Introduction
The years from late adolescence through the 20s are a complex and dynamic period marked by key life course events that are often viewed as formal markers of the transition from adolescence to adulthood. These markers include leaving school, entering the labor force, leaving one’s natal home, getting married, and becoming a parent.
1
,
2 Cultural, economic, educational, demographic, and other social changes greatly impact the sequencing and relevance of these salient markers of adult status. For example, a comparative study of perceptions of the transition to adulthood among Chinese and American college students reveals that the Chinese assign greater importance to role transitions, such as marriage, parenthood, and completion of education, in defining adulthood than do Americans.
3 Similarly, aboriginal college students in Canada place more value on these life course transitions than their European Canadian compatriots.
4 There is evidence that the “transition” period in Western societies has lengthened considerably,
5
,
6 leading scholars such as Arnett
6 to argue for a theory of development that captures a period distinct from adolescence and young adulthood that he calls “emerging adulthood” around 18–25 years. In his perspective, this period is characterized by independent exploration, and experimentation without the “dependency of childhood and adolescence” nor the “enduring responsibilities that are normative in adulthood” (p. 469).
6
Evidence drawn from Western societies may not be applicable in developing countries since socio-cultural and economic differences are likely to have significant impacts on the way young people experience the change from adolescence to adulthood. For example, studies conducted in African capital cities such as Dakar, Bamako, Lomé, Yaoundé, and Nairobi show that greater access to educational opportunities, changes in social values, lack of employment opportunities and increasing uncertainty about the future play a significant role in influencing the transition from childhood to adulthood.
7
,
8 These studies, however, mainly focus on the effect of macroeconomic changes on economic integration and demographic behavior of the city dwellers by using information collected from different generations of adults to examine the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Although these studies help better understand transitions to adulthood in sub-Saharan African cities as a whole, little is known about the entry into adult life in the rapidly growing urban slum settlements in African cities, which are characterized by extreme poverty and poor living conditions. In particular, there is limited research clarifying the linkages between the slum context and the timing, sequencing, and long-term consequences of major markers of the transition to adulthood.
The main objective of this paper is, therefore, to examine the timing and sequencing of critical events marking transition to adulthood, including first sexual intercourse, marriage, independent housing, and parenthood in two poor urban informal settlements—Korogocho and Viwandani in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital city. We aim to add to the emerging body of literature on transitions to adulthood in sub-Saharan Africa by investigating the timing and sequencing of salient markers of the transition to adulthood to see whether there is a specific pattern of transition into adulthood in Nairobi slums. We also examine the association between the timing of each of the four events and some selected variables known to be important factors of transition to adulthood.
Investigating transition into adulthood in slum settlements is important for several reasons. First, urban informal settlements constitute an opportune context in which to examine the passage to adulthood because of the unique challenges that young people face in these communities. Young people in these settlements grow up in a hostile environment characterized by high levels of unemployment, crime, substance abuse, poor schooling facilities, and lack of recreational facilities.
9‐
12 For instance, adolescents in the slums of Nairobi fare much worse in terms of risky sexual behavior than adolescents who live in non-slum parts of the city and rural areas.
13‐
15 These differences also prevail when one compares slum residents and other groups outside Nairobi, including the rural poor.
14 Early sexual intercourse among slum residents has many dire consequences, including unwanted pregnancies and births and their associated risks, as well as high maternal and child morbidity and mortality.
16 Early sexual debut may also lengthen the period of exposure to the risk of pregnancy and childbearing, especially in contexts where women have limited access to contraception. In fact, much of the high fertility in sub-Saharan Africa may be attributed to young age at first birth. The timing of the first birth is usually an indicator of future fertility patterns and larger completed family size is one of the long-term demographic effects of adolescent fertility.
17
Second, while transitions to marriage, parenthood, and sexual debut have been widely documented in developing countries,
18‐
21 the transition to independent housing has received much less attention, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Research conducted in other parts of the world shows that the pathways to independent housing differ by social class. For example, a study by Jones
22 in Britain showed that youth from working-class families (defined as families with a father whose occupational class was manual work) were more likely to move to independent housing at marriage, while their middle-class peers (where the father was employed in non-manual work) were more likely to pursue their studies. Further, the latter were more likely to return to their natal homes for extended periods. For young people living in urban slums in sub-Saharan Africa, high levels of unemployment, limited educational opportunities, overcrowded houses, and other socio-cultural factors may present unique challenges to the formation of independent housing or may drive young people out of their natal homes at younger ages than observed elsewhere. This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of this important marker of transition to adulthood in an African setting.
Discussion
Young people living in poor urban informal settlements face unique challenges as they transition to adulthood. This exploratory paper uses retrospective information from the baseline survey of a 3-year prospective study, to examine the timing and sequencing of four key markers of the transition to adulthood among adolescents in two informal settlements in Nairobi. According to our knowledge, a combination of these issues has not been examined among poor urban youth, and the findings of this study add to the growing body of literature on the transition process among adolescents living in various contexts in sub-Saharan Africa.
In contrast to other studies conducted in Nairobi,
33 our study found no significant gender difference with regard to the timing of sexual debut. In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, girls’ premarital sexual experience is stigmatized and socially prohibited whereas boys’ sexual activity is often seen as an act of pride/honor.
34‐
36 Consequently, it is often expected that girls will underreport sexual experiences or provide an older age at sexual debut while, boys will overreport sexual experiences or indicate that they engaged in sexual intercourse early. Findings also show that younger adolescents living in the two slum settlements tend to postpone their first sexual experience, although this trend may be affected by the misreporting of age at sexual debut. However, results indicate that a significant proportion of adolescents are sexually experienced in their early ages. Other studies
13
,
58
,
59 argue that the typical living arrangement in the slum settlements—entire families living in single-room houses—contributes to early transition to first sex because children are purportedly exposed to parental sexual activity at an early age. This residential reality also necessarily pushes a lot of young people to leave their parental homes prematurely, as soon as they can start generating their own money to pay rent, since they cannot live in the same room with their parents when they are grown. Given that the two study sites are characterized by high HIV/AIDS prevalence,
60 there is need to ensure that young people have access to sexual and reproductive health services. Also, as noted in South Nyanza where early sexual debut also prevails among adolescents,
19 adolescent health intervention programs in the slums may need to target adolescents in their early ages if they want to succeed in reducing poor sexual outcomes among them.
Adolescents who are still attending school are likely to engage in sexual activity at a later age, suggesting a protective role for the school environment as noted elsewhere.
61 One would argue that sexually experienced adolescents may be under-represented as they may be no longer attending school. It is, however, not possible to know whether adolescents are exposed to sex education programs that may be provided in their schools. Further analysis should examine whether there are gender-based differences with regard to the influence of schooling on sexual debut among adolescents in slums as evidenced elsewhere.
15
As expected, marriage significantly increases the likelihood of initiation of sex at an earlier age. However, for 69% of boys and 77% of girls, sexual debut occurs outside of marriage or other union. This is consistent with previous research showing that first sex typically occurs outside of marriage.
62 As first marriage is increasingly delayed, young people are more likely to experience premarital sexual activity and subsequently, premarital birth given their low level of contraception use and insufficient knowledge of reproduction.
23
,
63 In some cases, these premarital pregnancies are unplanned and the young parents (and often the young mother) have little or no financial and/or social support. Among adolescents living in similar conditions in the Kibera slums in Nairobi, evidence shows that for the vast majority of teenage mothers, the first birth was unwanted and the first pregnancy was unintended.
39 Adolescents who lived in independent housing initiate sex and begin childbearing earlier than their peers who had not moved into their own housing. Greater opportunities for sexual activity among adolescents living away from parental supervision in a context of relatively low contraceptive use may be advanced as possible explanation for these findings. Such adolescents may not benefit from parental support, supervision, and behavioral control, thus may be more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviors. Previous evidence shows that living with both parents is associated with lower chances of sexual activity among youth in sub-Saharan Africa.
61 In the slums of Nairobi, a father’s presence was found to prevent young girls from engaging into sex and experiencing an unwanted pregnancy.
64
As expected, findings show that young girls transition to parenthood earlier than boys. Median age at first birth was 20.7 years for young women and 16% of females were already parents by age 18. This suggests that some females have their first births while they are still young and thus, face special risks during pregnancy and delivery due to their level of physical maturity. In the poor slum settings where access to obstetric services is hindered by the lack of basic health facilities and the high cost of care,
65 young parenthood becomes a health threat not only for the young women but also their children. These risks are heightened in the context of the relatively high prevalence of HIV/AIDS in slum settlements. In Nigeria, Omololu (cited by the National Research Council and Institute of Medicine)
23 reported that female Yoruba adults who had their first birth during their adolescent years are more likely to have higher fertility by the time of survey, more likely to be in polygamous unions, and more likely to rely on parents’ assistance for their subsistence. Also, in most developing countries, early childbearing often triggers school dropout, reduces the opportunities of future employment, and leads to poor living conditions.
23 For those who are able to continue school, academic performance is likely to worsen, given the very possible conflict between childcare responsibilities and school work. As such, it is expected that young mothers in slum settlements are at high risk of getting into worsened living conditions. In a context where educational and employment opportunities are already scarce, early childbearing is therefore more likely to contribute to difficulties in completing school and finding gainful employment; thus, preventing the young people from “successfully” making the transition to adulthood.
As previously evidenced in developing countries,
19
,
23 higher education level and school enrollment were associated with delayed childbearing. One possible explanation is that young people who are still in school are less likely to engage in sexual activity at earlier ages because of high levels of adult monitoring or fewer opportunities to engage in sexual intercourse. Moreover, among girls, those who have experienced sexual intercourse may be underrepresented in the school sub-sample because childbearing may increase the likelihood of dropping out of school.
With respect to union, results confirm that young boys enter into union much later than girls. As expected, married adolescents were more likely to have begun childbearing. It is obvious that union increases the frequency of fertile sexual intercourse. However, existing literature also shows that premarital childbearing is increasingly prevalent in the slum communities in Kenya.
11 We also observe that a significant number of young females enter into marriage at a relatively younger age. Unfortunately, for some girls, early marriage means early childbearing which entails potential health risks for the young mother and the child. Early marriage may also limit educational opportunities and may occur when the young person is not fully prepared to take over marital and parental responsibilities. Conversely, education strongly deters entry into union for adolescents in the two slums, which is consistent with previous evidence in sub-Saharan Africa.
58
,
66
As expected, our findings show that boys get their first independent residence much earlier than girls. This is consistent with the fact that, in many societies in sub-Saharan Africa, women are rarely residentially independent since they usually move directly from their natal home to their marital home. It is also worth noting that some married women may not consider themselves to be living independently, perhaps because of cultural interpretations of the husband being the household head and owner of the home. Further, in some ethnic groups in Kenya, boys are expected to leave their parental home at young ages to live independently once they undergo initiation rites. For example, Kikuyu boys are expected to move out of their parental home after undergoing circumcision, a rite of initiation which typically occurs around 13 years of age. In the slums, where the entire family shares a single room, a young Kikuyu male may therefore be forced to move to a separate dwelling place at a much younger age than his non-Kikuyu peers. Our findings do suggest that Kikuyus move into independent housing much earlier than other ethnic groups living in the two slum communities.
It is worth noting that the timing of residential independence among young people living in the slum settlements may be influenced by space constraints in informal settlements. That is, youth may be prompted to establish a separate residence from that of their parents simply because space in their household of origin may not be sufficient. They thus leave their parent or guardian home to most likely rent a room/structure. Most people in slum settlements are tenants (seven out of eight). Also, given the high levels of poverty in the slums, leaving home may be unique and singular as it may not always coincide with full economically independent life. Many young people who leave home may still depend on their parents or guardians with regard to food or education. In addition, in the slum context, leaving home at young ages should not be always seen as a positive transition as it may lead young people to risky and delinquent behaviors such as early sexual intercourse, multiple sexual partnerships, substance, and alcohol use.
13
In general, adolescents in Korogocho initiate sex, get independent housing, and enter into union later than their counterparts from Viwandani. Given that Viwandani has a more mobile population than Korogocho, these differences may reflect a greater number of young migrants in the former who move to the slum settlement in search for livelihood opportunities. Further, we observed that migrants transitioned into union and established an independent household earlier than non-migrants. We postulate that young migrants may be prompted to rent or own a place to live as they may not have access to social or immediate family networks to house them upon arrival in the slums.
Marriage and sexual debut were observed to hasten the transition to first independent housing. In many societies in sub-Saharan Africa, it is expected that married people move out of their natal home to form their own household unit. It is surprising to note that adolescents who have entered parenthood experienced a delayed transition to independent housing. One would expect the opposite as forming a family is often associated with creating a new residential unit.
While this study examines the timing and sequences of markers of the transition to adulthood, it is critical to acknowledge that the process of becoming an adult is complex and young people place different meanings on what it means to be an adult.
5 Disentangling these meanings would require systematic investigations on subjective meanings of adulthood that shed light on less salient psychological and individual markers that define adulthood, such as bearing responsibility for one’s actions and independent decision making.
44 In addition, this study focuses on young people living in informal settlements who are not representative of all young people living in Nairobi. A more nuanced investigation of the role poverty plays in the transition from adolescence to young adulthood would require extension of the study population to include wider representation of young people. Our data do not allow investigations of educational transitions and entry to the labor market. Changes in education have significantly impacted the transition to adulthood.
66
,
67 In general, there are greater educational opportunities available, and as a result, entry into employment, marriage, and parenthood is increasingly being delayed. Data from future waves will allow us to examine these additional events.