Chapter Nineteen

1
Chapter Nineteen

• Early Adulthood
• Psychosocial Development

PowerPoints prepared by Cathie Robertson,
Grossmont College
2
Theories of Adulthood

• Many theories describe, analyze, and predict the
  transformations that occur during adulthood
• Different theories about psychological needs
  reach similar conclusions

3
Love and Work

• Two basic needs affiliation and achievement
• or affection and instrumentality
• Maslow hierarchy of needs
• Erikson intimacy vs. isolation

4
Ages and Stages

• Patterns of the Past
• by 20s identity
• by 30s intimacy
• by 40s generativity
• Adult lives today are less orderly and
  predictable than stage models suggest

5
The Social Clock

• Culturally set timetable that establishes when
  various events and endeavors in life are
  appropriate
• What are some of the appropriate timetables in
  the United States?

6
The Social Clock, cont.

• Developed vs. Developing Nations
• developed nations now permit grandmothers to be
  college graduates, while developing nations do
  not
• developing nations encourage teens to be mothers,
  while developed nations discourage this practice
• Rich and Poor
• the lower the SES, the sooner a person is
  expected to reach lifes milestones

7
Intimacy

• Need for Intimacy
• meeting it depends on affiliation, affection,
  interdependence, love
• Two primary sources are close friendships and
  romantic partnerships

8
Friendship

• Better than the family in buffering against
  stress, as guide to self-awareness, and as a
  source of positive feelings like joy

9
Choosing Young-Adult Friends

• Physical attractiveness
• Apparent availability (willingness to chat)
• Absence of exclusion criteria
• Frequent exposure to each other

10
Gender Differences in Friendship

• Conversations and Expectations
• women ? self-disclosure
• men ? external matterssports, politics, work
• female-female pattern may better reduce
  loneliness and self-absorption
• male-male pattern may be more effective and
  efficient, especially in work situations

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Gender Differences in Friendship, cont.

• Friendships Between Men and Women
• cross-sex friendships allow learning about common
  humanity and let people help each other gain
  skills
• problems may arise when a platonic relationship
  is sexualized or there are conflicts of
  expectations
• Same sex friendships may be most effective and
  efficient
• especially in the workplace

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Development of Love and Marriage

• Sternbergs Theory of love
• 1) passion 2) intimacy 3) commitment
• 7 forms of love based on presence or absence of
  three components above
• in West, consummate love a combination of all
  threeis the ideal form
• difficult to achieve consummate love
• familiarity and security diminish passion

13
Contact and Courtship

• Throughout history marriages commonly arranged
• still common today in many nations and certain
  cultures
• Typical U.S. pattern todayinitiated and
  sustained by the two people involved
• duration and seriousness increase until, couples
  marry, typically 10 years after their first love
  affair
• Courtship follows predicable patternfrom passion
  to intimacy

14
Living Together

• Cohabitation a couples living together in a
  committed sexual relationship without being
  formally married
• increasingly common
• cohabitation not just for young adults
• slightly more than half of all women aged 25-40
  years have cohabited

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Living Together, cont.

• Cohabitation does not necessarily benefit the
  participants
• one study found people who cohabitate much less
  happy and healthy, and less satisfied with
  financial status than are married couples
• in another study, cohabiting relationships were 3
  times as likely to be abusive than marriages
• in a third, compared to single adults,
  cohabitants are likelier to have alcohol problems

16
Marriage

• Not like it used to be
• proportion of unmarried adults is higher than at
  any time in the past century
• 10 percent of brides are virgins
• nearly one-half of all births are to single
  mothers who are increasingly unlikely to marry
  the fathers of their babies

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Marriage, cont.

• Not like it used to be, cont.
• 20 percent of first births conceived before
  marriage
• divorce rate is 49 percent of marriage rate
• the rate of first marriages in young adulthood
  lowest in 50 years

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Marriage, cont.

• Marriage, still most enduring evidence of couple
  commitment, is celebrated in every culture in the
  world by a wedding
• hoped-for-results a love that deepens over the
  years, as bond cemented by
• birth of children
• weathering economic and emotional turbulence
• surviving serious illness or other setbacks
• sharing social and financial commitments

19
Marriage, cont.

• Worldwide research says married people are
  happier, healthier, and richer

20
What Makes Marriages Work

• Developmentally, marriage is a useful institution
• children generally thrive when two parents are
  committed to their well-being

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What Makes Marriages Work, cont.

• One developmental factor affecting success of
  marriage is maturity of the partners
• A second factor is degree of similarity, or
  homogamymarriage within same group
• heterogamymarriage outside of group
• social homogamysimilarity of couples interests
  and role preferences

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What Makes Marriages Work, cont.

• Marital Equity
• social exchange theory
• in modern marriages, what matters most is
  perception of fairness, not absolute equality

23
Same-Sex Partners

• Long-term homosexual partnerships are more common
  and open today
• 2-5 percent of all U.S.adults spend some part of
  adulthood in such relationships
• Homosexuals generally have same relationship
  issues as heterosexuals

24
Divorce

• Influenced by social and political context
• affects many lives for years
• United States has highest divorce rate
• almost 1 in 2 first marriages end in divorce
• Historically, an increase, but stabilizing
• one reason lower marriage rate

25
The Role of Expectations

• People today expect more from marriage partners
  than in the past, but expectations are not always
  as well defined

26
The Developmental Impact of Divorce

• Initially worse than expected in
• health
• happiness
• self-esteem
• financial stability
• social interaction
• achievement

27
Domestic Violence

• Violence in intimate relationships has multiple
  causes
• social pressures that create stress, cultural
  values, personality pathologies, and drug and
  alcohol addiction
• common couple violence1 or both partners engage
  in verbal and physical attack
• intimate terrorism1 partner systematically
  isolates, degrades, and punishes the other

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Domestic Violence, cont.

• Intimate terrorism less prevalent than common
  couple violence
• Perpetrator usually anti-social and violent in
  many ways
• Leads to battered-wife syndrome, with woman not
  simply physically beaten but broken socially and
  psychologically

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Domestic Violence, cont.

• Similarities Between 2 Types of Domestic Violence
• jealous male partner doesnt want female partner
  to talk to other men
• male partner tries to limit female partners
  contact with family and friends
• male partner insists on knowing who female
  partner is with and where she is at all times
• Difference Between 2 Types of Domestic Violence
• But in intimate terrorism, partner seeks to exert
  violent control over the other

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Generativity

• Defined as the motivation to achieve or the drive
  to be generative

31
Importance of Work

• Develops and uses personal skills and talents
• Provides structure for daily life
• Work can help a person to
• develop and use personal skills
• express unique creative energy
• aid and advise coworkers, as a mentor or friend
• contribute to larger community via product or
  service

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New Patterns of Employment

• Restructuring
• work
• workers
• employers
• schedule
• teamwork
• typical career sequence
• Manufacturing estimated to shrink by 1/3 between
  1995-2005

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New Patterns of Employment, cont.

• Workplace characterized by ongoing reorganization
  and growing automation
• Timing and pace of jobs are changing
• Burden of these new work patterns falls
  especially on young adults

34
Diversity in the Workplace

• A major social change is most adult women are
  employed
• motherhood no longer considered impediment to
  employment
• Gender and ethnic diversity are increasing in
  every developed nation
• glass ceiling (invisible barrier impeding rise of
  both groups)

35
Diversity in the Workplace, cont.

• Work teams function best when they are diverse
• Work requires same relationship skills as
  friendship or marriage

36
Parenthood

• Adult Development
• having children, nurturing them, and launching
  them into the world has a major impact on the
  parents development
• birth of a child brings conflict and challenges
  and begins the lifelong process of interdependence

37
Children Affect Their Parents

• The bond is reciprocal
• Challenges emerge at every stage of childs
  development
• Few young adults anticipate the time required for
  parenting

38
Employed Parents

• Benefits and Problems
• role overload
• role buffering
• Logistics in Everyday Life

39
Children and Divorce

• Children make divorce more complicated
• Financial burden of child rearing on custodial
  parent
• Only one-half of fathers pay full child support

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Alternative Routes to Parenthood

• Roughly one-third of North American adults become
• stepparents
• adoptive parents
• foster parents