"defining years" is a correct and usable phrase in written English
It can be used to refer to a period of time in someone's life that was especially significant or impactful. For example, "The years between college and starting my career were my defining years."
The Defining Years: Volume 2, 1933-1938 Blanche Wiesen Cookook.
"Those were defining years in how I decided to raise my own family".
The discussion shouldn't focus on semantics but on how best to support young adults through these pivotal, impressionable, defining years.
("Always say 'Thank you.' ") However, I'm not sure that I'm prepared to stop people I see taking their kids shopping and say: "It just does my heart good to see a parent spend time with his/her child!" That old Mike Huckabee spent his defining years as a minister and had sympathy for the most ostracized of the downtrodden, like illegal immigrants.
Wonderful sources of information about Franklin and Elanor Roosevelt are Eleanor and Franklin and Eleanor: The Years Alone, by Joseph Lash and Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 1: 1884-1933 and Vol 2. The Defining Years: 1933-1938, Blanche Wiesen Cookook, as well as the excellent PBS American Experience documentary, F.D.R.
The writers set out to explore the characters' trials as they discover more about themselves following the defining years of high school.
"Overall, 2010 was a defining year for so many things - digital, politics, data, mobile.
In 2010, they're back again – and it might just be a defining year for both.
"This is the defining year to get these decisions right now.
But even by his own high standards, 2016 is shaping up to be Villa's defining year in MLS.
One way and another, 1963 was a defining year, and 2013 will have to go some way to beat it.
