Is New Adult All About Sex?

In this article, I will attempt to answer the question, "Is New Adult all about sex?" I believe it is not, but there is a preponderance of evidence against me. Or so it seems.

Going Through Changes

Puberty is one aspect of adolescence, but not the central focus, despite its ability to seem that way. Most properly, adolescence is defined by brain development which begins around the time that secondary sexual characteristics start to emerge and thus is incorrectly correlated with it.

Adolescence is a period of time lasting almost fifteen years, from around eleven or twelve until almost twenty-five, in most cases. During this time, while the body is undergoing various sexual developments, the most important changes are occurring in the brain.

Pathways are opening up and being developed which allow for a higher level of reasoning. Jean Piaget worked with many children, finding that about the time of puberty they began to move from very black and white thinking to being able to understand abstract subjects and reason beyond simply right and wrong, yes and no. Middle School teachers will tell you he was right.

Alfred Binet was able to show that various intellectual abilities were already present and would stay almost unchanged throughout the course of a persons life, and yet teenagers lack fundamental reasoning skills adults find common place. There is something beyond intellectual capacity that goes into distinguishing an adult from one that is not yet.

Adolescents Only Care About One Thing

Lies! Damn lies! But true, sort of. Here's the thing, when you get a new toy, you play with it. It's human nature. Biology gives adolescents this new shiny thing called sexuality, and then society says, don't play with it, do your homework, clean your room, and pretend you're still five.

Freud was spot on, when you deny impulses in one area, they sublimate into another. Young Adult books actively restrict exploration of sexual content, so it's invariable that it will burst forth in New Adult. But that doesn't mean New Adult is all about sex.

Stages of Development

Going back to Psych 101, Piaget was concerned with the mind's development, as was Binet. But Erikson wondered about how we grow up in relation to others. Adolescence spans two major stages of life: Identity vs. Role Confusion, and Intimacy vs. Isolation.

Young Adult, coming of age, that's the Identity vs. Role Confusion, the "Who am I?" of Spider-Man. Intimacy vs. Isolation begins even earlier than it used to, and it is predicated on sex, or more accurately the current system of capital, and therefore power, is sex.

Shirtless YouTube Sensations

Sixteen to Nineteen year-old boys across the world have figured out that if they take off their shirt and talk about the most random thing in the world, they get money. Sexuality is capital; and late teens, New Adults if you will, learn that they have some amount of worth as a sexual being.

But this isn't about sex. It's about power and relationship, same as earlier in life, only this time it's innately tied to you as a physical being. This is about "Can I love?"

Part of that is "Can someone love me?" And to test that, 18-25 year-olds go through various schemes and machinations, some involving outright sex, certainly, but far from all.

Changing the Conversation

New Adult isn't about sex, and adolescence isn't about sex. It's about taking that inkling of who you are as a person and figuring out how to relate with everyone else while being that person.

So, there's still "coming of age," there's still identity formation, there's still existential angst, only now it's further complicated by the 'other,' the prospective partner with all the vagaries that inhabit that in-between space of modern dating.

Scary German Words

New Adult is not Bildungsroman. I'll break this down separately in greater depth for those who enjoy literary criticism, but for now I'm going to state emphatically that while the hero's journey and a lot of Young Adult can be considered Bildungsroman, New Adult is systemically different.

What the German genre looks at is growing up, casting off childhood foolishness and eventually maturing into a societally productive adult. Firstly, New Adult skips forward from childhood as the German's would understand it, though still takes place inside adolescence. And while some authors may choose to add elements of growth to their characters, I would venture that few would consider their characters foolish, or in need of casting off their childhood in order to be productive members of society.

In fact, I believe New Adult represents a reaction to this very idea, that there is something fundamentally flawed about adolescents which much be grown out of.

Yes, compelling drama leads to changed characters, but the most interesting thing about New Adult is not that the characters are casting things off, but that they are exploring and accepting that which they already are.

Toward a new definition of New Adult

I'll likely write several articles that further explicate this concept. But I started this article asking: Is it all about sex? So let's return there.

Late adolescence is about transitioning from 'Who am I by myself?' to 'Who am I in this larger world?' Thus, New Adult will contain themes of growth and change, and yes, sex. But it is fundamentally about Intimacy vs. Isolation, in the words of Erikson. It is about being both one's self, and being with others. Relationships, friendships, marriages and families all contain elements of this.

Sex is the capital upon which the emergent self-esteem is valued. Even among friends, sexual appeal garners distinctions and power. It is inescapably part of being human.

I don't argue that we try, but I do argue that sex is a symptom. A compelling, marketable symptom, but not the underlying structure under examination.

New Adult is not about sex. New Adult is about moving from the more rigid structures of mid-adolescents into the near free-fall of psuedo-adulthood and the compelling angst and confusion that process creates in individuals whose brains are still settling and forming.

New Adult is about the quest for self-definition, not absent the world, but in relationship with it. Heroes do not quest through the underworld for some personal enlightenment. They cross the swampy nether regions of their own world and attempt to keep their head above water while learning to live not just for themselves, but for those they care about as well.

New Adult will never be without sexual power and politics, but it need not find itself solely concerned with it either. Every late adolescent must face the possibility of isolation and the question of intimacy, and while sexuality is the capital upon which that is traded, the value of it to each individual is markedly different.

For some, it may hold no value at all.