Emerging Young Adulthood

• Criteria for Adulthood

  • Accepting responsibility for oneself
  • Making independent decisions
  • Becoming financially independent
• Emerging Adulthood


  A period of time during which young adults can figure out who they are and what they want to be
• Social integration is active engagement in a broad range of social relationships, activities, and roles
• Social support


  Material, informational, and psychological resources derived from the social network on which a person can rely for help in coping with stress
• Alcohol abuse and dependence are the most prevalent substance disorders
• Risky drinking is consuming more than 14 drinks a week or 4 drinks on any single day for men, and more than 7 drinks a week or 3 drinks on any single day for women
• Alcoholism


  A chronic disease involving dependence on use of alcohol, causing interference with normal functioning and fulfilment of obligations
• Use of illicit drugs peaks at ages 18 to 25; 24.2 percent of this age group report using illicit drugs during the past month
• Childhood-or-adolescent-onset depression and adult-onset depression


  Seem to have different origins and developmental paths
• Reflective thinking or abstract reasoning


  Active, persistent, and careful consideration of information or beliefs
• Postformal Thought


  A mature type of thinking that relies on subjective experience and intuition as well as logic and allows room for ambiguity, uncertainty, inconsistency, contradiction, imperfection, and compromise
• Tacit Knowledge


  Self-management, management of tasks, management of others
• Emotional Intelligence


  The ability to understand and regulate emotions; an important component of effective, intelligent behavior
• Emotional intelligence enables a person to harness emotions to deal more effectively with the social environment
• Awareness of the type of behavior that is appropriate in a given social situation is part of emotional intelligence
• Moral Reasoning

  Refers to the process of determining right from wrong in a given situation
• Heinz Dilemma is a famous moral dilemma used to study moral reasoning
• Cognitive Growth at Work

  Substantive complexity, spillover hypothesis
• Paths to adulthood

  • Family path
  • Work path
  • Education & Career Path
• Identity vs Role Confusion


  Fanaticism, repudiation
• Recentering


  The shift to an adult identity
• Stages of identity development in emerging adulthood


  • Stage 1: Embedded in family of origin
  • Stage 2: Connected but no longer embedded
  • Stage 3: Independence from family of origin
• Developing adult relationships with parents influences relationships
• Failure to launch refers to difficulties in transitioning to adulthood
• Intimacy vs Isolation


  Promiscuity, exclusion
• Timing of Events Model


  Theoretical model of personality development based on timing of important life events
• Normative life events

  • Marriage
  • Parenthood
  • Grandparenthood
  • Retirement
• Social Clock


  Society’s norms or expectations for the appropriate timing of life events
• Trait Models


  Five-factor model
• Five-factor model


  Openness to experiences<|>Conscientiousness<|>Extraversion<|>Agreeableness<|>Neuroticism
• Typological Models


  Ego-resilient, overcontrolled, undercontrolled
• Ego-resilient people


  Well-adjusted, self-confident, independent, articulate, attentive, helpful, cooperative, task-focused
• Overcontrolled people


  Shy, quiet, anxious, dependable; tend to withdraw from conflict
• Undercontrolled people


  Active, energetic, impulsive, stubborn, easily distracted
• Foundations of Intimate Relationships

  • Friendship
  • Love
  • Intimacy
  • Passion
  • Commitment
• Women in industrialized societies are having fewer children and having them later in life
• An increasing number of women choose to remain childless
• Fathers are usually less involved in child raising than mothers, but more so than in previous generations
• Marital satisfaction typically declines during the childbearing years
• In most cases, the burdens of a dual-earner lifestyle fall most heavily on the woman