The Experience of Emerging Adulthood Among Street-Involved Youth tells the story of young people who were street-involved from their early to middle teens and into their 20s, particularly their experiences of emerging adulthood while struggling toward young adulthood and independence. These youth experienced emerging and early adulthood earlier than other youth while living independently of guardians, detached from formal education, and working in the underground economy. After leaving their guardians they were choosing how to be different than their family, learning to cope with instability, and enjoying and protecting their independence, and they experienced some satisfaction with their ability to manage. As one youth stated, “away from my family, I learned that I was not stupid.” Their success was facilitated by harm reduction services, like access to shelter and food, that gave them time to experiment with living independently and to practice being responsible for themselves and others. Later they began to prefer nonstreet identities, and they began to think about their desires for the future. The distance between their current lives and those aspirations was the experience of feeling “in-between,” and progress toward their aspirations was often complicated by past experiences of trauma, current experiences of exclusion, coping with substances, and the mismatch between their needs and available services.
Young people about career – career perception in adolescence and early adulthood
