"In On the Frontier of Adulthood, Richard A. Settersten Jr., Frank F. Furstenberg Jr., Ruben G. Rumbaut, and a team of distinguished contributors consider the nature and consequences of changes in early adulthood by drawing on a wide variety of historical and contemporary data from the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. Especially dramatic shifts have occurred in the conventional markers of adulthood - leaving home, finishing school, getting a job, getting married, and having children - and in how these experiences are configured as a set. These accounts reveal how the process of becoming an adult has changed over the past century, what the challenges faced by young people today are, and what societies can do to smooth the transition from adolescence to adulthood."--Jacket.