CRITERIA FOR THE TRANSITION TO ADULTHOOD, DEVELOPMENTAL FEATURES AND PERCEIVED ADULT STATUS AMONG BULGARIAN STUDENTS

The study focuses on emerging adulthood and the transition to adulthood in Bulgaria, a topic that is rarely studied in the country. The participants were 233 students aged 18-30. Indicators such as criteria for the transition to adulthood, developmental features, and perceived adult status are examined. The results confirm the presence of a specificity that highlights a period of emerging adulthood in Bulgaria. More than two-thirds of the sample is perceived as emerging adults. The most preferred criteria for the transition to adulthood is Starting a family, and the least preferred Chronological age. Identity and Opportunities / Experimentation are the most valued as dimensions of maturity during the emerging adulthood period. Similarities with data from other studies within EU countries have been identified and discussed.

Assets and Life Satisfaction of Older Korean Parents: Mediating Effects of Multiple Children’s Adult Status Attainment

This study examined if the association between older parents’ assets and life satisfaction is mediated by multiple children’s adult status attainment, given increasingly complicated processes of transition to adulthood and diminishing returns for parents’ extended investment in adult children. Disparate bodies of literature have indicated that assets help promoting older adults’ individual health and well-being; and parental assets also facilitate children’s reaching of adulthood. However, little attention has been paid to the ways in which the association between assets and life satisfaction might be explained by multiple children’s adult role statuses. Using the 5th wave of the Korean Longitudinal Study of Ageing (2014), this study analyzed a sample of parents aged 60 years and older with at least one living child aged between 30 and 50. For analyses, mediation models were estimated using SPSS PROCESS. Results showed that the association between non-financial assets and life satisfaction was partially mediated by one or more grown children’s college graduation and home ownership. Children’s employment, marriage, and parenthood did not play a major role in explicating the link between assets and life satisfaction in the contemporary socioeconomic context of Korea. Regarding policy and practice implications, comprehensive asset-building programs should be offered for parents to financially prepare for old age; parents should be informed that their overall life quality may hinge less on the lives of their children than might be typically expected, thus necessitating a more tailored approach to financially supporting their children during their transition to adulthood.

“When did I Stop being a Child?” The Subjective Feeling of Adulthood of Mexican and Central American Unaccompanied 1.25 Generation Immigrants

Employing narrative inquiry, this paper examines how 30 Mexican and Central American young adults (ages 21 to 34) who immigrated without a parent as teenagers—the unaccompanied 1.25 generation— experienced the subjective feeling of adulthood. Structural realities pushed the unaccompanied 1.25 generation into early adult roles, independence, and social responsibility. In many cases, attainment of “adult” roles, independence, and even social responsibility was not followed by the subjective feeling of adulthood. Instead, the feeling of adulthood emerged in gendered ways, was gradual, and resulted from seeing themselves as competent, mature, and capable of thoughtful decision-making. Moreover, in some cases, traumatic events led some to early identification with adult status or disrupted their identification with adulthood. Their experiences support the idea that becoming an adult is an internal process, and raises questions on how independence and social responsibility are experienced by marginalized youth and incorporated into their sense of adulthood.

Adolescentes del África Occidental: motivaciones y reflexiones del proceso migratorio. Un análisis comparado

This article presents the perception of professional experts and adolescents from West Africa on their migration process and their passage through Spain as they head toward Europe. Its objectives are 1) identify the reasons to migrate, 2) analyze family’s influence on decision-making, and 3) point out the factors conditioning the migration process. Qualitative techniques such as a life story, a panel of professional experts, Delphi, and SWOT were used. The results further deepen into the scarcity of the families’ financial resources, the adult status that adolescents originally receive, low income, and low qualification as main motivationsfor migrating. In conclusion, thistype of migration isidentified and built on the same parameters as adults. Different perceptions were found between adolescents and professionals regarding remittances and family influence to migrate. As implications for the practice, it was identified the importance of specializing the protection system professionals who attend the needs of young migrants.

Developmental goals during the transition to young adulthood

Adolescents navigate the transition into young adulthood through their pursuit of developmental goals. While societal expectations and institutions provide normed paths to adulthood by shaping decisions on goal identification, individuals take various routes to attain adult-status through different goal prioritization. Using longitudinal data from a U.S. sample of 1,088 adolescents (55.6% female; 25.3% Whites, 19.8% Asians, 30.4% Latinx, 12.6% Multiracial), we identified young adults’ major developmental goal and subgoal trajectories during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood. Participants nominated goals within a 5-year period starting from the final year of secondary school, and responses were categorized into major developmental goals. Results showed moderate goal stability over time. Although career and education goals were initially prioritized, they were less frequently nominated over time while relational and financial goals became more frequent. However, rank-order stability was retained. Findings also showed that individual differences in education and employment status, motivational factors, gender, and ethnicity predicted goal identification in young adulthood. Collectively, findings reveal both general trends and interindividual differences in goals that highlight the interplay between society and individual agency, ultimately leading to different paths taken during the transition to adulthood.

Leukocyte Telomere Length Is Not Reduced in Children and Adults with Cystic Fibrosis but Associates with Clinical Characteristics—A Cross-Sectional Study

We hypothezied that telomere length is considerably altered in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients compared to healthy subjects (HS), and that leukocyte telomere length variation reflects the severity of CF. Relative telomere length (RTL) was assessed by qPCR in 70 children aged 5–10 (34 CF; 36 HS) and 114 adults aged 18–45 (53 CF; 61 HS). Telomere length was similar in CF and HS (median (interquartile range): 0.799 (0.686–0.950) vs. 0.831 (0.707–0.986); p = 0.5283) both in children and adults. In adults, women had longer telomeres than men (0.805 (0.715–0.931) vs. 0.703 (0.574–0.790); p = 0.0002). Patients treated with inhaled corticosteroids had a shorter RTL compared to those without steroid therapy (0.765 (0.664–0.910) vs. 0.943 (0.813–1.191); p = 0.0007) and this finding remained significant after adjusting for gender, age, BMI, and child/adult status (p = 0.0003). Shorter telomeres were independently associated with the presence of comorbidities (0.763 (0.643–0.905) vs. 0.950 (0.783–1.130); p = 0.0006) and antibiotic treatment at the moment of blood sampling (0.762 (0.648–0.908) vs. 0.832 (0.748–1.129); p = 0.0172). RTL correlated with number of multiple-day hospitalizations (rho = −0.251; p = 0.0239), as well as number of hospitalization days (rho = −0.279; p = 0.0113). Leukocyte RTL in children and adults with CF was not shorter than in healthy controls, and did not seem to have any potential as a predictor of CF survival. However, it inversely associated with the investigated clinical characteristics.