Contemporary Sexuality - June 2008 - (Page 1)

American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists sexuality The international resource for educators, researchers and therapists contemporary June 2008 Vol. 42, No. 6 In this issue President’s Letter . .3 Making a difference The new twenties ike many 20-somethings, Jennifer Oakes is navigating an unsteady path through early adulthood. She’s 25, working full-time, living two time zones away from her parents and paying most of her own bills. Yet she doesn’t always feel like an adult. The reasons for that are complex. Oakes, an assistant editor at a weekly newspaper in Morton, Washington, says some older co-workers treat her like she’s “wet behind the ears.” Many women living in the same city are already married. Her father pays her car insurance. And she still talks to her parents on the phone just about every day. “I was terrified about turning 25,” she says. “That number sounds adult. I feel like I should have my act together and have an IRA [individual retirement account] and all that.” She’s not alone in seeming to have a foot in both worlds. According to Jeffrey Jensen Arnett’s Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from Late Teens to Twenties (Oxford University Press, 2004), nearly one-third of men and women ages 26-35 were ambivalent about defining themselves as adults, answering “yes and no” to the question, “Do you feel that you have reached adulthood?” “I portray an adult more than actually feeling it in my soul,” Oakes says. Compared to 1960, today’s 30-year-olds are less likely to have reached traditional milestones associated with adulthood: completed college, married, had children and achieved financial William Galston L A different road toward adulthood Member Spotlight . . . . . . . .6 Meet Margaret Goger of Wichita, Kans. Quick Hits: Sex in the News . . . . .7 California court OKs gay marriage News of Members . . . . . . .10 Satterly and Dyson win Schiller Prize independence. Only 31 percent of men and 46 percent of women achieve those markers by their 30th birthday these days. In 1960, about 65 percent of men and 77 percent of women reached those indicators of adulthood, according to the American Sociological Association and the U.S. census. These behavioral changes are prompting sexuality experts to more closely examine the lifestyles of 20-somethings in America. In recent months, the Guttmacher Institute published a paper on the sex lives of single, adult women and a board member of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy — William Galston of the Brookings Institution — issued an informal paper called The Changing Twenties. “The decade of the twenties is much more experimental than three or four decades ago,” Galston said. “People are experimenting with jobs, lifestyles and partners.” Added Galston, “The gap between median year of puberty and first marriage is unprecedentally wide. We’ve never seen anything like it in human history.” The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy recently received $1 million from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to expand its mission. Instead of simply focusing on teen pregnancy, the group is also zeroing in on unplanned pregnancies among young women. Last year, the group changed its name to reflect continued on page 4 http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/resources/pdf/pubs/changing_20s.pdf http://www.thenationalcampaign.org/resources/pdf/pubs/changing_20s.pdf

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Contemporary Sexuality - June 2008

Contemporary Sexuality - June 2008 Contents President’s Letter Member Spotlight Quick Hits: Sex in the News News of Members

Contemporary Sexuality - June 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.