The Experience of Emerging Adulthood Among Street-Involved Youth

This volume utilizes the emergent adulthood framework to further our understanding of marginalized youth in contemporary societies. Using data from a longitudinal study named Risky Business, the authors outline the fundamental characteristics of emerging adulthood through the lens of stories of street-involved youth. These stories inform an understanding of the powerfulness of emerging adulthood theory as a process; in particular, they illustrate emerging adults’ view of adulthood as comprised of a) accepting responsibility for oneself, b) making independent decisions, and c) becoming financially independent. Further, street-involved youth experience and practice emerging adulthood, and then adulthood, unusually early and under unusual conditions. By examining this developmental process, the book makes a valuable contribution to research on the causes and consequences of the early onset of adulthood, the experience of instability in emerging adulthood, and the importance of social institutions’ presence or absence during this period of life.