(mirrored from Nordic Youth Research Information)
The prolongation of the youth's phase in the life cycle is a well established finding of social research on youth. More or less, this phenomenon can be observed in all European societies. The dimensions of this tendency are part of the overall process of modernization and are well known:
More school years for more young people. Young people stay longer in school than they used before. The expansion of school attendance has taken place in different countries. There is almost everywhere a high positive correlation between the length of educational exposure and social class origin: the higher the social status of the family the longer young boys and girls stay in school. Differences in school attendance by gender tend to disappear. As a consequence of longer school attendance, young people enter later in the labour market. Child and adolescent labour is still present in some regions; its relevance is, however, more and more marginal. During the late 70ies and early 80ies the average age of both men and women on the first marriage has started to increase. Young people marry later and they are older when, if it all, they give birth to their first (and often only) child.
These trends can be observed in all industrial countries, they appear however with some specificities in Mediterranean societies. To explain these specificities, several factors must be taken into account:
1.many students attain a degree at an older age than they should according to educational plans. To take only one example, university students in Italy get a degree on the average 7 years after first enrolment (the study plans of different faculties provide on the average only 4-5 years for getting a degree);
2.in Southern Europe most young people still leave their parental home only when they get married; cohabitation with partner before marriage is increasing; it is, however, limited to fringes of the upper classes;
3.the high cost of housing prevents young couples to establish a household before getting a stable and consistent source of income;
4.in all Southern European countries the rate of youth and female unemployment is considerably higher than in the rest of Europe; there are several factors explaining this difference: the lack or the poor functioning of vocational training discourages employers to employ young people without previous work experience; the trade-unions policy is oriented toward the protection of employed workers (in Italy more than half of the unemployed are young people looking for their first occupation; even in the regions with the highest unemployment's rate, the employment rate of adult males - between 35 and 60 - is at the same level as in the regions with the lowest unemployment rates; males as fathers and husbands are more protected against unemployment than their younger sons);
5.a large fraction of young people (both males and females) enter working life only after a long period of semi-employment in part time, seasonal or precarious occupations in the informal sector of the economy; some get a full-time job only when they are over 35;
6.cultural factors reinforce these trends (the value placed on youth as the "golden age" in life, the image of youth as a phase of freedom from responsibilities, the idea that to become adult means "settle down", all this makes less attractive for young people to enter adulthood). Among cultural factors one must include also the family's socialization practices: the weakening of parental authority and the large amount of autonomy and freedom young people enjoy within the family play an important role in creating the conditions for a protracted permanence of boys, and, to a lesser extent, girls, within the family. This is particularly so in middle-class families and has the apparently paradoxical effect that the more autonomy young people enjoy within the family the more dependent they become from the family. The democratization of parent-sons relationship has had the effect of reducing the conflict among generations and has therefore reduced the need to find autonomy by getting-out of the family.
Following aspects of the dependency on parental family must be taken into account: the spending capacity of young people living in the parental home is quite consistent since they get a number of
services for free (they don't pay for rent, food, electricity, telephone, family's car, etc.) and contribute less and less to the family's budget; most young workers living with their parents keep for the own personal consumption most their income (having basic needs - food, cloth and shelter - covered by family's budget); to establish an independent household means in most cases to suffer a considerable loss in standard of living. in order to avoid this loss, young people don't leave their parental home until they are firmly established in a profession; due to the improved housing conditions of middle-class families, most young people have a living space of their own, a room furnished according to their tastes, the possibility to invite friend of both sexes without control.
These factors, taken together, converge to produce a situation of protracted dependency upon the parents and prevent the early acquisition of autonomy. This situation may have dis-functional effects on society: young people get used to be supported by resources they are not committed to produce and do not rely upon their own initiatives; birth rates decline sharply; the family's size is shrinking and children have no or only few siblings; single son's families where the only child is the object of exclusive parental care become more and more frequent; the age distance between parents and sons/daughters increases; a higher burden is placed on the middle-age population (particularly women) which will have to care during the same life-phase for young children and old parents.
In view of these consequences, it is possible to expect that youth policies will be oriented in the future to ease the transition to adulthood, through different measures in the fields of schooling, housing, child care and work: in the field of education measures must be taken in order to: improve the quality and the effectiveness of vocational training; reduce the rate of drop-outs in secondary education; improve facilities for educational and occupational orientation; introduce rules to prevent the abnormal prolongation of school attendance; in the field of housing different measures have proven effective in Nordic countries to help young people willing to establish a new household to find an appropriate lodging; in the field of child care: nursery schools can be improved, parental leave for both mother and father, various forms of domestic care; in the field of work: support of new entrepreneurship's forms (the Italian law supporting juvenile entrepreneurship has proved successful);
fiscal reductions in favour of firms hiring young people; introduction of forms of "entry-wages" at reduced rates; diffusion of part-time jobs.
To sum up: the phenomenon of "extended youth" may not entail only positive aspects. Modern societies face unprecedented problems arising from changes in the stages of the life-cycle: problems connected with growth of elderly population are paralleled with problems connected with the prolongation of youth. To ease the entrance into adult life will be one of the major policy problems of the years to come.
Alessandro Cavalli, University of Pavia (Italy), IARD Scientific Board
International Conference: "Growing up between Centre and Periphery" -
Gulbenkian (Lisboa), 2-4 May 1996
