What Young Adults Rate as Important Robyn Hartley Young adults are often criticised as being materialistic, selfish and hedonistic. However, the Institute's Becoming Adult Study found that contrary to popular perception, and despite changing societal patterns, traditional values such as family, jobs and future security were of great importance to the young adults interviewed. Robyn Hartley, AIFS Fellow, discusses the findings.
Young adults form a crucial bridge between one generation and the next.
They carry values, attitudes and beliefs derived from their parents and from the society and culture in which they have been raised. At the same time, they help to shape, by their own behaviour and the decisions they make, changes in the society in which they and the next generation will live. The values that they hold therefore have important implications for the future. There are unquestionably differences in the lives of today's young adults and those of their parents. In general, young adults marry later than their parents, more live in de facto relationships, more have had a number of significant relationships before marriage, they tend to have children later, and women expect to return to work after they have children.