Adulthood in Contemporary Lithuania. Between Standardisation and Individualisation
Abstract
The research data show that the contemporary transition to adulthood experience does not correspond to social normative schedules, and the concept of adulthood has lost a large part of its role structure and traditional meaning. It has become much more of a psychological phenomenon associated with the individualisation of late modern society. This article analyses the connections between the experience of transition to adulthood and the concept of adulthood in 21stcentury Lithuania. The aim is to reveal the factors that form these connections or determine their absence. For this purpose, the analysis of the adulthood cases of two young people of different genders, born in the early 1990s, was used. It is based on the qualitative life story interview material. The article also presents a broader and more general picture of the change in the patterns of adulthood that began as societies transitioned from modernity to late modernity. An overview of changes in the adulthood in Lithuania in the 20th and 21st centuries supplements it.
