Estonian young people should feel freer to make mistakes

Estonian young people should feel more comfortable experimenting, trying different paths and making mistakes, psychologist Dagmar Kutsar and Cathy Vivien Vahi, a youth development manager at the Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund, told ERR’s Vikerraadio programme “From the Other Side.”

Growing into adulthood is a long journey, with turning 18 representing just one milestone. The guests agreed that a recent school graduate does not suddenly feel like an adult overnight.

“I am 27. I am an adult under the law, but I still believe I have a lot to learn, and that we all have a lot to do and experience,” Vahi said.

The emerging generation must cope with both an abundance of choices and a constantly changing labour market.

“This is just my assessment, but I do feel that Generation Z is one of the first generations for which all doors are open on the one hand. At the same time, there are so many doors that it is easy to get lost among them,” Vahi said.

That constant pressure wears young people down. While short-term stress can help people make good decisions, Vahi said that the continuing expectation of becoming an adult overnight is harmful.

Under the law, turning 18 brings full legal capacity and responsibility for one’s actions. Ethnologists Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner, however, have described the transition between stages of life as gradual. They call it liminality, or a transitional period.

“You are no longer someone who has to ask your parents for permission to go to a friend’s house, to a concert or simply outside. But you are not yet an adult whom we can describe as mature,” Kutsar said.

The period of emerging adulthood often lasts until the end of a person’s 20s. One of the most difficult challenges on the way to adulthood is achieving financial independence, since living independently requires an income.

“Under the law, they are still a member of their parents’ household, and the parents are responsible for ensuring that they have money and can manage,” Kutsar said.

Mistakes are part of the beginning

As noted by the guests, today’s abundance of information opens a dizzying number of doors for young people. Vahi said they feel pressure to make the right choice of field immediately.

Since not everyone can make that decision straight away, some young people take a gap year to postpone it.

“You do not have to make the most correct choice. You can and should learn throughout your life. Making one choice at first and changing it after realising that it does not suit you is very welcome,” Vahi said.

ERR published the discussion under the title “From the Other Side,” featuring Cathy Vivien Vahi and Dagmar Kutsar.