One of the central issues in lifecourse research is to track changes in the way transitions from one stage to another are organised and legitimated. There is a fascinating debate over whether societies are becoming more or less institutionalised, ie whether the passage from one stage to another (eg into ‘old age’) is more strongly shaped than it used to be (eg by institutions such as workplace retirement procedures or state pensions arrangements), or whether there is more freedom of choice.
Equally interesting is what degree of institutionalisation is appropriate (very well discussed in the excellent book edited by Walter Heinz and colleagues) . Naturally this is a matter of personal preference, relating to how far you value having some social guidelines to govern your behaviour, as opposed to making up your own as you go along. But it also relates to how well you think we cope generally with transitions; are some people undermined by not having socially recognised points at which a move is to be made from one stage to another?
The transition to adulthood is an obvious case where traditional rituals and symbolisms have disappeared. Giving a young person the keys to the door (whether at 18 or some other age) symbolised their independence, with the freedom to come and go. Now this happens without it being any big deal, and almost always before the person is adult in any legal sense.
As more and more young people, especially young men, stay on at home well into their twenties, the issue changes complexion. Now it becomes a question of the absence of a moment when they can reasonably be expected to leave. There may of course be structural reasons, notably the lack of affordable accommodation. But the fact that for many it is socially acceptable to be living at home, dependent on parents, has reduced the normative pressures on young people to leave. This, often combined with a relative degree of material comfort, signals and open-endedness which makes many uncomfortable.
Talking about this with friends the other day I referred to the ‘keys of the door’ ceremony, and there was a familiar response from parents present about the diplomatic difficulties of signalling to their young adult offspring that it was time to move on. It occurred to me that there might now be scope for an inversion of the earlier tradition: at 25, rather than 18, young people might be expected to post back the keys to their parents’ house as they leave. If only the Child Trust Allowance had been fixed to mature at 25 rather than 18, they could have left with an endowment also.
In Carol Shield’s novel Larry’s Party there’s a nice illustration:
“Oh.” he said. “So you live with your parents?” He was prying, but it seemed important to get the message right.
“No,” she said, and now her tone was frosting over again. “They finally pitched me out on my twenty-fifth birthday. That is, they sold their house and moved to a condo in Hawaii. I sort of, you might say, got the message.”