The study examined Indian college students and nonstudents aged 18 to 26 to examine (a) whether they feel they are adults (i.e., “age of feeling in-between”), (b) the criteria they deem necessary for becoming adults, and (c) the extent to which they feel optimistic about their future (e.g., “age of possibilities”). Participants included 478 college students in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India and 100 nonstudents from rural villages surrounding Coimbatore. Results revealed that the majority of the 18- to 26-year-olds studied felt that they had achieved adulthood. Participants emphasized attributes needed to fulfill family roles as characteristics necessary for adulthood. Differences in optimism levels were found between students and nonstudents. The unique cultural and structural influences in India, such as Hinduism, caste, gendered socialization, and the educational system, are discussed as possible explanations for the unique findings.

Through everyday activities, often performed by women, a version of family becomes reified for its members. Family discourse, linked to cultural capital via family capital, creates credentials and competence (family capital) in a particular family type and also a set of dispositions (family habitus) that inclines family members to act in ways consistent with normative standards of family. This article presents a holistic-content narrative analysis of one family’s eleven-volume scrapbook collection that revealed the process and content of their construction of reality. The scrapbooking mother seems to be equipping her children with family-based cultural resources and personal dispositions to situate them in future social interactions.