The Law of Emerging Adults

Abstract

Law tends to divide people into two groups based on age: children and adults. The age of majority provides a bright line between two quite different legal regimes. Minority is characterized by dependency, parental control, incapacity, and diminished responsibility. Adulthood is characterized by autonomy, capacity, and financial and legal responsibility. Over the course of the 20th century, evolving understandings of adolescence in law and culture led to the replacement of uniform legal treatment for minors with a staged process of increasing liberty up to the age of majority. After eighteen, however, the presumption of adulthood remains strong.

Today, a combination of psychological and social factors has extended the process of becoming an adult well into legal adulthood. Psychologists call this life phase “emerging adulthood” and have identified it as a crucial transition period between adolescence and adult life. Emerging adults differ both from children and adults with regard to their roles in three keys relationships: the parent-child; the individual and the market; and the individual and the state.

This article argues that emerging adulthood should be treated as a distinct legal category and offers a framework for how to do that. Emerging adults face unique developmental and economic challenges that make a sharp binary between childhood and adulthood inapt. A broader array of legal tools could afford greater autonomy than exists during minority, but greater protection than adulthood typically provides. Such tools include staging responsibilities and entitlements over time, requiring licensing or consultation, or extending state and parental obligations toward emerging adults.

Keywords: family law, adolescence, emerging adults, age of majority, age law