ABSTRACT

The experience of youth has features that are common across time and place. These arise because youth is always and everywhere a transitional life stage. The life stage may be completed rapidly and its conclusion marked by a formal initiation ceremony, but in present-day modern societies the life stage typically extends over many years, for over two decades in some cases. It involves a series of status transitions: from student to worker, from child to parent, from minor to voter, from having goods and services purchased on one’s behalf by an adult to becoming an independent consumer. These changes take place at different ages. Hence the start and end points of the youth life stage are typically fuzzy. Also, to complicate matters further, in complex modern societies the life stage varies by social class, gender and ethnicity among other things.