“You Gotta Be Able to Pay Your Own Way”

Youth transitions to adulthood and traditional markers of “complete” adulthood are becoming more fluid, uncertain, and extended in modern western societies. Despite these shifts, public discourses surrounding young adult home-leaving trajectories have remained largely informed by a linear benchmark perspective. This framework positions establishing financial autonomy with the goal of permanently leaving the parental home as central to “successful” adulthood. In this paper, we integrate textual and interview data to critically interrogate contemporary public discourses of adulting in tandem with Canadian young adults’ subjective understandings of “successful” adulthood. Specifically, we conduct discourse analysis using two complimentary data sources: (1) a selection of Canadian news articles addressing youth transitions to adulthood (n = 44), and (2) interviews assessing Canadian young adults’ perceptions and experiences of adulthood (n = 20). Our findings reveal how media constructions of “successful adulthood” are synonymous with financial independence and responsibility. These social norms reflect and shape young adults’ subjective meanings of “successful” adulthood and inform the ways of being that young people imagine as “ideal”.