Reaching Adult Status Among Emerging Adults in United States, Italy, and Taiwan

Today, most societies allow more time for young people to transition to adulthood. Compared to youth from a generation ago, young people today are delaying marriage, prolonging their educational pursuits, and deemphasizing the need for a single life-long career. The purpose of this study was to delineate patterns of transitioning to adulthood among young people from three countries. As part of a collaborative multisite project, 1,310 emerging adults from Taiwan (n = 372), Italy (n = 364), and the United States (n = 574) provided perceptions of their endorsement and attainment of certain commonly accepted adult status markers. Using latent profile analysis, a four-class model emerged. The groups were not culturally specific and the groupings highlighted unique approaches to how emerging adults conceptualized adulthood. Using Marcia’s identity statuses as loose labels for each group, the achieved group was the largest as they showed an inclination toward endorsing and attaining most adult markers. Other groups showed both delay (diffused) and perplexity (transitional) toward many markers of adulthood. Using an alignment procedure to account for cross-cultural measurement non-invariance, the role of individualism-collectivism, filial piety, and parental autonomy support in relation to adult status profiles were also explored across participant groups. Vertical collectivism and authoritarian filial piety were the most predictive whereas parental autonomy support was less predictive in class membership in both the overall and stratified regression analyses.