1
Adult Development Analysis
Michelle Cartier
University of Phoenix
CMH/504: Individual And Family Development Across The Life Span
Jennifer Jenkins
June 17, 2021
2
Adult Development Analysis
Adulthood can be broken into three stages early 20-40 years old, middle 40-60 years old,
and late adulthood 60 years old and beyond. Currently, I fall into the early adulthood stage of
life. Early Adulthood is a transition from adolescents, teenage years to true independent adult
years. During early adulthood, many life events often take places such as dating and marriage,
parenting consideration and birth as well as college and career exploration. During my early
adulthood years, I have faced these same challenges, growths as well as many setbacks and
struggles along the way.
Cognitive Development
Cognition in early adulthood is theorized to begin to stabilize, reaching a peak around the
age of 35. (Feldman, 2019) During this stage of life, cognitive skills are the essential qualities
your brain utilizes to think, listen, learn, understand, justify, question, and pay close attention are
important as you begin to make most of life's long-lasting life decisions. During these early
adulthood years, we often learn to base decisions on what is realistic and practical, versus
idealistic as we have in the past. Being able to view and make more adaptive choices. Adults are
also not as easily influenced by what others think as they were in their adolescent years. This
advanced type of thinking is referred to as Postformal Thought (Sinnott, 1998)
Since entering early adulthood, I have experienced many of the cognitive milestones as
expected. The way in which I make decisions and choices has clearly transitioned into a more
postformal thought process. Decisions I make now tend to be more thought-out and practical
versus the impulsive decisions I have made in the past years. I have noticed that my thoughts are
feelings are more realistic in early adulthood as I have transitioned from valuing what my peers
think and are doing and more to what I and my family needs especially with important life-
3
changing decisions such as career choices, large purchases, or even friends to have. My
relationships have matured as I have grown to change in values and understanding friendship and
relationships on a deeper level. While I have quite noticeable matured cognitively socially and
emotionally, I have continued to mature as well in early adulthood.
Social and Emotional development
Early adulthood is not only loaded with cognitive changes but social/emotional changes
as well. Emotional development is defined as the emergence of the experience, expression,
understanding, and regulation of emotions from birth and the growth and change in these
capacities throughout childhood, adolescence, and adulthood (Feldman, 2019). Emotional
development during early adulthood can be seen with the development of the ability to share
intimacy with another adult, seeking to form relationships and find intimate long-lasting love.
During early adulthood individuals seek to form more long‐term relationships leading to
marriage and later children as opposed to those formed in adolescents. Besides family and
relationship building young adults continue to grow their college and career paths putting plans
into action. The college and career choices made in young adulthood affect not only
socioeconomic status but also the friends, learned and gained political values, and many other
characteristics of life. Erickson placed early adulthood into stage 6 of his psychosocial
development chart. Stage six is the intimacy vs isolation stage in which young adults struggle to
form intimate and loving relationships with others, success leads to strong relationships and
failure leads to loneliness.
Just as I have met and managed multiple cognitive growth milestones as well. During
early adulthood, I have been able to work on building internment relationships with another
young adult that lead to marriage. I worked with my partner to consider and later embark on
4
childbearing moving from coupled adults to young parents. During young adulthood, I have
chosen a path or college and career that differed from my visions held in adolescents. Socially
friendships have grown, changed, and gained more purpose besides pure socialization. During
my early adulthood, I have been able to meet many milestones as expected by multiple theorists.
Personal Challenges
During the early adulthood stage of life, I have already had the opportunity to encounter
many personal challenges along the way. I started and was able to build an intimate relationship
that progressed to a homogamy marriage that led to childbearing with my partner. Aside from
romantic relationships, I have been able to grow and prune friendships throughout the years as
my cognitive development evolved my social relationships followed suit leading to change in
relationship desires and needs. During my recent adult years, I have also experienced the
challenges of divorce and ending a long-term relationship with a partner that I had dated since
adolescents followed by beginning new relationships with another adult. One of the most
challenging tasks I have faced in this young adulthood stage this far is finding a career path and
managing career consolidation as I try to thrive in my chosen path.
Life roles
These developmental changes rather cognitively or emotionally that have taken place
have molded me and prepared me to manage young adulthood and soon promote to middle
adulthood. During this stage and through these changes I have become more independent as an
adult and parent. If I had attempted to manage a relationship or parents before meeting many of
these milestones, I do not believe I would be ready to manage such situations as successfully as I
have thus far. I have been able to make better, more logical, and informed choices leading to
more successful choices in my career path, parenting and relationships.
5
Life Experience
During early adulthood, I have learned from the growth and experiences experienced.
Cognitively I have gained immense perspective. I gave gained perspective in being able and
willing to see others' points of view, beliefs, and standpoints. I am able to explore other thoughts
and feelings knowing that they may not be my own but they are still valid despite my personal
beliefs and holdings. Along with pained perspective is perseverance. The ability to push through
adversity while working toward my goals, I have learned that while a setback may feel like
defeat it is only a setback and that growth can and will continue. I have gained the knowledge of
real relationships and what I desire in life based on my own wants and not that of my peers or
what social standards pressure me to pursue. Despite currently being in this phase of life
development I can already use the postformal thought to reflect and critically examine growth
experiences and changes taking place.
Conclusion
Many of the milestones I have been able to experience thus far will continue to assist me
as I become a counselor. I have been able to gain hands-on life experience on many of life's
stressors that my clients will also come to me with. Key events such as: becoming a parent,
struggling with young marriage and divorce as well as, overcoming career confusion conflict, or
starting a new relationship in adulthood leading to a blended family and cohabitating. Living
through experiences can provide me with empathy and realistic perspective that I can offer my
clients compared to someone who has not yet experienced such events in life leading to further
rapport building and greater experience for both my client as well as myself.
6
References
Feldman, R. (2019). Development Across the Life Span (9th ed.).
Sinnotte . A proposed model of psychodynamic psychotherapy linked to Erik Erikson’s eight
stages of psychosocial development. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy.
1998;24(5):1047. doi:10.1002/cpp.2066
Light, D. (2005). An Analysis of Erikson's and Piaget's Theories of Human Growth.
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED116776