasin

D. S.

(2008). Evidence for a closing gender gap in alcohol use, abuse, and dependence in the United States population. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 93(1), 21–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2007.08.017

13.

Laub

J. H.

Sampson

R. J.

(2001). Understanding desistance from crime. Crime and Justice, 28, 1–69.

14.

Lofstrom

Goss

Hayes

Martin

(2019). A closer look at women’s arrest rates. Public Policy Institute of California. https://www.ppic.org/blog/a-closer-look-a-womens-arrest-rates/

15.

Manning

W. D.

Brown

S. L.

Payne

K. K.

(2014). Two decades of stability and change in age at first union formation. Journal of Marriage and Family, 76(2), 247–260. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12090

16.

Massoglia

Uggen

(2010). Settling down and aging out: Toward an interactionist theory of desistance and the transition to adulthood. American Journal of Sociology, 116(2), 543–582. https://doi.org/10.1086/653835

17.

Norona

J. C.

Preddy

T. M.

Welsh

D. P.

(2015). How gender shapes emerging adulthood. In Arnett

J. J.

(Ed.), The Oxford handbook of emerging adulthood (pp. 62–86). Oxford University Press.

18.

Pampel

F. C.

(1998). National context, social change, and sex differences in suicide rates. American Sociological Review, 63(5), 744–758. https://doi.org/10.2307/2657337

19.

Prison Policy Initiative. (2019). Policing women: Race and gender disparities in police stops, searches, and use of force. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2019/05/14/policingwomen/

20.

Qian

(2012). During the great recession, more young adults lived with parents [Census brief]. Project US2010. http://www.S4.Brown.Edu/Us2010/Data/Report/Report08012012.Pdf

21.

Sampson

R. J.

Laub

J. H.

(1992). Crime and deviance in the life course. Annual Review of Sociology, 18, 63–84. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.18.080192.000431

22.

Sauber-Schatz

E. K.

Ederer

D. J.

Dellinger

A. M.

Baldwin

G. T.

(2016). Vital signs: Motor vehicle injury prevention—United States and 19 comparison countries. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 65(26). https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.mm6526e1

23.

Shanahan

M. J.

(2000). Pathways to adulthood in changing societies: Variability and mechanisms in life course perspective. Annual Review of Sociology, 26(1), 667–692. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.26.1.667

24.

Silva

J. M.

(2013). Coming up short: Working-class adulthood in an age of uncertainty. Oxford University Press.

25.

Smock

P. J.

Schwartz

C. R.

(2020). The demography of families: A review of patterns and change. Journal of Marriage and Family, 82(1), 9–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12612

26.

Vespa

(2017, April). The changing economics and demographics of young adulthood: 1975–2016 . U.S. Census Bureau.

27.

Warren

J. R.

Wrigley-Field

Luo

Saliba

(2017). When should researchers use inferential statistics when analyzing data on full populations? Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

28.

Wray

Colen

Pescosolido

(2011). The sociology of suicide. Annual Review of Sociology, 37, 505–528. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-081309-150058

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.12 MB