Despite challenges, Clark poll reveals optimism among today's adults

A recent Clark University poll revealed somewhat surprising results about today’s 20- and 30-somethings’ take on life: They’re largely content and optimistic about the future.

The results are detailed in a report, titled “Becoming Established Adults: Busy, Joyful , Stressed – and Still Dreaming Big.” Based on one thousand interviews with adults ages 25 to 29, the poll followed a 2012 poll of younger, “emerging adults,” in which subjects ages 18 to 29 expressed similar optimism.

Despite the recent recession, and conventional wisdom that today’s generation of “established adults,” in their 20s and 30s face futures that are more difficult than those their parents experienced, in terms of economic prosperity, respondents surveyed by Clark appear largely unfazed.

The poll found that 86 percent of those surveyed agreed with the statement, “I am confident that eventually I will get what I want out of life,” and 77 percent agreed that “that this time of my life, it still seems like anything is possible.” Slightly fewer – but still a comfortable majority – said they believe that “overall, my life will be better than my parents’ lives have been.”

Directed by Clark University research professor of psychology Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, the poll’s other findings include:

-Most established adults are in close relationships, and 87 percent agreed that they’d “found their soulmate”

-82 percent of respondents said it is important to have a job that “does some good in the world,” but less than half reported work is a current source of enjoyment

-A majority (74 percent) said they felt hopeful upon reaching the age of 30

“This report offers an abundance of new information about ages 25 to 39, but it raises many fresh questions as well,” Arnett wrote in a report summary. Among them, Arnett wrote, is the question, “ How can it be that so many established adults still believe that ‘anything is possible, even after they have made commitments in love and work that clearly narrow the range of their possibilities and choices?

“We hope the 2014 Clark poll will inspire new research on these important questions,” Arnett wrote.