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Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
These 2 behaviors help those moving into adulthood thrive
Emerging adults can find their 20s a place to begin flourishing or a period that could lead them to crash and burn. It turns out that early adult decisions in their 20s don't stay there, but follow them into their 30s. It hinges on life choices. But which ones set a person up for success in the future? And just avoiding negative ones doesn't mean you'll flourish. A new study says you have to actively choose to do positive things, as well. The study was published in the journal Emerging Adulthood. According to researchers from Brigham Young University, getting more education and volunteering in one's 20s are two choices that rank high when it comes to how good one's relationships, sense of well-being and life satisfaction will be in one's 30s. But they're not the only choices possible. The years from 18 to 29 provide opportunities for all kinds of things, including experimenting with sex or substances, dabbling in crime and choosing careers. With a break from parental controls, young people can set their schedules, pick or reject jobs, eat what they want and choose where and with whom to live. Study co-author Larry Nelson, a BYU family life professor, described the 20s as a time of instability and excitement and change. Friends are graduating and moving away from each other. Young adults may get married. They move during this age more than at any other time in their lifespan. They choose jobs or careers or majors and change them, too. 'There's a lot of instability in their lives and complete autonomy to do what they want,' he said. Past generations, he noted, typically married younger and that marriage produced some structure. Young men in previous generations were more likely than now to transition into adulthood in the military, which provides a lot of structure. Young women had very rigid role expectations and now have more choices. So many choices, good and bad Nelson said while he celebrates the greater range of choices, it can be challenging without any structure and 'they're doing all that with a brain that's not yet fully developed. So that combination of things mean that the 20s is the peak period for a lot of challenging things,' including risky sex and reckless driving, substance use, onset of mental illness, criminal behavior, different eating habits, self harm and more. He said young people can thrive or find themselves with criminal records, addictions, health problems and fewer friends if they're not careful. But Nelson said that research shows many young people don't see it that way. They believe their 20s are a time for experimenting, including with things that might be risky. Nor are emerging adults choosing to be good or to take chances. Choices are complex and varied. One can be both a volunteer and a criminal. So Nelson and his co-authors considered what each choice in the 20s contributed to well-being in the 30s, finding education and volunteering were particularly strong at predicting good relationships, life satisfaction and a sense of overall well-being. The study notes that while many experts agree emerging adulthood is a distinct developmental period, little work has examined how it impacts later development. The researchers note some limitations, including the fact that people in the survey were asked to remember their 20s and what they did some years later. But while most studies of people in their 20s utilize a kind of captive audience of college students, Nelson noted the strength of a more representative group of 20-somethings. Tracking behavior over time The researchers surveyed almost 5,000 adults between the ages of 30 and 35, using a nationally representative online survey, and asked them to reflect on the things they did in their 20s. Past activity categories included items like volunteering, education, video game use, criminal activity and risky sex. 'We didn't want to only focus on negative behaviors,' Nelson said in the study's background material. 'The absence of floundering does not mean the presence of flourishing. Just because someone avoids negative behavior doesn't mean they are doing well, that they've found purpose. They need to be proactively doing positive things, too.' Flourishing end points in the study included life and relationship satisfaction, emotional health and general hope for the future, as well as overall regret about the past and poor emotional health. Factors like gender, income and ethnicity were controlled for to get a clear picture, he said. Of all the behaviors studied, education and volunteering were clearly linked to positive feelings in the study participants' 30s. The research suggests, Nelson said, that young adults can add elements to their future that will enhance their lives. The 20s are an exciting time, but looking ahead and caring for others are very good steps. Parents can help, too, he said, by steering their children toward positive activities like volunteering. More powerful than you think Nelson said that the researchers found that things one would expect to be good for certain reasons have other, broader goods. For instance, education might be expected to help one land a better job, but they found it also helps with relationships and emotional health and overall well-being. People who volunteer don't just get to put it on their resume and hope it helps find a job. 'It's tied to your emotional and relationship well-being years down the road,' he said. Volunteering offers something special to emerging adults, he added, noting that young people can fall into a trap of doing what they want in the moment and focusing just on themselves. Volunteering, on the other hand, helps young people think of others, too, and bolsters relationships. They become less self-centered and more interconnected. Negative behaviors proved to also be more powerful than a young person might expect. Those with criminal behavior had more regret and less life satisfaction. Those who'd engaged in risky sex had lower relationship satisfaction and emotional health. BYU professors Mallory Millett and Laura Padilla-Walker were co-authors on the study, along with former master's student Melanie Lott. Nelson said the study builds on previous work he's done with Padilla-Walker, tracking 18- and 19-years-olds over seven years to identify positives and negatives in behavior and identifying risk factors and outcomes. Solve the daily Crossword
Scroll.in
21-06-2025
- General
- Scroll.in
‘Dukh ki Duniya Bhitar Hai': In writer Jey Sushil's memoir, an intimate republic and a sense of loss
The literature of mourning is a curious subgenre. It can easily slip into sentimentality, but the best examples rise above that to reflect on bigger things, society, time, and the fragile bonds that hold families together. Dukh Ki Duniya Bhitar Hai, a memoir in Hindi by journalist and writer Jey Sushil, belongs to that rare kind. It is both a deeply personal story of a son grieving his father and a wider reflection on a disappearing way of life in postcolonial India. This way of life was shaped by ideas of collective work, the respect tied to public sector jobs, political dreams, and simple, honest hopes. It once shaped the lives of millions in India's industrial towns. As India shifted towards a market-driven and individualistic culture, that world began to fade not through breaking news, but in quiet living rooms and long silences. Sushil's memoir is one of the few literary attempts in recent memory to document that quiet erosion. The memoir, written with startling clarity and emotional restraint, revolves around Sushil's late father, a man born in a small village in north Bihar, who spent much of his working life in the uranium mines of Jadugoda, now in Jharkhand part of the industrial belt that once symbolised India's postcolonial ambition. His life was shaped by the hopes of Nehruvian socialism and the dignity of unionised labour, only to end in the quiet disappointment that many experienced in liberalised India. His story, rendered with care and restraint, reflects a generation of working-class men who helped build the Indian republic but were rarely written about. In this way, Sushil's memoir joins a quiet but significant tradition of sons writing to understand their fathers. Akhil Sharma's Family Life explores a boy's fraught relationship with his parents amid grief and migration; Aatish Taseer's Stranger to History traces a son's search for an absent father across borders, ideologies, and silences. Saikat Majumdar's The Firebird captures the delicate act of observing a parent's gradual unravelling from a child's eye. Even in VS Naipaul's Miguel Street, the narrator tries to make sense of his father's slow decline and the quiet failures of an ordinary man. Like Naipaul's characters, Sushil's father is ordinary; he is not a writer, leader or thinker, but through this memoir, he becomes unforgettable, a symbol of middle India's lost dreams and fading dignity. The inner world of grief Sushil begins his story not with grand declarations but with an awkward phone call, a simple SMS that triggers a landslide of memory. This is refreshing. Indian memoirs often tend to adopt a heroic tone, as if the narrator had always been aware of the literary weight of his own story, scripting his life in hindsight. Sushil, in contrast, writes from the middle of confusion, from within the fog of unresolved emotions. His grief is not performative; it is searching, unadorned, and honest. It grows gradually, like a slow monsoon over parched ground and as it deepens, so too do our sympathies, not just for the storyteller, but for the father whose absence animates every page. What opens is a moving recollection of childhood in Jadugoda, not just a place on the industrial map of India, but a dream built with brick, uranium, and belief. Sushil writes with tender clarity about his mother, his brothers, sisters-in-law, and the nephew who is now grown; later, his artist-wife and infant son quietly enter the story, threading the past with the present. Created during the zenith of India's post-independence industrial push, Jadugoda, as Sushil reveals, was a city held together not by policy but by people – the technicians, clerks, drivers, and mine workers who believed in the republic's promise, even when that belief asked for everything and gave very little in return. At the heart of this fragile promise stood Sushil's father, a unionist, a principled man, at times rigid, often misunderstood, but never cynical. He believed in the dignity of labour, read Hindi magazines like Dharmyug and Saptahik Hindustan, wrote letters with care, and took pride in his small kitchen garden. To understand the son, we must first understand the father. Sushil, a journalist who once flirted with being an artist, carries a quiet urge to observe, record, and belong. This seems to come from his father, whose life was filled with handwritten notes, old pamphlets, union records, and minutes of political meetings. While reading, we find that Sushil's prose is gentler, more intimate. He writes less like a polemicist and more like a witness to both public change and private loss. His grief is not tidy or stylised; it meanders, returning to the domestic; the memory of onions growing by the kitchen, a half-read Dharmyug magazine, the sound of a transistor crackling in the summer heat. In these moments, Sushil achieves what few writers do; he brings together the sentimental and the structural, capturing both a father's silence and a generation's fading script. The place and the migration One of the memoir's greatest strengths is its deep-rootedness in place. Jadugoda, Darbhanga, and the small towns of eastern India are not mere settings, they are living, breathing characters. Sushil describes these spaces with a gaze that is clear-eyed yet affectionate. He includes the emotional geography of small-town life, where distances are not measured in kilometres but in rituals, reputations, and shared memories. Migration, in Sushil's telling, is a quiet, cyclical process of leaving, returning, and never fully belonging again. His father's move from the ancestral village to the industrial township of Jadugoda, and Sushil's own journey from Jharkhand to Delhi and eventually to the United States, are narrated not as escapes or achievements, but as part of a slow dislocation. The further he moves from home, the more he clings to memory. In this way, the memoir is not only an elegy for a father or a time, but also for the fragile threads that tie us to where we come from, even when we can no longer return. Dukh Ki Duniya Bhitar Hai is not a conventional memoir. It does not have a linear plot, nor does it offer easy closure. What it does provide, however, is a rare honesty. It speaks of disappointment, of misunderstanding, of silences that accumulate over the years. As a reader's questions may arise in our thoughts, like, What do we owe our parents? Or, what parts of their stories do we carry forward, and what do we leave behind? Sushil does not offer definitive answers, but rather invites us to sit with these questions, in the long shadow of memory, in the in-between spaces of love and regret. In its quiet, unassuming way, this memoir becomes a gentle act of remembrance, and perhaps, of reconciliation. In an age obsessed with spectacle, where public memory is curated through soundbites and hashtags, Sushil's memoir is an act of quiet resistance. It reminds us that grief is not a performance; it is a conversation, often with people who are no longer there to respond. If literature has a civic role, it is to recover these lost conversations. In doing so, it helps build a more honest archive of the nation's inner life. Dukh Ki Duniya Bhitar Hai does precisely that and with grace, depth, and lasting dignity. Ashutosh Kumar Thakur curates the Benaras Literature Festival.
Edinburgh Reporter
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Edinburgh Reporter
Desert island delights – literary feasts that feed both mind and soul
What would your Desert Island book be? Mine is 'Family Life – Birth, Death and the Whole Damn Thing' by Elisabeth Luard, a book I first read when it launched in 1996 but remains as poignant today as it was then. It's a recommendation I've made countless times over the years. In truth, any book by Luard would keep me happily contented and satiated as I plotted my escape route from the island. Her unique ability to weave heartfelt stories with sketches and recipes means I'd never go hungry – in body or spirit. Luard's story begins in 1963 when, at twenty-one, she married Nicholas Luard, co-founder of Private Eye. Within six years, she had four children and moved to a remote valley in Southern Spain. 'Family Life' chronicles the love that holds a family together, told both in sunlight and shadow. No family is immune to tragedy – still less one that lives life to the full. In Francesca, the eldest daughter, we find a true heroine. She tells her own story until that moment when she can tell it no more. Ultimately, it's a mother's tale, one of love without regret – a story of laughter and tears, of joy and sorrow, of life and death. It's unforgettable. However, a new literary contender has recently entered my life. I attended another excellent Toppings Bookshop event celebrating Edinburgh-based writer Caroline Eden's third book in her colour trilogy, 'Green Mountains', following 'Black Sea' and 'Red Sands'. This latest work is split between Armenia and Georgia, tracing Caroline's walks in the South Caucasus, exploring culture, history, religion and politics through the lens of food. I'm rather annoyed I hadn't discovered Eden sooner. Like Luard, she has a remarkable ability to bring countries to life through storytelling. By her own admission, she's no chef, but she has a nose for a good recipe and an ear for extraordinary stories. Throughout the book are what she calls 'Edible Postcards' – recipes that capture the essence of place. I was quick to secure tickets for Toppings' first supper club – an event that sold like hot cakes. I found myself seated at a table nestled among bookshelves with four foodie friends and three strangers, all united by our love of good food. Tables were elegantly set with white cloths, vases of wild spring flowers, and cutlery tied with string adorned with marigolds. Our first edible postcard was an aperitif called Armenian Dawn: apricot, almond essence, brandy and prosecco. As Caroline later explained: 'If an Armenian hands you an apricot, they are, in a way, handing you Armenia.' The apricot is Armenia's national symbol, and this sunrise-coloured delight perfectly launched an evening of revelations. What followed was a delicious feast: Summer tolma with cranberries from Armenia, lobio croquettes from Georgia, courgettes with Georgian spices and walnuts, citrus and walnut salad, potato and cabbage pirozhki, sauerkraut and pickles, finishing with tarragon panna cotta. This somewhat scathing cynic – who typically wouldn't choose a meatless menu – left the evening satisfied in both stomach and mind. The combination of great company, mental stimulation, and fabulous food sent me home with Eden's entire trilogy plus her recent memoir 'Cold Kitchen', written during lockdown when travel ceased. 'Cold Kitchen' celebrates curiosity and feeling at home in the world, opening in Uzbekistan and concluding in Ukraine. Named a 'best summer read' by both the Financial Times and The Observer, I'm sure it will become one of mine as well. Discover other Cooks and Books events at Toppings, Edinburgh: Both Caroline Eden and Elisabeth Luard publish weekly newsletters on Substack – 'Journeys Beyond Borders' every Wednesday and 'Elisabeth Luard's Cookstory' Like this: Like Related
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AM Best Places Credit Ratings of Family Life Insurance Company Under Review With Developing Implications
OLDWICK, N.J., April 14, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--AM Best has placed under review with developing implications the Financial Strength Rating of B++ (Good) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of "bbb" (Good) of Family Life Insurance Company (Family Life) (Houston, Texas). The Credit Ratings (ratings) reflect Family Life's balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as adequate, as well as its adequate operating performance, neutral business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management (ERM). Family Life was sold to JAB Holding Company s.à.r.l. (JAB). JAB is a Luxembourg private equity company. The transaction was a cash deal and closed on April 3, 2025. AM Best has placed Family Life under review with developing implications until it has had sufficient discussion with the new owners as to the direction of the company's balance sheet strength, operating performance, profile and ERM. This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Best's Credit Ratings. For information on the proper use of Best's Credit Ratings, Best's Performance Assessments, Best's Preliminary Credit Assessments and AM Best press releases, please view Guide to Proper Use of Best's Ratings & Assessments. AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specializing in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit Copyright © 2025 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on Contacts Omar Mostafa Senior Financial Analyst +1 908 882 1684 Erik Miller, CFA Director +1 908 882 2120 Christopher Sharkey Associate Director, Public Relations +1 908 882 2310 Al Slavin Senior Public Relations Specialist +1 908 882 2318 Sign in to access your portfolio
