2016 Volume 27 Issue 4 Pages 335-345
This article provides suggestions and questions to Japanese developmental psychological studies from a youth transition researcher. Over the last few decades, young people's transition to adulthood has been lengthened in Japan and other Western countries, with regard to stable employment, leaving home and marriage. In accord with this change, adolescence/youth researchers in America and Europe are introducing and debating new theories, such as Arnett's theory of emerging adulthood, to explain this prolonged transition. The most critical point under debate is whether or not emerging adulthood is a new universal developmental stage for youth in industrialized countries. Arnett claims universality, but other researchers argue that emerging adulthood applies only to middle class youth who can afford to attend universities, while ignoring the experiences of disadvantaged youth. In Japan, although there have been many developmental psychological studies of adolescence, there seem to be few that focus on the prolongation of the transition. It may be a serious point that most psychological research on adolescents focus only on those who will obtain higher education, while less educated youth seem to be invisible to psychologists in Japan.
