The New Landscape of Adult Life: Road Maps, Signposts, and Speed Lines

This article highlights how much adult life has changed in the decades since the publication of landmark works on adult development and explores what these great shakeups mean for understanding adulthood today. It points to the need for renewed attention to what is unique and what is shared in different life periods, the changing significance of age, the growing uncertainties and certainties of modern life, the expanding demands and dwindling protections of jobs, the fragility of marriage, and the need to rearchitect social institutions and policies. The new terrain of adult life demands new responses from governments, families, and individuals—as well as from scientists who must treat it in ways that do right by its contemporary complexities and realities.