Lecture 15: Emotional and Social Development in Early Adulthood

Emerging Adulthood: Exploration,

Emerging Adulthood - Transitional period from late teens to mid-late 20s

• More pursue edu in a drawn-out + non-linear way, not yet immersed into adult responsibilities, with resources they can now explore education, work, personal values + behaviors

• Emerging Adulthood not prominent in developing countries

• Societal condition can restrict the prospects and rewards of this period

• Access to cognitive, emotional, and financial resources for emerging adulthood creates resilience, w/o it causes risks for neg results

Erikson’s Psychosocial Conflict of Intimacy vs. isolation

• Intimacy involves a mutually satisfying, close relationship with another  

• Must balance the needs for independence and intimacy  

  W/o independence – Define self only in terms of partner – Sacrifice self-respect & initiative

  W/o intimacy – Face isolation, loneliness, self-absorption 

• + Resolution = Intimacy: Being able to commit to a love relationship & sacrifice & compromise  

• - Resolution = Isolation: Involves an inability or failure to achieve mutuality  

  • Can only see others flaws in terms of future relationships 

Levinson’s Season’s of Life: Development, structure, + content of theory

• Based on in-depth interviews of White & Black men (35-45 y.o.) + reviewed biographies of famous men  

• Wrote Seasons of a Man’s Life (1978) and interviews with women 35-45 y.o., wrote Seasons of a Woman’s life (1996)  

• Central concept is the life structure: The underlying pattern or design of a person’s life at a given time – Consists of relationship with significant others  

• Sees development as a sequence of stable & transitional phases 

  • Stable – Pursue goals and at ease with self

  • Transitional phases – Question one’s life and explore new possibilities 

Levinson’s seasons of life: Sequence of early adulthood

• 17-22: Transition to early adulthood. Task is to become psychologically independent from their parents  

• 22-28: Stable Phase. Become autonomous. Establish self in adult world and work on developing intimacy  

• 28-33: Age 30 Transition. Re-evaluate life structure 

• 33-40: Stable Phase “Settling down”  

  • Career consolidation is a major goal and being a part of the community 

  • Sex differences: Men are settling down, women are often continued instability bc of the transitioning state  

Levinson’s seasons of life: Nature + role of dream and mentor

• Two Organizing Factors to cope

  • Dream

• An image of the self in the adult world that guides decision making 

• Inspires a person in present endeavors  

  • Gender differs: Men-Career: Women-Family + Career

  • Refine and update their dreams throughout adulthood  

• The more specific the dream, the more structured their goals will be.

  • Mentor 

• Facilitates realization of the dream  

• Provides a transition from parent-child relationship to the world of adult peers  

Levinson’s seasons of life- Concerns + Criticism of the Theory

1. Relevance of patterns to today’s youth – Cohort effects?  

2. Few non-college educated, and low-income men and women in samples  

3. Possible inaccurate memories of early stages – Retrospective (Looking back)  

4. Rigidity of stages, now there is more variety  

The Social Clock

Society’s age-graded expectations for major life events (1st job, marriage, 1st child birth, buying home)

• More common that people delay the social clock

• Create pressure between intergenerational tensions for parents to pressure chn to obtain milestones on an outdated schedule

Types of Love - Sternberg’s triangular theory of love and its 3 components

Shifts in emphasis of the type of love as romantic relationships develop

1. Passion - Intense Sexual Attraction is strong, but passion declines In favor of intimacy + commitment

2. Companionate - Warm, trusting affection and valuing the other partner

3. Compassionate - Concern for the other’s well-being expressed through caring efforts to alleviate the other’s distress + promote their growth

Transition to Marriage: What People Look for in Partners

Transition - Changes which restructure our lives or reorder our goals in response to changing experiences

Factors Affecting Mate Selection 

• We tend to select mates similar to ourselves. Compatiability  

• What traits matter? Both women and men prefer intelligent, honest, and emotionally stable partners, who are attractive, with “good” personality 

• Sex diff commonly reported  

  • Women – Assign more weight good earning potential, ambition, intelligence

  • Men – Assign more weight for physical attractiveness, domestic skills

• But these sex diffs are not universal across these contexts  

  • See cultural differences

  • See diffs. In stated preferences but fewer diffs. In real life choices – Speed dating study by Eastwick & Finkel (2008)

  • See diffs. based on short-term vs long-term relationships

Transition to Marriage - Role of childhood attachment

• Early attachment bond leads to internal working model, set of expectations abt attachment figures

• Secure - IWM reflects this, parents are warn, loving, and supportive

• Avoidant - IWM with stressed independence, mistrust for love partners, and anxiety abt people getting too close, as they age they will have little enjoyment in physical contact, which they lacked at a young age

• Resistant - IWM seek to merge completely with another person, are afraid their intense intimacy overwhelms other, quick to disclose info at inappropriate times

Marital Roles

Types of Marriages 

• Traditional Marriage  

  • Clear division of husband’s and wife’s roles  

  • Male as head of household, breadwinner  

  • Female as caregiver & homemaker

• Egalitarian Marriage  

  • Relate as equals

  • Power and authority are shared

Marital Satisfication Predictors

1. Communication of emotion  

2. Homogamy – Similarity of values and interests  

3. Age of Marriage after 23  

4. Length of the courtship (6 months+ more satisfaction)  

5. Timing of first pregnancy (After the 1^st year of marriage)  

6. Warm and positive relationship to extended family (in-laws)  

7. Stable marital patterns in extended family (Good Models for you)  

8. Financial and employment security 

9. One’s own expectations and myths about marriage  

10. Personality characteristics  

Emotionally positive personality  

Good conflict resolution skills  

Research for Marital Satisfaction Predictor: Lavner, Weiss, Miller, & Karney (2018)

• 169 heterosexual newlyweds; first marriage; 0 chn; Predominantly women  

• Surveyed on marital satisfaction & big 5 personality traits at 3 time points: 0-6 months after marriage, +6 months, +6 months 

• Findings for Husbands: declines in extraversion and agreeableness; increase in conscientiousness 

• Findings for Wives: Declines in agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness 

• Changes not affected by age, relationship history, initial marital satisfaction, education, race, income 

Typical Problems + Conflicts When Transitioning to Parenthood

• Having chn reduces women ability to progress in their career but has no impact in men

• Lack of support in parenting, more difficult post-birth adjustment

• Sharing caregiving roles predicts greater parental happiness + sensitivity to the baby

• Waiting to have chn or having a second chd, men are more enthusiastic to be fathers, more engaged

• Interventions can help new parents learn abt child bearing and eases the transition into parenthood

• Paid employment leave crucial for parents of newborns

• For employed parents, they have issue of finding childcare

Young adult lifestyles Singlehood, Cohabitation, Childlessness, Divorce, Varied Parenthood

Singlehood - Not living with an intimate partner, many U.S. will spend a large part alone and bc of later marriage. Have freedom and mobility but feel lonely, limit sexual and social grind

Cohabitation - The lifestyle of unmarried couples who have a sexually intimate relationship + share a residence. Serves a preparation for marriage to test living together. Less often leads to marriage

• Greater risk for divorce from cohabiting to marriage or premarital cohabitation before 25

Childlessness - Voluntary childless are highly educated, prestigious occupations, less trad. gender-role attitudes

• Declined because of more educated, career-focused women

Divorce - Disrupted relationships due to (women)demand-(men)withdrawal pattern and little conflict, emotionally unengaged, leading separate lives with lack of common interest

• Now decline because of more egalitarian partnerships in marriages

Varied Parenthood -

• Stepparents + stepchn bonds vary, stepmother have harder than fathers that establish them more readily.

• Never-Married Single Parents - Often from low edu, majority of single parents are mothers and are more prevalent in Afr.Amer. and tend to relay on extended family to help take care of chn + chd has more antisocial behaviors bc of lack of father’s presence

• Lesbian and Gay Parents - Their chn are maj. hetero but are more likely to explore and their parents are just as committed + effective at child rearing as hetero counterparts

becoming an adult – READING 5 (Arnett, 2000) – What/when is stage of emerging adulthood?

What - The authors argued that the emerging adulthood period is neither adolescence nor young adulthood but is theoretically and empirically distinct from one another.

• It is having relative independence from normative expectations, can have instability and allow a lot of exploration

• Many during this stage believe they are neither an adol. or an adult

• They tend to have higher residential change, higher rates of binge drinking (5+)

• Now changes in social clock, more adol. going into college and marking parenthood low than other priorities

• More subjective term, young adulthood means they have already reached adulthood

When - Around the around the ages of 18-25. From late teens to early twenties.