If that’s the way people think of themselves - and I assume the author does, since she used the term - it seems to me that they are giving themselves permission to act in stupid and immature ways that contemporaries who define themselves as “adults” would not.
My 18-year-old might be considered an “emerging adult,” although I’m more inclined to say “teenage pain-in-the-neck.” However, a 30-year-old man had better have arrived at unqualified adulthood.
Like I said - asinine!
My 14yo considers herself and emerging-adult......I think of her more a brat! She did however get on an airplane in Norfolk, change planes in Baltimore and arrive safely on her own in Tampa yesterday. I wanted to cry when she walked passed those TSA agents yesterday. One o them smiled at me and said “She’ll be fine, Mom.”