Big Questions, Worthy Dreams

Building on the foundation she established with her ground-breaking book, The Critical Years, Parks invites us to take up responsibility for providing thoughtful mentorship and mentoring environments during the wilderness years of young adulthood.

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THE “TWENTY-SOMETHING” YEARS of emerging adulthood are increasingly recognized as a distinctive but puzzling era in the human life span. In this tenth anniversary revised edition of her 2001 classic, Sharon Daloz Parks, a pioneering voice in young adult development theory, builds on the foundation she established over two decades ago in The Critical Years, in which she recognized this significant stage in the human life span and underscored the role of mentors in the lives of young adults.

The emerging adult years constitute a new challenge to individuals, institutions, and cultures. It matters whether emerging adults move through the twenty-something decade on default settings or are well prepared for citizenship and leadership. Focusing on critical features of human development—transformations in thinking, feeling, and networks of belonging—Parks describes the potential and vulnerability of emerging adults and shows how mentors and mentoring environments can provide access to big-enough questions and inspire dreams worthy of engagement with a challenging and complex world.

Parks casts the emerging adult years within the task of making meaning in a dramatically changing world—a task that all human beings share. She helpfully recognizes “faith” as meaning-making in its most comprehensive dimensions, whether expressed in secular or religious terms, and how over time our meaning-making orients our sense of purpose, moral stance, and competence.

This tenth-anniversary revised edition of Big Questions, Worthy Dreams is written for faculty and administrators in higher and professional education, supervisors in workplace settings, community leaders, parents, and for all who are open to deepening their understanding of emerging adult lives. This updated edition addresses recent issues and events, including (among others) violence in our culture, mixed spirituality and religious identities, social media and networking, the economic crisis, changing racial identity, cultural shifts, and other forces shaping the narrative of young adulthood today.