My Generation is emerging

Welcome to our new blog category, My Generation, in which we'll be covering young adults and the church.

As I pointed out in a blog asking "Am I an adult yet?" a few months ago, there's a lot of discussion of 20-somethings these days.

Thanks to the recent New York Times Magazine article about us young people, I know the answer to my previous question: I'm an emerging adult! But seriously NYT, we Millennials don't have the attention span for 10-page articles–it took me multiple sittings to read it.

Once I got through the article though, I learned that there is debate about whether the concept of "emerging adulthood" is a genuine stage of development or simply a cultural phenomenon. Some argue that it's not a universal experience, especially among people in the developing world (interestingly, though, in Kenya they called people up to age 35 "youth" if they weren't employed).

Regardless, there does seem to be something about kids/emerging adults these days, including Catholics. They're taking different paths to marriage or simply marrying later; they're moving back home with Mom and Dad or spending a year or two volunteering their time before starting a career. They're open to new forms of prayer. They may be well connected online, but they struggle to find their place in the church.

That's where this blog comes in. This will be a place to discuss these issues and more. Young adults on U.S. Catholic's staff–perhaps including a Cristo Rey student who will be working with us this year–will be joined by guest bloggers–including young adults themselves and those who work with them.

We've asked a number of people to get us started, but we welcome others to contribute to the discussion as well. Feel free to submit blog post, ideas or questions you'd like addressed, or suggestions for guest bloggers to onlineeditor@uscatholic.org.

(Fine print: Guest blog posts are concise–usually 200-500 words–including links where relevant. Sorry we cannot pay you but we will link to your website and you can cross-post your entry elsewhere. Guest blog posts express the views of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of U.S. Catholic, its editors, or the Claretians. Questions? Just email me!)