"YOU GOTTA BE ABLE TO PAY YOUR OWN WAY": CANADIAN NEWS MEDIA DISCOURSE AND YOUNG ADULTS' SUBJECTIVITIES OF SUCCESSFUL ADULTING.

Youth transitions to adulthood and traditional markers of adulthood are becoming more fluid, uncertain, and extended in contemporary societies. Despite these shifts, public discourses surrounding young adult transitional trajectories are dominantly informed by a linear benchmark perspective. This framework positions establishing financial autonomy with the goal of permanently leaving the parental home as central to successful adulthood. In this paper, we integrate textual news media and interview data to critically interrogate contemporary public discourses of adulting in tandem with Canadian young adults' subjective understandings of adulthood. We conduct Foucauldian Discourse Analysis (FDA) using two complementary data sources: (1) a selection of Canadian news media addressing youth transitions to adulthood (n = 44), and (2) interviews with Canadian young adults, assessing their perceptions and experiences of adulthood (n = 20). Our findings reveal that media and personalized constructions of successful adulthood are synonymous with financial independence and responsibility. These social norms reflect and shape young adults' subjective meanings of adulthood and inform the ways of being that young people imagine as ideal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]