Chapter Nineteen
Early Adulthood
Psychosocial Development
Tasks of Adulthood
• Two basic needs: affiliation and
achievement
• Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
• Ages and Stages = Patterns of the
past
• by 20’s  identity
• by 30’s  intimacy
• by 40’s  generativity
• Today’s adult lives “are less orderly and
predictable than stage models suggest”
• The Social Clock
• Culturally set timetable that establishes
when various events and endeavors in life
are appropriate
• What are some of the appropriate
timetables for the United States?***
• Nation to Nation
• Industrialized nations - legal
ages/requirements/expectations
(teenage pregnancy = not good)
• Underdeveloped nations - less age
stratified because survival to late
adulthood less certain
• Rich and Poor
• The lower the SES, the sooner a
person is expected to reach life’s
milestones
Intimacy
• Need for intimacy
• Affiliation, affection,
interdependence, love
• Two primary sources are close
friendship and romantic
partnership
Friendship
• Buffer against stress, guide to selfawareness and source of positive
feelings
• Gateways to attraction for
friendship:
• physical attractiveness
• apparent availability (willingness to chat)
• absence of exclusion criteria
• frequent exposure
• Gender differences in
Friendship***
• Conversations
• Women  self-disclosure
• Men  external matters - sports,
politics, work
• Deborah Tannen’s work***
• Man and Woman, Just Friends***
• cross-sex friendships allow learning
about common humanity and help
each other gain skills
• problems may arise when
sexualizing a platonic relationship
• The Best Friendships
• several close friendships, each meeting
different needs
• Friendship and Marriage
• At marriage, friendships become less
prominent
• Cross-sex friendships can cause
problems
• Same sex can be rivals
Development of Love
and Marriage
• Intimate relationship with a mate
creates a bond
• Living together
• Cohabitation = increasingly common
• Cohabitation does not strengthen bond
• People who cohabitate are much less happy,
healthy and less satisfied with financial
status than are married couples
• Cohabiting relationships are more
abusive- abuse=twice as likely as those
not living together
• Cohabitaters who eventually marry are
more likely to divorce
Living with a
Same Sex Partner
• Homosexual cohabitation is more
common and open today
• 2-5% of all adults in US spend part
of adulthood in gay or lesbian
partnerships
• More similar than different to
cohabiting heterosexual
partnerships
• Sternberg’s Theory of love
• 3 components 1)passion 2)intimacy
3)commitment
• 7 types of love stemming from this
theory ***
Marriage
• Not like it “used to be”
• Only 10% brides are virgins
• 32% of all births are to unmarried mothers
• 10% of first births are conceived before
marriage
• Divorce rate is 49% of marriage rate
• The rate of first marriages in young
adulthood lowest in 50 years
• However, marriage remains the most
enduring evidence of couple
commitment, celebrated in every
culture in the world by a wedding***
• Homogamy/endogamy  within group
• Heterogamy/exogamy  out of group
• Social homogamy  similar interests and role
preferences
• Marital equity
• exchange theory
• Marriage is a work in progress
=communication
• Divorce
• Divorce rates differ by country- US
highest rate of any major country
• Role of expectations
• Expect more from marriage partners
than in the past
• Uncoupling
• How does it affect the development of
husband, wife and children
• Initially worse in every way- health,
happiness, self-esteem, financial
stability and social interaction
• Developmental Pattern of Divorce
• First year
• anger and conflict
• social circle shrinks
• prone to loneliness, disequilibrium-***
• financial instability
• Divorced with Children
• Children become more demanding,
disrespectful or depressed
• Financial burdens
• Fathers often lose intimate bonds with
children because of physical or psychic
differences
• Likely to become less involved with children every
passing year
• Spouse abuse  multiple causal
factors***
• social pressures, stress, cultural values,
personality pathologies, and drug and
alcohol addiction
• couple violence - yelling, insulting and
physical attack but no domination
• patriarchal terrorism- one partner
domination using isolation, degradation
and punishment
• Remarriage
• 3 times more likely for men in the first
3 years
• Adjustments to stepfamilies take a lot
of time
Generativity
• Importance of Work
• develops and uses personal skills and talents
• expresses unique creative energy
• contributes to larger community by providing
product or service
• Volunteerism
• Family responsibilities
• Artistic Creation
• Pattern of the 1950’s
• Historical Context of work
• New Patterns of Work
• Context changing
• Work itself changing
• Industry to information
• Diversity in the workplace
• sex, nationality and ethnicity
• Implications for development
• Flexibility and transferable skills-
especially communication
• Need for sensitivity to cultural
differences
• Glass ceiling
• Need for same human relations skills as
friendship and marriage
Gender Roles in Work
and Family
• Shift in gender roles in the 20th
century
• Benefits and problems
• Coparenting
• Role overload
• Role buffering
• Logistics in everyday life ***
Parenthood
• Adult Development
• having children, nurturing them and
launching them into the world has a
major impact on the parent’s
development
• birth of a child brings conflict and
challenges
• Alternative forms of parenthood
• stepparents, adoptive parents, foster
parents