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The Ecology of Purposeful Living Across the Lifespan pp 115–135Cite as

Supporting Youth Purpose in Adolescence: Youth-Adult Relationships as Ecological Assets

Abstract

Having or developing a sense of purpose is an important component of positive adolescent development. However, there is limited empirical understanding of how youth purpose develops and what aspects of youth’s ecologies best support purpose development during adolescence. This chapter seeks to provide insight into how significant adults, both parents and non-parental adults, serve as ecological assets that may support purpose development for youth during adolescence. We begin by discussing how developmental and ecological theories can inform the broader literature on youth purpose. We then present findings from a study examining the development, characteristics, and influence of youth–adult relationships across multiple contexts and over key transition points across adolescence, focusing on the ways in which relationships with parents and other significant adults can play a key role in cultivating and nurturing purpose development during adolescence. We close by discussing implications for understanding effective ways of supporting purpose development during adolescence and the benefits of mixed methods research for those aims.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    All names used in this paper are pseudonyms that were selected by the participants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California—Irvine, Irvine, USA

    Mark Vincent B. Yu

  2. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA

    Nancy L. Deutsch

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  1. Mark Vincent B. Yu
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  2. Nancy L. Deutsch
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Correspondence to Mark Vincent B. Yu .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Human Development, College of Human Ecology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Prof. Dr. Anthony L. Burrow

  2. Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis, MO, USA

    Dr. Patrick L. Hill

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Yu, M.V.B., Deutsch, N.L. (2020). Supporting Youth Purpose in Adolescence: Youth-Adult Relationships as Ecological Assets. In: Burrow, A., Hill, P. (eds) The Ecology of Purposeful Living Across the Lifespan. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52078-6_7

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