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Life experiences of 20-somethings in many industrialized societies have shifted significantly in the last 50 years. Marriage and parenthood often start later. Premarital sex is widely accepted. Cohabitation is normative. Women are now pursuing higher education in numbers greater than men. A new developmental life-stage called emerging adulthood has been proposed to account for these changes. This period is characterized by a focus on identity and self-development, instability, feeling not-yet-adult, and having a number of possible pathways (Arnett, 2004; Arnett, Kloep, Hendry, & Tanner, 2011). Commitments during this time are temporary; relationships and jobs are short-term. Lena Dunham's HBO series Girls illustrates this experience, as her four young stars struggle to establish romance and careers in New York City. Dunham describes her own experience with her parents, “I feel like I'm constantly asking them to please stay out of my work life, but also to please bring me soup. It's this weird moment where you just don't have a sense of what age-appropriate behavior is because there is no age-appropriate behavior” (Dunham, 2012).
Meg Jay believes that this new frame for the 20s decade does an injustice to the importance of the age and imperils the people living through those years. She believes that the 20s are the most formative years of a person's life, a critical period for identity, career, and relationship development. She's concerned that 20-somethings feel that being lost and drifting is developmentally appropriate, and that they are wasting valuable time as a result. As she notes, “I have seen countless 20-somethings spend too many years living without perspective. What is worse are the tears shed by 30-somethings and 40-somethings because they are now paying a steep price—professionally, romantically, economically, reproductively, for a lack of vision in their twenties” (Jay, 2012, p. xv). Using material drawn from her work with 20-something clients and stude